• The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...
  • The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a...

The rise of the monster mobile phone | Via

Before 1973, if you wanted to make a phone call while roving around, you had two choices—either you got yourself a pair of tin cans tied together with a taut length of string, or you drove a car with a telephone built in. But all that changed on April 3rd of that year, when Martin Cooper, a Motorola executive, made the first hand-held cell-phone call. The guy he rang was his rival at Bell Labs.

Cooper’s phone weighed in at just below 2.5 lbs. Its battery allowed a half-hour of use, and then, 10 hours of recharging later, it would be ready for a chat again. It would be another six years before the launch of the first—1G—cellular network, and then only in the center of Tokyo. By 1984, the network had expanded sufficiently to cover the whole of Japan.

More 1G networks emerged and took hold across the world throughout the 1980s, including, in 1983, the United States . That same year saw the launch of Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000X handset, developed at a cost of $100 million. The price tag? For you, $3,995. And there was a waiting list.

It looked like a brick, and a brick is what people called it.  Yet, massive though it might seem to modern eyes, in 1983 it was a portable miracle that ushered in a new era.

  • The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum...
  • The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum...
  • The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum...
  • The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum...
  • The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum...
  • The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum...

The Cadet Chapel | SOM | Thibaud Poirier

The Cadet Chapel was the culminating architectural element of SOM’s master plan and design of the entire U.S. Air Force Academy campus. The striking building features a succession of 17 glass and aluminum spires — each composed of 100 tetrahedrons — enclosing the upper level. Continuous panels of brilliant stained glass clad the tubular tetrahedrons, enabling diffused light to enter the building.

The 150-foot-tall chapel is situated on a podium adjacent to the Court of Honor. The program required three distinct chapels: a 900-seat Protestant chapel, a 500-seat Catholic chapel, and a 100-seat Jewish chapel. Each chapel has a separate entrance. The main floor Protestant chapel is enclosed by tetrahedrons clad in extruded aluminum separated by continuous colored glass panels, with windows of special laminated glass. The terrace-level Catholic chapel is characterized by precast masonry forming the ceiling pattern, with side walls of amber glass and strip windows of faceted glass. The Jewish chapel is a circular room enclosed in cypress frames and stained-glass slabs, with a foyer of brown Jerusalem stone donated by the Israeli Air Force.

  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...
  • The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost...

The Ghost Armies of World War I & II | Via

It is a false belief that wars are won simply through the might of military force. Equally as devastating is the ability to deceive, to misdirect the enemy into committing a fatal error. Enter the Ghost Army.

Subterfuge as a strategic or tactical skill has ancient precedent. The Art of War, written in China in the 5th Century BC, devotes significant space to the techniques of misdirection. Or think of the mythical Trojan Horse. Across the centuries, deceiving one’s foe became as crucial as direct confrontation.

But in the 20th century, a new form of fakery appeared, with a new type of war machine — the tank. The presence of these huge heavy destroyers was, it seemed, certain evidence of a planned offensive.

Unless they were not real.

Imitation tanks could be constructed of timber — or, making them even more maneuverable, out of thin air. Such practices began in World War I, but it was during World War II that they came into their own.

After D-Day, in 1944, the U.S. Army deployed 1,1000 troops in the Ghost Army — a tactical deception unit, aka “1st Headquarters Special Troops” aka “Operation Quicksilver” — tasked purely with misdirecting the Axis powers.

As well as the inflatable tanks seen here, the Ghost Army deployed fake jeeps, trucks, guns and aircraft — even dummy airfields — as well as sound recordings and radio transmissions. The imitation soundtracks, broadcast from specially equipped trucks, could be heard as far as 15 miles away. As close as possible to the enemy lines, the Unit would stage more than 20 false battlefields.

Many of the Unit’s troops were, in civilian life, employed as actors, architects and set designers, and were drawn from art schools, advertising agencies and design practices.

And yet, vital as it was, the Ghost Army was largely unknown and remained uncommemorated. Ghost by name and nature, the Unit remained an official secret until the 1980s.

  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....
  • Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one....

Flora Phantasmagoria | Finbarr Fallon

The question of how the seemingly opposite pleasures of urban/rural can be reconciled in a single spacetime – how a bucolic green setting could be imbued with the hum of a busy city – seems an intractable one. It’s no surprise that Singapore, the natural resourceless wunderkid of Southeast Asia, has resolved the dilemma with great efficiency. Driven by the vision of a “City in a Garden”, the city-state takes a pragmatic approach to greening a land-limited island. Besides safeguarding parkland, the state maximises even liminal spaces like road dividers through planting, and capitalises on development (paradoxically) as an opportunity for greenery, by mandating landscape replacement as a prerequisite for planning approval. This allows for a city that is dense yet liveable: a model that many other cities with pressing problems should look to when germinating their own variation of a liveable city.

Through this series, familiar scenes are rendered into unexpected colours to visually distil and heighten the tension between greenery and building, evoking the wonder and magic of a garden city like no other.

  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...
  • Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave. Paris prosecutors said in...

Rebuilding Notre Dame | Via

Three months after a fire ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a rare glimpse inside the burned masterpiece on Wednesday revealed it to be eerily empty and with rubble still littering the nave.

Paris prosecutors said in June that a poorly stubbed-out cigarette or an electrical fault could have started the fire and opened an investigation into criminal negligence, without targeting any individual. The chief architect of France’s historic monuments says that three months after the April 15 fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral the site is still being secured.

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