Catch up with highlights from our digital travels this week…
The Dark Knight’s demise
When the world collapses and not even Batman can stop it, all that remains is a dejected caped crusader stood around abandoned spaces. That’s according to French artist Travis Durden, who teamed up with urban explorers to depict the eventual demise of the Dark Knight, pondering his own fall within architectural ruins. Head to designboom for more.
How Amazon is using internet shopping to influence their offline bookstores
Opening hundreds of physical, brick-and-mortar bookstores might seem like a backwards step for an Internet giant such as Amazon – but rest assured, the company has a plan. ‘We’ve applied 20 years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping,’ Amazon Books VP Jennifer Cast told Fast Company. ‘The books in our store are selected based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments.’
The house that Sottsass built
‘I always say I didn’t have any choice in which architect to use. Sottsass would have killed me if I didn’t have him design my house,’ says David Kelley, CEO of design firm Ideo. Ettore Sottsass, who headed up the Memphis Group and is best known for his Postmodern product designs, only built three houses in the USA and finished Kelly’s Silicon Valley home seven years before his death. Kelly invites Surface Mag inside for a look around.
How urban design shapes music scenes
Whether it’s Motown, east London grime or Seattle grunge, musical scenes over the years have always been pinpointed to a certain place. The Guardian asks whether it’s the urban planning of cities that creates the perfect breeding ground for a musical movement. Read its compelling argument here.
Cool blue architecture
If this series of photographs by Maik Lipp were a band, it’d probably be Zero 7. Lipp travelled the world capturing the geometric forms of buildings from Miami to Frankfurt against the cool blue backdrop of clear skies. See more of the series, titled ‘Mixed Minimal I and II’, via Fubiz.
