Kickstarter: The Latest Architecture and News

Now is your chance to build a house of cards from cards of houses with the Kickstarter campaign for the updated second edition of SCALA Architecture Playing Cards. "Arquitectura a Contrapelo", an architecture and design team based in Seville, Spain, are hoping to release a sequel to their previous successful deck of architecture-themed cards. The new edition keeps the collection current with additions of the most relevant contemporary architecture, as well as providing some upgrades and improvements from the previous deck.

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Following the popularity of their first two structural modeling kits, today Mola Model launches their Kickstarter campaign for Mola Structural Kit 3. Mola3 introduces cable structures to the system of hands-on structural learning, integrating seamlessly with the previous two kits. Because the Mola kits are designed as a single modular system, the new kit can be combined with the previous two, all connected via magnets, to model iconic structures like the Sydney Harbor Bridge or London’s Stansted Airport with the help of the bilingual instruction booklet.

It is often difficult to detect structures' potential deformations and behaviors with the naked eye, which is why interactive education and model-making have proved to be some of the most beneficial methods of learning about structural design.

To help with the learning of structures in a more playful and intuitive way, Brazilian brand Mola, have developed Mola Structural Kits, a selection of interactive physical models that simulate the behavior of architectural structures and create countless design combinations.

Following the success of the Structural Kits 1 and 2, Mola will be launching the Mola Structural Kit 3 in a Kickstarter campaign in a couple of weeks, and to celebrate, the innovative company has once again teamed up with ArchDaily for another exclusive giveaway, offering 10 of our readers the chance to win a complete structural kit, along with additional accessories.

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After creating the perfect sketchbook, Architools is back with a minimalist notebook made for designers and architects alike. The project is now raising funds on Kickstarter, and aims to bring a subtle elegance to the humble notebook. Named the Dérive, or “drift” in French, the notebook embodies qualities of wanderlust and sensory exploration. Featuring refined materials and design, it was made to inspire the next project or adventure.

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A table and a bench. A coffee table and a mirror? Perhaps it’s a stool and a cutting board.  

This is not a furniture identity crisis, it’s Varia, a six-piece, mix-and-match furniture collection that can create over 25 pieces of furniture, saving money, space, and time. The creators, Jamie and Laura Kickstarted their project after Jamie found herself constantly moving from one place to another, and in need of versatile material instead of having old, unnecessary furniture pieces. With just a couple of lightweight metal frames and solid hardwood accessories, the collection is ideal for compact urban living and can be transformed into different furniture pieces in no time.

In brief, this is Varia, and it is pretty much anything you want it to be.

Varia's Kickstarter ends on August 31, support Jamie and Laura's project here.

Site models: they are intriguing and playful things by nature, making you feel like a giant looking down on a city. These miniature neighborhoods, however, are often large and bulky and only suited for architecture schools or offices. Imagine being able to have a site model in your home or office. Microscape has launched a Kickstarter to produce 1:5000 scale models of America’s Windy City, Chicago.

As all architects know, there are few things in life more valuable than a good sketchbook. That's why the Architools Notebook, a sketchbook now raising funds on Kickstarter, was designed from the ground up to suit an architect's workflow and sense of style. From the design of the covers (which incorporates the golden ratio) to the type of binding (which allows the open book to lay flat for double-page sketching or scanning), the Architools Notebook has considered all the little things that can help make a sketchbook the perfect companion.

Put away the Neufert manual and pixelated Internet searches, because scaling people just got a whole lot easier. The Chicago-based design consultancy IA Collaborative has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the reissue of Humanscale – a set of ergonomic design templates that contain over 60,000 measurements adjusted to humans of all ages, sizes and, yes, even situations.

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The “Never Built” world so far includes Never Built Los Angeles, a book and exhibit, and the book, Never Built New York. Now, the Queens Museum hopes to continue the exploration into the New York that might have been with a Never Built New York exhibition and has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $35,000 to make it happen. The exhibition, curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin and designed by Christian Wassmann, will explore 200 years of wild schemes and unbuilt projects that had the potential to vastly alter the New York we know today.

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Cities have a wealth of experiences, landmarks and sights to offer the eager traveller, who despite their ambitions, may begin to feel overwhelmed under the weight of culture and geography that saturates their travels. It is easy to get lost not only during pilgrimages to iconic locations, but also in the number of places to go and things to see, guided on overpriced tours and by consumerist maps. But worry not, for a new Kickstarter campaign has been launched for the Architectour Guide – a hardcover curated compendium of key spots that’s got you covered during your next urban crawl.

“The guide is made for the urban explorer, an individual who loves discovering cities in a different way,” explains Virginia Duran, the London-based architect and urban planner responsible for the campaign. “Architectour Guide collects the best spaces of a city inspiring travelers to craft their trips in a unique way, making it easier for us to visit, understand and photograph each of these places. As a consequence, we travelers will be helping to keep buildings alive.”

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The team at TwoEyes Tech made up of HunJoo Song, SeonAh Kim, and Vivek Soni has launched a kickstarter campaign for its TwoEyes VR 360 camera, which is the first binocular 360-degree VR, 4K camera that mirrors human eye sight.

Using two pairs of 180-degree lenses that are placed 65 millimeters apart—the average distance between a person’s eyes—the camera captures 360-degree footage, “just like your natural eyes would view the world.” This footage can be uploaded to 360-degree-compatible social media platforms like YouTube 360, Facebook 360, and Twitter 360, or enjoyed through virtual reality binoculars or 3D television.

Young tech team (Bar Smith, Hannah Teagle, and Tom Beckett) has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Maslow, a four-by-eight-foot at home CNC cutting machine made to assist construction efforts by cutting user-specified shapes out of wood or any other flat material. Designed to be affordable—at under $500—easy to use, inclusive, and powerful, the project aims to share designs digitally so that you can build on the work of others or create your own from scratch.

Based on the design of the hanging plotter, Maslow “uses gear-reduced DC motors with encoders and a closed-loop feedback system to achieve high accuracy and high torque.”

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Have you ever wanted to look over an entire city from the comfort of your own desk? Do you have a sentimental relationship with the city of Tokyo? If you answered "yes" to these questions, iJet Inc, a 3D print solutions company, along with DMM.com Ltd, have launched a Kickstarter that might be for you.

One Hundred Tokyo is a project aiming to reproduce Tokyo’s urban landscape in the form of one hundred ten by ten centimeter 3D printed models. All of the data and equipment needed to gather visual information of the city has been provided by ZENRIN Co Ltd, who traveled around the landscape in specialized vehicles. The 3D models created by this process are then printed on 3DSystems printers, using gypsum powder that is coated in a special resin in order to harden, and then coated once again in resin paint to achieve the full-color skyline.

This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "Citizen Bridge, NYC's First Floating Bridge, Reaches Kickstarter Goal."

Governors Island is a small, pedestrian-only island to the south of Manhattan and to the west of Brooklyn. It’s just across from Red Hook, the Brooklyn neighborhood known to many a Manhattanite as the home of New York’s only Ikea. To get there, you have to take the East River Ferry—that’s the only option. No subway, no bus, no rail. But it wasn’t always that way.

Nancy Nowacek is a Red Hook-based artist whose vision, since 2012, has been to create an alternative way to reach this backyard of New York City. She has always had a close relationship with the waterfront, but many, she suggests, do not. “It’s really hard to get to the water’s edge from most points inland,” she says. “It’s not a part of the New York that the kids in my building...live in, nor many others who live a few miles away geographically, but experientially are a world away.”