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Victoria Beckham

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While many of us go for a functionalist, pick’n’mix approach to home decor (”I need curtains: oh, that will do” etc.), let us be upstanding for the financially brave, creatively passionate and unashamedly geeky souls who transform their homes into miniature versions of their favorite corners of modern culture, as these 8 thoroughly unique examples illustrate.

(Images via: Hack N Mod via Geeky Gadgets)

If you wish that the Steam Age was still with us and have a thing for overengineered pipes and rocket-firing dirigibles, you would feel thoroughly at home in this Extraordinary Gentleman’s house in New Zealand. The house is designed to look like a beached  Twenty Thousand Leagues-style submarine, complete with rust, encroaching greenery and a working periscope! Feeling similarly inspired? Prepare to have your savings torpedoed – this beast cost $100,000 to build.

(Image via: Gizmodo)

Everyone wants a treehouse. (Even adults want a treehouse.) But is it going too far to build a treehouse in your bedroom?

(Image via: Gizmodo)

The Kidtropolis Magic Indoor Treehouse Bedroom is kitted out with everything a treehouse-hugger could wish for. As well as the bed (only accessible via ladder), the room contains trapdoor storage facilites and a table that folds down from the ‘fence’ running round the room.

(Images via: Illusion 360 and Sellsius)

Staying with wood, what happens when you want a plushly-paneled basement study and your budget won’t stretch? For Lexington (Kentucky) lawyer Charlie Fratzer, the answer was simple: pull out a pen and draw it. With nothing but a $10 Sharpie and a fertile imagination, Fratzer has decorated his basement with staircases, furniture, members of his family and historical & fictional characters including Winston Churchill, Sherlock Holmes and Bullwinkle & Rocky.

(Image via: Gizmodo)

Now for the work of truly dedicated parents. This is a kid’s bedroom (please let it be a kid’s bedroom) in a house currently up for sale…

(Image via: Gizmodo)

…and the centerpiece (if you can call something entirely filling a room a ‘centerpiece’) is a reconstruction of a Star Wars Y-Wing. If you are wondering where the bed is, it’s laid along the wing. All you need is a droid alarm clock and the illusion is complete. (”R2, that duvet’s broken loose again, see if you can’t tuck it in”).

(Images via: SlipperyBrick)

Or perhaps your scifi tastes lean more towards the other largest franchise in the known Universe – in which case this NCC-1701D (that’s “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s USS Enterprise” to us terrestrial folk) home theatre should push all the right buttons. Check out other 14 similarly creative / mad-as-a-fish examples over at SlipperyBrick.

(Image via: The Telegraph)

But for sheer unadulterated Trek-lurve, the prize goes to interior designer Tony Alleyne. After his marriage faltered, Alleyne decided to turn his flat into the ultimate geek bachelor pad – by modeling it on the set of Star Trek: Voyager.

(Images via: The Telegraph and The Mirror)

Press the doorbell and a voice says “welcome to the 24th century” – and from there it’s a Trekkie’s paradise, complete with a “fully-working transporter” (a what?), touch-panel lighting, command consoles and a replica of Voyager’s warp core that propels the ship between the stars. (It’s in the spot where the fridge used to be).  The price of all this geeky luxury? Fourteen maxed-out credit cards,  $160,000 in debt…and bankruptcy. Alleyne remains philosophical: “I’m still proud of what I created, but it’s been a financial disaster”.

(Images via: Wired)

If you constantly have the Mario theme-tune running through your head (like the creators of this little masterpiece), why not turn your home into a shrine to your favorite Italian plumber? That is what Antoinette J. Citizen has done, as reported by Wired. The walls are painted in jolly Mario colors and are studded with bricks that play the original sound effects when poked and pushed (and maybe even when jumped on). How many shiny gold coins did this cost?

(Image via: Daily Mail)

And finally, for all young girls pining to live the Cinderella dream (the glamorous ending, not the sitting-in-cinders part) then that dream can be a reality – if daddy is a premiership footballer with $80,000 to kick around, that is.

(Image via: Daily Mail)

The individually-tailored work of Mark Wilkinson Furniture, these luxury items of furniture include ornate murals and hand-crafted carriage beds. Some footballers have even come up with their own designs – leading the British media to label these creations the latest demonstrations of footballers having more money than sense. Would you like your darling treasures to grow up expecting to be treated like fairy-tale royalty?

