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The LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043) was just announced yesterday morning and it’ll be available on August 15 for VIP members and September 1 for the general public. I’ve been told by a source that LEGO Stores may be taking pre-orders for this set as there was a sign in the front stating “Ask us about how to Pre-Order our new Exclusive.” I was also told that the deposit for it was $39.99. I’m not sure if all LEGO Stores are doing pre-orders but it’s interesting to see LEGO trying something new for their exclusive sets as there will be a high demand for the Hogwarts Castle when it comes out in a few short weeks. I suggest contact your store to see if they are indeed taking pre-orders for it. I haven’t been down to my store yet to check but if someone did do it, let us know in the comments.

If you didn’t see the announcement post, Hogwarts Castle (71043) will become the second largest ever LEGO set coming in at 6,020 pieces and it will retail for $399.99. Head over to the link above to see the press release as well as a ton of images that LEGO has sent over.

The post LEGO Stores Taking Pre-Orders for LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (71043)? appeared first on The Brick Fan.

An optical illusion mural affixed to the facade of a medieval fortress in France is no less controversial for its temporary nature, even though the piece is not quite what it seems at first glance. Those aren’t swaths of paint defacing the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Carcassonne, Southern France – they’re ribbons of thin aluminum, which can be easily removed when the installation is taken down in September.

‘Concentric Eccentric’ by Felice Varini continues the artist’s tradition of creating large-scale perspectival pieces in urban environments, and it’s all the more stunning for the contrast it creates.

Fifteen yellow circles radiate out from the entrance to the fortress, drawing in the many tourists who flock to Carcassonne for its picturesque scenery and wine. The installation celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the monument’s UNESCO designation. While the design echoes much of Varini’s past work, it also complements the design of the fortress itself, which consists of two concentric outer walls, 53 towers and barbicans (fortified entrances) to prevent attacks during sieges, the first known use of the technique.

While some might find ’Concentric Eccentric’ a fun addition to the ancient city, some locals weren’t exactly thrilled, calling for the removal of the “filthy” artwork. Some even cried that the work was “ruining our lives.” Some said they welcomed the controversy because it proves that they’re “deeply attached to their heritage.”

To create the mural, local art students projected the circles onto the stone surfaces at night and applied the aluminum strips. France’s Centre Des Monuments Nationaux gives us a look at how this process was carried out in a series of behind-the-scenes photographs viewable on its website.

Photos by André Morin

Lions ate at least two rhinoceros poachers trespassing on a game preserve in Kenton-on-Sea, South Africa. Along with the poachers' remains, rangers found a high-powered rifle and axe.

"They strayed into a pride of lions - it's a big pride so they didn't have too much time," Sibuya reserve owner Nick Fox was quoted as saying. "We're not sure how many there were - there's not much left of them."

More in this press release from the Sibuya Game Reserve.

(BBC)

A new housing project in Beirut uses flexible wall dividers in an unconventional way, allowing huge steel panels to slide into and out of the structure itself, animating the facade while partitioning space on demand.

Designed by Fouad Samara Architects, these duplex ‘Modulofts’ units in the capital of Lebanon were modeled after a combination of classic open urban lofts and cozy contemporary homes, hence the spatial flexibility.

Each unit has a pair of rooms overlooking a main living and dining area which can be opened up by day, the steel partitions serving as shades, and closed at night for privacy, or reconfigured for dinners and parties.

The adaptable interior can be configured in sixteen different ways, explain the architects, via a combination of four sliding walls that divide the bedrooms as well as separate living and dining, study and television spaces on the lower level.

Divisions aren’t exclusively binary, either — partitions can be slid out partway to create essentially infinite variations. Raw slate is designed to reference traditional Lebanese homes, and steel to conjure NYC loft aesthetics.

To visitors, architectural ruins are simply a modern reality, and their imagined reconstruction is left to descriptive plaques, statics images and the human imagination, but this series of renderings dynamically recreates each of seven different famous sites, brick by brick and column by column.

The collection includes the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, The Temple of Jupiter in Pompeii, Hadrian’s Wall in England, the Temple of Largo Argentina in Rome, Italy, the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, as well as the Pyramid of the Sun and the Nohoch Mul Pyramid in Mexico.

