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......NEWS............................more..NEWS.......... Text: Nick Clarke and Chris Dove London City Surfing? Violin-playing California’s got Surf City. Sydney’s got Bondi Beach. Now London’s next to catch the crest of a wave Robot Futureproof with the world’s first outdoor A similar concept to Noah’s Ark, but for seeds instead artificial surfing machine to Toyota has unveiled of animals, the Svalbard International Seed Vault is help relieve pressure on England’s a five feet tall, currently being built on a remote island near the North Cornish coast – the most popular white Violin Robot Pole. Scheduled to open later this year – but not for UK destination for extreme with 17 joints in shoppers, we imagine - the doomsday-style vault will watersports. The aim is to attract both its hands and house seeds from all known varieties of food crops just the growing ranks of urban surfers arms. Performing to in case global warming wipes them all out. While it’s to taste the ‘quintessential the tune ‘Pomp and certainly a good idea, we can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if we’d never have California surf lifestyle’ in the Circumstance’, it to taste brussel sprouts again! The brainchild of the Norwegian government, who are forking unlikely surroundings of a disused dock on the River Thames in involves a soft grip out a reported £2.5-million for the project, the vault is strangely stylish with steel doors, east London. From 2011, the outdoor surfing pool, designed by Barker on strings which high fences and concrete walls. While we wouldn’t seek comfort in it as an asteroid was about And Coutts Architects, will feature six-foot swells using cleaned is tough work for to hit earth, we’d sure be thankful for it if we survived. river water to rival the Atlantic breakers of Devon and Cornwall. mechanical fingers. The £20m (€26.5m) Venture Xtreme project at Silvertown Quays has This development secured outline planning permission to transform the former followed their grain dock. Building will begin this year with an artificial beach demonstration of how featuring palm trees, boardwalks, rentable fire-pits and Aussie- a robot’s fingers are style barbecues for post-surf relaxation. The wave pool will be dexterous enough Some people are just so fickle. Take top auctioneer Alexander Payne, for instance. surrounded by shops, cafés and restaurants, and the beach will be to play a trumpet. Having coined the term ‘design art’ for an exhibition in 1999, he’s now let the available for corporate entertainment hire. Go surf London! This is just one of Design world know that he’s sick of it. So sick of it, in fact, he’s stopped using it. Toyota’s Mobility Completely. Director of design at upscale auction house Phillips de Pury, Payne Robots they’re huffed: “We don’t call our auctions ‘design art’ anymore... we were getting tired of developing in their it being used incorrectly”. Instead, items under the hammer will now be classified quest to deliver Art as either design or art – not in between. When Payne decides to get down off his UltraBattery Hybrid Storage Cell robots that offer high-horse, perhaps he can stop whittering on and get back to work. utility for everyday Worry about the battery life of electric cars no longer. The new low- life. Like playing emission UltraBattery developed in Australia is a high-performance the violin, which hybrid storage cell that runs for 100,000 miles without the need we all do every day! for recharging or replacement. Combining a super capacitor with a Famed international lead acid battery in one unit cell provides higher power discharge violinist Nigel and longer life. According to designers CSIRO, the UltraBattery is Kennedy finally has an advancement on conventional battery design as it outperforms some competition! Big Brother watches you PEE!..........WHAT?? any other battery on the market for Hybrid Make sure you have your mobile phone on you when you need to Electric Vehicles (HEVs). use roadside toilets in Finland. To deter vandalism and arson, It’s 70% cheaper to the Finnish Road Administration is deploying a system which manufacture and has advises users to open roadside toilet doors only by sending 50% more power while an SMS message saying “OPEN” to the number given on the door. providing a solution for The call is directed to a modem which then sounds a buzzer and future energy storage opens the door, hopefully without any time delay. The traffic needs by absorbing centre says it will save the numbers of callers for a while wasted energy from but not permanently. This should reduce the damages to public braking. The innovative property as people will know their phone number is on record if battery is also being they wish to trash the place. While opening the door costs the tested for use in wind normal SMS rate without additional charges, it’s still another and solar applications. opportunity for the phone companies to take the p*** out of desperate road users. 