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Barcodes may be a potent symbol of consumerism, but they aren’t just found on product packaging anymore. Whether imbued with meaning or merely appreciated for their visual impact, barcodes are turning up everywhere, from tattoos to graffiti to home décor. These 15 forms of barcode art take these ubiquitous black and white lines and make them fun, provocative and beautiful.

Product Barcodes Made Fun

(images via: Design Barcode)

The team at Design Barcode asked themselves, “Why has the barcode never changed?” That led to a flurry of amazingly creative ways to reinvent the ubiquitous set of black lines, helping companies add a little more personality to their valuable product real estate. They’ve created barcodes for major Japanese brands such as Suntory, Calbee, Wacoal and more.

Barcode Chandelier

(image via: SuperMobilet)

The transparent acrylic used as a base for this barcode chandelier light fixture from Super Mobilet makes it seem like it’s hovering overhead, like the specter of modern consumerism. The design was so popular, it sold out almost immediately.

Stop the Traffik – Barcode Billboard

(images via: Adland)

Another clever play on the barcode and all that it stands for is this billboard, designed by Leagas Delaney London for Stop the Traffik, a coalition working to stop human trafficking. It depicts silhouettes of human figures amid the bars, symbolizing the commoditization of human beings.

Art Lebedev Barcode Posters

(images via: Art Lebedev)

How many different ways can you portray a barcode using totally unrelated images? Russian design firm Art Lebedev creates posters that create their barcode logo using images like icicles, melons, columns on a building and even human eyelashes.

Barcode Portraits by Scott Blake

(images via: BarcodeArt.com)

Artist Scott Blake has truly turned the barcode into an art form, using it to create portraits of iconic pop culture figures like OJ Simpson, Charles Manson, Oprah and Jesus. He also creates barcode stencils that he calls ‘word paintings’, and barcode graffiti, like an image that simply says “Scott Blake was here.”

Of his barcode portraits, Blake says, “I started making art with barcodes right before Y2K, inspired by the year 2000 computer bug, and threatening digital apocalypse. Barcode Jesus was born in Photoshop, by creating mosaics with simple shapes. I first tried circles and then squares. The tile patterns morphed into a cluster of lines, and before I knew it, I was staring at a bunch of barcodes. I assigned the numbers to describe each pixel’s grayscale value and grid coordinate.”

Barcode Building in St. Petersburg, Russia

(images via: Best Top Design)

Russian architecture firm Vitruvius & Sons designed this bright red barcode building called Shtrikh Kod, which means ‘barcode’ in Russian. Located in a bleak, gray residential area on the banks of the Neva River, the ‘bars’ on the building are actually the shopping center’s windows.

Barcode Pedicure

(image via: Justin Shattuck)

With all of the barcode-related images and products out there, it’s not too surprising that someone thought to apply the design to a pedicure. It may not be high-concept, but it’s certainly creative.

Illuminated Barcode Sofa by Demuzz Designs

(image via: 2Modern)

Barcodes have even made their way into furniture design, with this sofa by Jason John Muscat of Demuzz Designs. Each individual bar is made from foam-covered plywood, fixed onto an acrylic platform with LED lights incorporated into the base.

Barcode Graffiti

(images via: Jan Timm, DevlBaby, a_kep)

Barcodes are a common theme in graffiti, but none are quite so well known and iconic as a Banksy design that depicts a leopard escaping a barcode cage. Barcodes are often used as jail bars in art, usually symbolizing slavery to consumer culture.

Barcode Tattoos

(images via: Jet City Orange)

The barcode is also an increasingly common motif in tattoos. Some have meaning and some don’t – well done barcode tattoos may actually scan, while others don’t have any inherent meaning other than the barcode itself. For those seeking something less permanent, barcode artist Scott Blake creates custom temporary tattoos using Code 128-style encryption.

From Barcodes to Abstract Art

(images via: Barcode Plantage)

Scan or key any barcode into the Barcode Plantage website, and you’ll not only get the details of the country of origin, manufacturer, product number and sum – you’ll also get an abstract work of art and a melody based on the bars. Barcode Plantage calls each design “a unique tree in the garden of globalization.”