In some cases, there is barely anything left to extrapolate from, but by outlining, framing and filling in each structure, the relationship of what remains and what once was can be seen side-by-side.

Also highlighted is the order of decay, showing which materials and structural components were most durable and which ones were subjected to decay and destruction.

Of course, they could be physically restored as well, but questions of archeological ethics and historical truth make this a difficult proposition — and there is something to be said for the aesthetic of a ruin, particularly those that have shaped modern architecture.

Take the bleached-white columns of ancient Roman and Greek cathedrals — these informed an entire area of Neo-Classical and Greek Revival design, but it is based on the ruins having lost their color over time. In reality, the buildings on which these styles are based were once highly decorated, so it was the ruined versions, not the originals, that inspired places like American capital buildings of today.

Neomam created this series for Expedia.  The creative contractors behind the labor-intensive renderings are Maja Wroska and her husband Przemek Sobiecki, who works as This Is Render.

A great potential next-level application for this strategy would also be to add in an augmented reality component, allowing visitors to use their mobile devices to see these reconstructions overlaid on actual ruins in realtime.

Along those lines: a pane of glass overlaid with a simple line drawing brings crumbling ruins to life at one of Austria’s most famous historical sites, reanimating the partial building near the Open Air Museum Petronell. When a viewer lines up the illustration with the structure, known as Heidentor (Heathen’s Gate), the image completes itself in a compelling yet entirely low-tech fashion.

I've lived in British Columbia and Nova Scotia. This is, hands down, the best story I've ever read that involves both coasts.

According to The Times Colonist, 17 years ago, Nick Burchill, a naval reservist from Nova Scotia, was in Victoria, British Columbia for a work-related conference. He chose to stay at the Fairmont Empress Hotel: a high-falootin' luxury joint that's been a fixture on the city's downtown waterfront for decades. When Burchill came from the east coast, he knew that he'd be meeting with friends from the navy when time allowed for it. He brought them a gift: Chris Brothers Pepperoni sticks: a much-loved Nova Scotian delicacy. Not wanting anyone to feel left out, he brought, well, a lot. To keep the meat cool and edible until he could hand it over to his pals, Burchill cracked the window in his hotel room and laid the pepperoni out on the windowsill. He figured that the cool spring air would be enough to refrigerate the food. What happened next is the stuff of legend:

From the Times Colonist:

He spread the packages of pepperoni out on a table and along the window sill, then went for a leisurely four or five hour walk.

“I remember walking down the long hall and opening the door to my room to find an entire flock of seagulls in my room,” Burchill wrote. “I didn’t have time to count, but there must have been 40 of them and they had been in my room, eating pepperoni for a long time.”

Burchill discovered that spicy pepperoni does not agree with a seagull’s digestive system. The room was covered in guano.

Burchill’s unexpected entry startled the birds.

The birds, losing their shit over their being a human in the room, began to literally lose their shit, everywhere they flew in the room, spreading poop over everything. As they took to the air, the seagulls knocked over lamps, decorations and anything else that wasn't bolted down. As Burchill put it, the resulting chaos was "...a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers, pepperoni chunks and fairly large birds whipping around the room." Fighting his way through the flock, Burchill managed to open the rest of the windows in his suite so that the birds could escape. As one of the birds tried to re-enter the room in search of more food, Burchill threw his shoe at it. The shoe ended up on the front lawn of the hotel, narrowly missing a group of vistors.

Burchill has been, understandably, banned from staying at the Empress for the past 17 years. This past week, his lifetime ban was lifted by the hotel's management after he wrote them a passionate letter explaining his part in the pepperoni-and-seagull related disaster.

That Burchill included a pound of Chris Brothers pepperoni with the letter as a peace offering may have had something to do with it too.

Image via pixabay, courtesy of cocoparisienne

Color, shape, texture and structure form the basis for these cairns, mandalas, spiral and hexagons, set against scenic backdrops where the materials were found.

In a tradition often traced back to Andy Goldsworthy, artist James Brunt makes “creates elaborate ephemeral artworks using the natural materials he finds in forests, parks, and beaches near his home in Yorkshire, England,” reports Colossal.

By design and necessity, each of the works is inherently temporary, destined to follow and entropic path back to chaos once left to the forces of nature.

And while all of these works take time, the stacked stone cairns are particularly impressive — and probably the first to fall back apart when left alone.