08 Modern Design Modern Design 9 .......more..NEWS.......... Lend A Helping Hand PAD (Protección de Animales Domésticos) Eternal respect to budding Back To UK architect NATURE Eco-mad designer Fritz Dreaming of becoming an architect before his brutal racist Haeg is at it again, murder 15 years ago on the streets of Deptford, South this year trying to London, the Stephen Lawrence Centre officially opened on save the planet one 7th February 2008 commemorating the 19 year old’s short life. species at a time. As In building the Centre, the Stephen Lawrence Charitable part of his agenda to Trust has created “a place for community learning and prevent Armageddon, social research that will inspire and motivate young the green giant has people to pursue successful careers in architecture and recently launched associated professions involving urban design and urban Animal Estates, an renewal.” Funded by the Millennium Commission and Arts eight-site project that Council England, London Development Agency, Berkeley Homes provides dwellings plc, Thames Water and the St. James Group, the Centre aims for homeless animals to bring tangible, life-changing benefits to vulnerable in neigbourhoods that communities. It was officially opened by Stephen’s long- would be otherwise suffering mother Doreen (Director of the Trust and awarded an OBE devoid of nature. Set from The Queen), together with London’s Mayor and Prince Charles – to be introduced into the latter paying tribute to Stephen saying: “Our lives are shaped urban environments, by the towns and cities we inhabit and by the beauty or the ugliness such as car parks, of our surroundings. From time to time, this powerful truth so shopping centres and touches a young man, or a young woman, that they decide they must museums, the manmade become an architect”. With support also coming from Prime Minister homes will encourage Gordon Brown and the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green homeless species to Party leaders, the team at Modern Design wish the Centre’s ‘Youth, resettle, with each Creativity and Urban Design’ curriculum every success in spreading built in conjunction the positive word about all architectural forms to new and younger with a zoologist. You audiences. Though well-known to the Police, Stephen’s five alleged can always count on killers have never been convicted due to ‘legal technicalities’. Haeg to do something crazy; just last year www.stephenlawrence.org.uk he was asking people in Los Angeles to turn their front lawns into vegetable patches to change how suburbanites relate to their surroundings. Perhaps what’s even crazier, though, PAD is a rehoming shelter for abandoned dogs and cats. Since we opened our shelter in December 1998 we have found is that they did it! loving homes for more than 6000 dogs, cats, puppies and kittens. Our placement rate is exceptional and in 2007 alone we rehomed well over 1000 animals. So the next time you worry that all your efforts may not be making a difference, you only www.fritzhaeg.com have to remember the 6000 lives that have ALREADY been saved. TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. You can help by becoming a member (just €35/year), adopt or foster a cat or dog, make a donation, dog walk, groom and clean the cats, help at our fund raising events, collect bric-a-brac, display a collecting tin, or find new members . The shelter is open 365 days of the year from 11am to 2pm and Monday-Friday (working days) from 4pm to 7pm. Tel: 952 48 60 84 | PAD, Apartado 170, Mijas 29650 | website: www.padcatsanddogs.org | e-mail [email protected] Donations accepted through: Bankinter, Ramon y Cajal 9, Fuengirola 29640, A/C Nº 0128 0796 13 0102677405 10 Modern Design Whether it’s mysterious containers, mobile homes, office units, bathroom fittings or quirky furnishings, Atelier’s concepts are always miles ahead of the curve. Their signature, however, has to be the large-scale sculptures they manufacture, such as the Sensory Deprivation Skull, made from reinforced fibreglass. With a hidden container built into the skull, the piece often causes opposite reactions from those who sit inside, some experiencing feelings of isolation, others feeling strangely serene. Other works include the Bad Little Table and the Bad Club Chair – though they’re VanText: Nick Clarke Images: Courtesy of Atelier van Lieshout Dutch Based in a riverside warehouse anything but! – and the suggestively- in Rotterdam, Atelier van named Prick Lamp! Our favourite 1| Look inside: Despite looking like Victoria Beckham’s head, this is actually Atelier’s iconic Sensory Deprivation Skull (2007).

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