The Barcode Plantage website explains, “Once a bar code is keyed or scanned in, the program sends a request to the database, which returns a master file data. This master file data is then analysed to define positions, curves and colours of Bezier curves of the tree structure. The number of these curves will vary correspondence to the number of figures in the code. Simultaneously, the user will hear a melody, which is based on the figures of the bar code.”

Photoshopped Barcode Art

(images via: FreakingNews)

Photoshop contest website FreakingNews.com challenged its artists to create barcode-based art to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the first barcode patent. Contest entrants incorporated barcodes into photos in various ways, from the strings of a harp to the stripes in the UKn flag.

Barcode Basketball Court

(images via: meophamman)

Playground, or prison yard? This London basketball court has had previous graffiti covered over by a giant barcode design on all of the walls, giving it a sense of incarceration.

Barcode Watch

(images via: TokyoFlash)

For those tired of having the time spelled out for them the traditional way, a barcode watch from TokyoFlash actually displays the time and date in barcode fashion with LED lights.

“The first two columns show hours; in column 1 each light equals 5 hours, in column 2 each light equals 1 hour. The second two columns show minutes; in column 3 each light equals 10 minutes, in column 4 each light equals 1 minute.”

Barcode Wall Sticker

(image via: Nest Living)

Fans of stark, high-contrast graphic design appreciate the barcode for its looks alone. This wall decal by Ferm Living might not have any deep meaning, but it looks pretty striking on a white surface.

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Entitled, “Anglo-Parisian Barnstormer”, this massive, hulking sculpture is Kris Kuksi’s newest work for the Musuem of The History Of Science ‘Steampunk’ Exhibition, in Oxford. Yes, that’s right, Steampunk seems to have caught the world by storm and is now being shown at museums!

(Click on Images to Enlarge)

The first museum exhibition of Steampunk art.

13 October 2009 – 21 February 2010.

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Amazing photography compiled from the infinite vault of Flickr….This mag is really well curated and contains so many inspiring images…

[VIA]

Issue 1 of Weapon Of Choice includes interviews with artist’s Epok, Sepr and Nikill as well as an interview from UK Hip Hop legends Task Force!

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World War II caused death and destruction on a scale unknown in human history. While the human cost of the war is of course paramount, the loss of property and with it, the cultural heritage of nations must also be considered. These 9 examples of preserved, bombed-out buildings stand, in stark contrast to their successors, as testaments to a war that forever changed the world we live in.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Japan

(images via: Animatronyx, Travel and Tour Guides and Over The Rhine)

The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall was designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel and opened in 1915. On August 6th, 1945, the atomic bomb known as “Little Boy” exploded 1,968 feet above the building, obliterating in seconds the heart and soul of a thriving city along with tens of thousands of its citizens – yet curiously, the “Genbaku Dome” suffered surprisingly little structural damage. It remains mostly unrestored today as a graphic memorial to those who died that day in 1945 and a reminder to anyone who would take the consequences of war lightly.

(images via: 3yen)

The year is 1946 and the shattered streets of Hiroshima are eerily silent… Then, turning the corner, an ominous bulk looms into view. Is it a bizarre mutant out for blood? An escaped zoo animal driven mad by radiation poisoning? Nah… it’s just the Kabaya Caramels “Hippo Car”, dispersing sadness by dispensing candy! Imagine being a kid in post-war Hiroshima – an encounter with the Hippo Car just might be the best thing to happen to you all day, perhaps all week. Kabaya still operates Hippo Cars today though they’re sleek, modern and bright red. The Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome, on the other hand, looks pretty much the same.

Oradour-sur-Glane, France

(images via: Swiss Family Grass, Free Republic and OpenTravel)

June 10, 1944 is, for the people of France, a day that will truly live in infamy. To make a terrible story short (but not to lessen any of its horror), all 642 people of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane were massacred by soldiers of the Waffen SS, who subsequently razed the entire town. Those who died that day ranged in age from one week to 90. Following the war, French president Charles De Gaulle declared Oradour-sur-Glane to be a Village Martyr. The ruins of the village have been preserved and visitors are asked to remain silent until they have left.