But Brunt photographs each piece after completion, creating a record that will outlast the work, and sells prints as well.

As studies proving the strength and fire-resistance of timber construction loosen building codes around the globe, a new class of towers emerges, each of them angling to set records for the world’s tallest wooden buildings. In fact, so many towering timber creations are planned, there’s no telling which ones will actually manage to score the title before another snatches the crown. Here are some of the contenders.

W350 Project: 1,148-Foot Timber Tower for Tokyo by Nikken Sekkei

Architects Nikken Sekkei and Japanese companity Sumitomo Forestry Co. announce their plans to rise triumphant over every other tall timber tower currently in development with ‘Project 350,’ the world’s first supertall wooden skyscraper. At 1,148 feet tall, it soars significantly over the pinnacles of all other timber tower proposals. The mixed-use development would call for more than 6.5 million cubic feet of wood and cost about $5.6 billion USD. It features a 9:1 ration of wood to steel to meet Tokyo’s stringent seismic requirements.

Tree Tower Toronto by Penda

Taking inspiration from Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67, also located in Toronto, ‘Tree Tower Toronto’ by architecture firm Penda and wood consultants from CLT-brand Tmber is an 18-story timber-frame skyscraper that will reach a height of about 203 feet. The majority of the tower will contain residential units, with the rest dedicated to public spaces.

“Our cities are an assembly of steel, concrete and glass,” says Chris Precht, partner at Penda. “If you walk through the city and suddenly see a tower made of wood and plants, it will create an interesting contrast. The warm, natural appearance of wood and the plants growing on its facade bring the building to life and that could be a model for environmental friendly developments and sustainable extensions of our urban landscape.”

Mjøstårnet in Norway by Moelvin Limtre

Due to be completed in March 2019, Mjøstårnet by Moelvin Limtre is an 18-story high rise planned for a small Norway town that will be made primarily of local spruce. Though other planned towers are undeniably much taller, it looks like this one will be among the highest real-world examples to emerge in the next couple years. It will include apartments, offices, common areas, a restaurant, a hotel and a swimming hall. The developers are giving it a wide base so its total height could be raised in the future.

Terrace House in Vancouver by Shigeru Ban Architects

Planned for Vancouver’s Coal Harbour neighborhood alongside the landmark Evergreen building by Arthur Erickson, ‘Terrace House’ by famed Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is set to be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. The design for the 232-foot-tall luxury residence tower complements that of its neighbor, and will feature an outer frame of timber, a glass top and a concrete and steel core.

Brock Commons: The World’s Tallest Timber Structured Building, Vancouver

For all of these towering timber proposals, we rarely see any already completed. Brock Commons in Vancouver by Acton Ostry Architects Inc. gives us an idea of what these structures will look like. Created as a student residence building at the University of British Columbia, the 173-foot building is made primarily of wood but its interiors are lined with a drywall and concrete envelope to comply with current fire safety codes.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Wood You Believe It 10 Ultra Tall Timber Towers Compete For World Records

When we think of ancient persons carefully laying the foundations of stone monuments, or hard at work writing out historical tomes, it’s a bit hard to imagine them brushing away an interrupting cat or dog in frustration, much as we still do today.

But PhD researcher Paul Cooper became fascinated with these everyday moments, frozen in time, as he began to find more and more examples — like 4,000-year-old mud bricks, for instance, “stamped with the name and titles of the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu (reigned 2047-2030 BCE) and left out to dry.”

And while dogs may be less prone to hop on on tables, Cooper has found plenty of examples of cats knocking over ink and bounding across work surfaces to leave their mark, or even outright peeing on pages. The scribe of one ancient volume wrote in his text: “Here is nothing missing, but a cat urinated on this during a certain night. Cursed be the pesty cat that urinated over this book … because of it many others did too. And beware not to leave open books at night where cats can come.”

Left outside to dry, masonry materials often show signs of accidental intervention. One can find paw prints on clay tablets from the Ziggurat of Ur (21st century BCE), for example, and ancient Roman tiles (from around 0 CE) found in England, left by various species wild or domestic, including dogs, goats and sheep.

A dish-washing machine is often the first thing to go when space needs saving in a tiny home, small condo or studio apartment, but this little invention aims to provide a better option for more average-sized households.

