Jerry Hsiao

ARCHITECTURE Star… bucks

One can always hate the corporate giant that has their own jargon for sizes, but when they produce something as beautiful as this storefront. You can’t help but lean off the hate button and maybe go visit one for an ice coffee Trenta sized, you know too cool off a bit. I present Starbucks Fukuoka.

Designed by Kengo Kuma the Starbucks coffee shop is situated near the famous Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine and because of it’s close proximity Kuma was cautious to make sure the commercial space didn’t look out of place in such a setting. The shop is full of wooden beams all placed in different angles and at different heights made to mimic branches in a forest so it appears that the Starbucks is sitting in the trees.

via Who’s Jack

Anne Ishii

Oldie but Goodie: Spike Lee’s Appreciation of Caps, or “Boston Sucks.”

Kevin

Great piece on the lost art of letterpress

Love how something that many would consider to be obsolete still has a place in today’s time. The quality and unique characteristics produced by a letterpress just cannot be replicated by the modern day laser printers. Think its time for ICL to invest in a letterpress to make all of our future event invites!

Kevin

Never go blind – stem cells FTW

Never ceases to amaze me at how awesomely fast technology and medicine continues to progress. Here’s a new story on probably the first (published) human trial with stem cells and its effects on blindness. Maybe its about time I can finally trust Lasik…

“This trial is more about assessing the safety of the transplantation than its efficacy; but the ambiguity surrounding Freeman’s improvements draws attention to the need for control groups and larger sample sizes in future trials. For now, however, these results are pretty much everything the researchers could have hoped for.

“This is very important for the field of human embryonic stem cell research,” says Dr. Steven Schwartz, director of the Diabetic Eye Disease and Retinal Vascular Center at UCLA and lead author of the paper. “It opens the door for multiple strategies in the field, and hopefully for everyone investigating [this technique], it puts some wind in their sails.”

Full Article

Kevin

Spread the word: Why #SOPA and #PIPA are so dangerous

Most of you have heard of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, but have you also heard of PIPA, the Protect IP Act? While the SOPA brand has been damaged due to the mass negative attention it has received and the companies publicly opposing it, the PIPA bill is essentially the twin sister of SOPA and has mostly slid under the radar. The bill is scheduled for a Senate floor vote on January 24th and companies such as MAKE, all of O’Reilly Media, Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, Tucows, Twitpic, and more have pledged to go dark tomorrow to build awareness on this issue.

Don’t let your government destroy what is the fabric of the internet.
Do your part and help spread the word.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.