now Maps is 3D!

This released by Google show a 3D view of San Francisco on Google Earth.

Google's digital mapping service is preparing to introduce offline access on mobile devices and 3D images of major cities as it braces for a possible loss in traffic from Apple's iPhone and iPad. Wednesday's preview of upcoming features came ahead of an Apple's developer conference next week (National Post)

source: National Post

Earthscrapper

I really like the word "Earth-scrapper" that exactly describes this kind of architecture. It looks nice, saving the open save above the ground, bring light and life to the deep underground. But at such depth, in my opinion, the building would destroy the underground water tables, the soil structure and more important, the earth crust structure. In comparison with invading the sky-space, digging the ground-space seems to me still less friendly to the environment because, under no circumstances, the ground is limited while the sky is limitless.

However, I like this concept:

Visit the original page to see more of this conceptual design.

11-09-11

I think when memorizing something sad, we should think more about its happier future.

Photo by Michael J,Crosbie

from ArchitectureWeek.com

My new rendering tool !

Model tool: SketchUp
Rendering tool: Lumion
Render time for this video: 4 hour - lowest quality ( 640 x 480)
( on a 64 bit system with Core i7, 8 GB ram and 1 GB graphic card)

I was very surprised when first importing the model into Lumion. Things are just fantasy!