Developed by Heatworks, Tetra is a tankless washer aimed at one-to-two-person homes that can help save 1,500 gallons of water annually (as compared to hand-washing dishes). It’s about the same dimensions as a microwave and requires no plumbing hookup, making it nice and portable — it can be set on counters, stored in cabinets or tucked under islands. Water is poured in by hand and a single cycle takes just a few minutes.

Detergent demands are also reduced and the process of adding them simplified, with a built-in tank that stores fluid for a few dozen rounds at a time. And as much for fun as anything: the gadget is see-through, so you can watch the cleaning process.

The device is small, but made to hold up to 10 plates and glasses (or: about two place settings, compared to the 12 or so of a normal-sized washer for bigger houses). It also has various internal bases that can be swapped out depending on the needs of a different user (or particular wash cycle). It costs around $300.

From the founder: “Our research indicates that although the average household is comprised of 2.58 people, the modern dishwasher holds place settings for 13 or more. This makes people believe that they either need to hand-wash their few dirty dishes — which wastes 10 times more water than using a dishwasher — or wait for a fill load to run a cycle. With Tetra, we hope to change people’s mindset.”

police were called when people began fighting and pushing one another. "They are like animals. A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand," one customer told French media. A member of staff at one Intermarché shop in central France told the regional newspaper Le Progrès: "We were trying to get in between the customers but they were pushing us."

A series of stacked tree-like supports seem to abstract the nature in this Japanese chapel, bringing a small geometric forest inside this otherwise minimalist space to serve a contemporary congregation.

Designed by architects of Momoeda Yo, the square pillars were made using traditional Japanese woodworking methods. They stack on top of each other, forming different forest layers and growing smaller as they go up — a fractal-style repeating pattern.

The construction strategy not only supports a ceiling high above, but it also opens up more space for occupation down below. A series of thin, white-painted metal rods are used for structural stabilization (tension) while the wooden members work to hold things up (compression).

The side loads are carried by walls while the columns support roof loads of up to 25 tons. The whole architectural creation reads a bit like a structural drawing exercise, in which loads trace are downward and become larger as they join up and head toward the floor, much like the columns do in this case.

The designer says they were inspired in part by a combination of historic church styles and local traditions: “In nagasaki, there is the oldest wooden gothic chapel in japan known as ‘ohura-tenshudou’,’ he says ‘This chapel is not only a famous tourist point, but a place loved and cared for by the townsfolk. We tried to design the building as a new gothic style chapel, by using Japanese wooden system.”

When you don't have a million LEGO bricks, and you can't afford the official Millennium Falcon kit, you do with what you have. The_Librarian_NULL did quite a great job with limited resources, just like Han Solo would! If you don't even have that many LEGO bricks, you can get a tiny kit.

It resembles a small ship from Jay’s Brick Blog Star Wars Advent Calendar, but it's not the same, just a coincidence.

While the tiny ship is cute, it's not the only make-do. Redditor funkblast had plenty of LEGO bricks, but not the cash needed for the kit, so he made the multicolored Millennium Falcon above some time ago. You can see more of it in an album here.  

But if you're into the tiny Star Wars ships, you might be able to squeeze out enough bricks for a minimal Imperial Battle Cruiser and a TIE fighter, by deu5ex. 

In 2010, The Royal Society featured the "Desiderata" (previously) of Robert "Boyle's Law" Boyle, a list of dozens of scientific discoverie and breakthroughs that Boyle hoped would be discovered by scientists.

* The Prolongation of Life.

* The Recovery of Youth, or at least some of the Marks of it, as new Teeth, new Hair colour’d as in youth.

* The Art of Flying.

* The Art of Continuing long under water, and exercising functions freely there.

* The Cure of Wounds at a Distance.

* The Cure of Diseases at a distance or at least by Transplantation.

* The Attaining Gigantick Dimensions.

* The Emulating of Fish without Engines by Custome and Education only.

* The Acceleration of the Production of things out of Seed.

* The Transmutation of Metalls.

* The makeing of Glass Malleable.

* The Transmutation of Species in Mineralls, Animals, and Vegetables.

* The Liquid Alkaest and Other dissolving Menstruums.

* The making of Parabolicall and Hyperbolicall Glasses.

* The making Armor light and extremely hard.

* The practicable and certain way of finding Longitudes.