(images via: Oradour.info)

The car above is a Peugeot 202 belonging to Dr. Desourteaux, who arrived back in Oradour-sur-Glane after treating a patient. Both the car and the ruined buildings lining the Champ de Foire epitomize the “frozen in time” quality the establishment of the Village Martyr was intended to instill.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, Germany

(images via: Route 9 Autos and Nextstop)

As the power center of Nazi Germany, Berlin was bombed heavily in the final 2 years of the war. Very few of its major buildings have survived not only the fall of the Third Reich but the difficult transition to first a divided city and now, once again, a great European capital. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was originally constructed from 1891 to 1906 and was severely damaged in an Allied bombing raid on November 23rd of 1943. The preserved spire of the old church now rests alongside a modernist New Church built between 1959 and 1963.

The Ruins, Talisay City, Philippines

(images via: Koolbirks, Byahilo and SkyscraperCity)

The gorgeous Italianate ruins at Talisay City were formerly a mansion built in the 1890s by sugar baron Don Mariano Ledesma Lacson (1865-1948) as a gift to his Portuguese wife. The building was set afire in the early days of World War II to prevent it from falling into the hands of invading Japanese forces, who hoped to use it as there area headquarters. Today the ruins are a tourist attraction with the ruins and grounds owned by Lacson’s great-grandson.

Old Steam Mill, Volgograd, Russia

(images via: Panoramic Museum, CVGS and Virtual Tourist)

Built by a trio of ethnic-German brothers in the 19th century, the Hergert Mill was one of the only buildings to survive the exceptionally vicious Battle of Stalingrad which raged from August 1942 through February 1943. How bad was the destruction wrought by the battle? See the film Enemy At The Gates if you haven’t already. Today, the mill is preserved alongside the Panorama Museum which houses relics and resources relating to the battle – including the sniper rifle used by Vasily Zaytsev.

Hitachi Aircraft Company, Tokyo, Japan

(images via: Tokyo Times)

A battle-scarred building stands, alone and unoccupied, in a peaceful park just north of Tamagawajosui Station in Tokyo’s Tachikawa Ward. Disused since 1993, the structure is a rare relic of the Second World War’s closing chapter. Its pitted concrete walls bear witness to multiple UKn air attacks on what was, at the time, a substation for the Hitachi Aircraft Company. The photo series published by Tokyo Times catches the building on a brilliantly clear day, with the former substation’s drab concrete walls standing in sharp contrast to the deep blue skies which, in the now-distant past, begat winged fury with guns ablaze.

Temple Church, Bristol, UK

(images via: Red Bubble and Brisray)

The English city of Bristol was a prime target of Germany’s Luftwaffe due to the concentration of aircraft and war material factories in the area. Nearly 1,300 people died and almost 90,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed in a 6-month period from November 1940 through April 1941 known as the Bristol Blitz. Though most of the wartime carnage in Bristol has been rebuilt or restored, the 14th century Temple Church remains much as it has since the end of the war. The church spire noticeably leans – a result of natural subsidence over the centuries, not the bombing.

Intramuros, Manilla, Philippines

(images via: Eserbisyo and Caroline Albarando)

Intramuros, built in 1571, was the walled capital and administrative center of the Philippines under Spanish rule. Severely damaged during World War II – first by invading Imperial Japanese armies and later by UKn forces under MacArthur – only remnants of Intramuros’ former glory remain. Even so, one can still discern echoes of Intramuros’ former magnificence by comparing the above images of the Plaza Major.

Farringdon “Castle”, London, UK

(image via: Imagekind)

London was devastated by waves of Luftwaffe bombing raids in 1940 and 1941 that sought to break the morale of the British people. As we know, property and people suffered immensely but the nation remained unbowed. Few remnants of The Blitz still stand in the City of London but those that do, radiate a timeless serenity that belies their violent origins. One such survivor was captured by the lens of photographer Hamish Reid in 1985. The bombed-out warehouse above is located on Farringdon Road in Islington, right beside the rail station. Reid calls the structure Farringdon Castle due to its resemblance to a medieval ruined fortress.

It’s been 70 years since World War II began and almost 65 years since it ended. These 9 battered, bombed but unbroken survivors of the war reflect the enduring strength of the human spirit. Like them, we have emerged from the horrors of war with renewed strength though we carry the scars within and without. To those architects and architecture that have perished, we remember. To those whose blood and bone, bricks and mortar have returned to ashes and dust, these mute memorials maintain our connection to the past, from the present, into the future.

7 More Abandoned Cities and Towns of the World

Check out these urban abandonments of the modern world.

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