* The use of Pendulums at Sea and in Journeys, and the Application of it to watches.

* Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams, etc.

* A Ship to saile with All Winds, and A Ship not to be Sunk.

* Freedom from Necessity of much Sleeping exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and what happens in Mad-Men.

* Pleasing Dreams and physicall Exercises exemplify’d by the Egyptian Electuary and by the Fungus mentioned by the French Author.

* Great Strength and Agility of Body exemplify’d by that of Frantick Epileptick and Hystericall persons.

* A perpetuall Light.

* Varnishes perfumable by Rubbing.

What scientists want: Robert Boyle’s to-do list [The Repository/Royal Society Archives]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

If you have ever opened a side door to see the lines of a parking space, or asked a passenger to get out and guide you in, you may be wondering where this simple solution has been for all your years of urban driving.

In some cases, like parallel street parking, it would be hard to implement. But in open lots or interior garages — anywhere with a wall, fence, guardrail or space for posts — it is just too obvious and easy not to do, yet too few places realize the opportunity.

In areas where it snows, these lines do a lot more than just help guide people into their final parking position — buried under fresh powder, they can represent the only way to keep a lot from devolving into a state of anarchy.

In a culture without tipping, one Japanese waiter began to realize that customers were expressing their gratitude in a subtle (and in some cases even unintentional) way, by folding the sleeves in which their chopsticks came wrapped.

In 2012, Yuki Tatsumi began to collect these into a set he would come to display and call Japanese Tip. He started at the establishment in which he worked, then branched out to other restaurants around Japan to gather over 10,000 examples of all kinds.

Finally, half a decade later, he staged an exhibition of his collection in Tokyo. The variety is remarkable, from complex origami-style works to shredded and otherwise deformed sleeves.

The results show various degrees of conscious and subconscious effort by patrons. Meanwhile, the variety of materials, colors and designs from different sleeves also lends complexity to the collection.

“Japanese Tip is a project between restaurants and customers,” says Tatsumi of the project, “to communicate the ‘appreciation for food’ and ‘appreciation of the service’ by using the most common material used at any Japanese restaurant.

A good way to gain confidence in your cooking is by developing good habits that will make the whole process go much more smoothly, because preparation and forethought are better than winging it and risking a meltdown.

Unless the dish you're cooking requires whole chicken breasts or thighs you should be slicin' those mothers up into thin fillets, so they'll cook faster and taste better:

 "Chicken will cook faster if you butterfly the breast, pound it to equal thickness, and cut it into fillets. Otherwise, the small end of the breast will be overcooked and dry by the time the larger side is cooked. It’s an easy extra step, makes a huge difference taste-wise, and looks so much better when plated." —stephaniev23

With steak it's a good idea to let the meat reach room temperature before you cook it:

And you should preheat the oil in your pan before you place the meat in, so it'll cook more evenly and won't stick:

But here's the best tip of them all, for my fellow guacamole lovers out there:

See 17 Small Cooking Habits That Can Make A Big Difference here

Last Friday night, my Facebook feed blew up with images of "UFOs." It took a beat before my concerned SoCal friends got the news that the big illuminated streak they saw across the sky was actually Elon Musk's latest rocket launch on its way to space, and not something nefarious.

Shortly after, my brother Andrew texted me in excitement from Arizona, saying that he and his family had caught the rocket launch from Scottsdale. I was surprised to hear that it was visible in Arizona, as I had already learned it was launched from Vandenberg in California. Then today I came across this gorgeous timelapse video shot by photographer Jesse Watson and I can see what all the fuss was about.

Watson writes:

This particular launch was close to my hometown in Yuma, Arizona, roughly 400 miles away but perfectly viewable for people in Arizona. I’ve one previous rocket launch years ago from White Sands Missile range in the morning time at sunrise and knew with the correct lighting from sunset that this launch had the opportunity to pop in a dramatic fashion.

I scouted four locations that had foregrounds to add depth to the imagery and was uniquely inspiring to my hometown. Location choices were between a favorite local hiking mountain, the Imperial Sand Dunes, or a small hill that resides in the historic downtown area overlooking the city. I ended up choosing the location that overlooked the city, partially because it was the easiest to access with all of my time-lapse gear. I used The Photographer’s Ephemeris and Google Maps to help scouting and initial line up.

I have never shot a rocket launch before, so I did not know exactly what to expect as far as exposure or precise location of the rocket in the horizon. I wanted to be prepared to capture comprehensive coverage of the spectacle. Therefore I packed four cameras and five lenses, to cover wide to telephoto details of the scene. Three of the cameras were rolling time-lapse and 1 was setup for telephoto video.

I arrived about two hours before launch time (1827 Arizona time) to have my gear prepped and ready for action. I started rolling the time-lapse sequences about 45 minutes prior to launch to capture some lead in footage. 1827 came by and I didn’t see anything, I was a little disheartened at first thinking maybe it wouldn’t show up or that something happened and they did not launch, but continued to roll the time-lapses. Then after what seemed like ages, but in reality probably only a minute or two the Falcon 9 rocket blasted into the horizon and my cameras’ field of view.

I was a little off target on my initial shot, but thanks to the high resolution aspect of shooting time-lapse on the Nikon D810 and wide angle lens, I was able to crop into the 6K time-lapse sequence and salvage the framing. I wrapped up a few minutes after the glowing contrail faded. I ended up shooting 2452 images and culled that down to 1315 images for the final project edited in Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro.

By the way, if you want to catch a launch from Vandenberg, there is a public viewing area. I learned about it a few years ago I went on a NASA Social event. Schedules for launches around the world can be discovered with an easy internet search. (Colossal)

The built environment becomes the backdrop from all kinds of imaginative (if improbable) scenes when this London photographer adds a single layer to each of his images: a black piece of cut paper.

Rich McCor, also known as “paperboyo,” transforms landmark architecture and urban design elements, sometimes turning them into other structures (like roller coasters) or something else entirely (the fire under a rocket ship).

These interventions often transform the scale of their subjects, reducing them for human use as, say, a stand for a telescope or a prop for a gymnast.

In each frame, the hand also adds another dimension, for a net effect of three different scales — the background, cutout and photographer.

More broadly, these images suggest work our own imagination can do while traveling — patterns that can be revealed by squinting our eyes and thinking just a bit outside the box about familiar structures.

Fans can follow McCor’s adventures in Around the World in Cut-Outs.

No ladders are required to get all the way to the top of this floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in a Japanese home, built into a specially designed oblique exterior wall for both easy access and earthquake resistance. Shinsuke Fujii Architects rose to the challenge of a tight lot with a smart design that uses a high ceiling, split levels and climbable surfaces to make the best possible use of every square inch of space.

First of all, that wall. From the outside of the home, you can see that the neighboring home on the right is awfully close, and taking up the maximum amount of living space on the lot would have been a tight fit. The architects leaned this wall of the home toward the neighbor at the top, leaving a wide space at the base for the front entrance, which is protected from rain. There are no windows on this side, eliminating privacy concerns that would normally arise from being right across from each other. The home is also perched over a small carport that’s sized just right for the client’s compact car.

Inside, this angle creates the perfect surface for a super-tall bookshelf that’s easy to climb, making it possible to use the entire wall for storage. Plus, the grid of the bookshelf makes the wall more structurally stable, and the bookshelf won’t collapse onto the interior in the event of a quake. Books, magazines and storage boxes easily slot into the deep niches while the extra-wide shelves double as steps.

Stairs lead from the bookshelf up to a lofted living area, which gazes out onto views of the city rather than the neighboring houses. An outdoor terrace doubles as a giant skylight, and the ceiling of the kitchen below becomes a surface for a table, with additional storage set into the wall. It’s a great example of thinking outside the box to create a home that feels spacious, airy, private and well-lit without sacrificing storage space, even on a tiny urban parcel.

Space and privacy are increasingly valuable commodities in cities, and many people on tight budgets find themselves in living situations that feel more than a little cramped. The average student in a city like New York or San Francisco can’t afford to live alone, and many more have difficulty accessing shared housing with just a handful of roommates. In Bangkok, students facing financial difficulties have been offered a ‘space scholarship,’ but the catch is they’ll be living with 6 other people in a tiny apartment. How can designers make such tight quarters more tolerable?

Fabrica, a research center based in Italy, came up with a few solutions as part of a corporate social responsibility initiative by Thai property developer AP Public Company Ltd. Making use of existing condo units in Bangkok, the firm did some heavy research on what makes co-living work before setting out to design the spaces.

Some are ultra-compact, consisting of just a single undivided room, yet manage to be comfortable for multiple inhabitants through built-in furniture that makes use of the vertical space. Others have a couple separate bedrooms, but pack three to four people into each one. Fabrica’s extensive use of smooth, pale wood surfaces, simple lines and cohesive color schemes goes a long way toward making each apartment feel spacious and uncluttered despite the number of people living there. The same materials and color schemes are carried throughout the interiors, including the kitchens and living rooms.

No matter how you spin it, 7 people is an awful big number for one compact condo. But take a second to consider what most college dorm rooms look like, and whether you’d prefer their cheap bunks and hot plates to a well-designed space full of useful space-saving features.

Embed from Getty Images

John Lasseter was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. He was the head of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, and his films – beloved children’s films which he nurtured and developed and helped make him one of the most respected men in Hollywood – have earned more than $6 billion. And this whole time, John Lasseter was a serial groper, a man who couldn’t stand next to a woman or sit beside a woman without putting his hands on her. Rashida Jones and her writing partner Will McCormack co-wrote Toy Story 4, but they’ve exited the project after Lasseter made some kind of unwanted advance on Rashida, at least that was the first version of the story, from The Hollywood Reporter. And now all the stories are coming out.

Rashida Jones is still credited as a writer on Toy Story 4, the next installment in the beloved franchise. But, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, the actress and her writing partner at the time, Will McCormack, left the project early on after John Lasseter, the acclaimed head of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, made an unwanted advance.

Jones and McCormack did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Disney declined to comment on the alleged incident though a studio source said the departure was over “creative differences.” Multiple sources spoke with THR but asked not to be named out of fear that their careers in the tight-knit animation community would be damaged.

Based on the accounts of former Pixar insiders as well as sources in the animation community, the alleged incident was not an isolated occurrence. One longtime Pixar employee says Lasseter, who is well-known for hugging employees and others in the entertainment community, was also known by insiders for “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes.” Multiple sources say Lasseter is known to drink heavily at company social events such as premiere parties but this source says the behavior was not always confined to such settings.

Now Lasseter is taking a leave of absence from Pixar after acknowledging “painful” conversations and unspecified “missteps,” he wrote in a memo to staff on Tuesday. The leave is said to be for six months, a source tells THR.

“I have always wanted our animation studios to be places where creators can explore their vision with the support and collaboration of other gifted animators and storytellers,” Lasseter stated. “This kind of creative culture takes constant vigilance to maintain. It’s built on trust and respect, and it becomes fragile if any members of the team don’t feel valued. As a leader, it’s my responsibility to ensure that doesn’t happen; and I now believe I have been falling short in this regard.” The executive added: “I’ve recently had a number of difficult conversations that have been very painful for me. It’s never easy to face your missteps, but it’s the only way to learn from them.”

Sources say some women at Pixar knew to turn their heads quickly when encountering him to avoid his kisses. Some used a move they called “the Lasseter” to prevent their boss from putting his hands on their legs.

[From THR]

Insiders say that women who worked for or around him knew they needed to avoid wearing skirts or else his hand would “travel.” Photos had to be cropped so no one could see Lasseter groping women as they posed together. He liked long, uncomfortable, lingering hugs with female colleagues. One Pixar employee told THR that Lasseter’s statement about “missteps” is “ridiculous and trivializing this behavior.” It wasn’t just “unwanted hugs,” this insider says. Personally, I’m getting really tired of these kinds of statements: “I’ve recently had a number of difficult conversations that have been very painful for me.” O RLY? There were some conversations which were painful for YOU? Imagine how your few female animators felt. Imagine how your few female colleagues felt, knowing they had to dress a certain way so you wouldn’t run your hand up their bare thigh?

Incidentally, Rashida Jones denies that she exited Toy Story 4 after an unwanted advance – she told the New York Times last night that she left the project because of Pixar’s lack of diversity. Jones and her writing partner told the Times: “We did not leave Pixar because of unwanted advances. That is untrue. We parted ways because of creative and, more importantly, philosophical differences….There is so much talent at Pixar, and we remain enormous fans of their films. However, it is also a culture where women and people of color do not have an equal creative voice.”

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