Thursday, October 20, 2011

titus thotawatte 1929-2011



Remember "handaya" and "Doctor Honda Hitha".

Titus Thotawatte was a great film maker and perhaps the best film editor Sri Lanka ever had. He made several popular and technically skilled Sri Lankan action movies in the 1960s and 1970s and later developed Sinhala children's pro grammes and perhaps made the most significant contribution by producing properly dubbed foreign language children's programs to Sinhala hence making these films accessible to a wider section of the Sri Lankan society. He passed away on October 15, 2011.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

IFRC community centre (#48)










IFRC Community Centre for Tsunami affected community @ Thalalla Mathara

Architect: Chinthaka Wickramage
Engineer: Keerthi Rathnayake
Quantity Surveyour: Sunanda Gnanasiri
IFRC Co-ordinators: Wardell Eastwood, John Wain
Photographer: Kesara Ratnavibhushana

This project is commended @ ar+d Emerging Architecture Awards

Monday, October 10, 2011

look out loo


Artist Monica Bonvicini has created a minimalist glass cube containing a usable loo to stand opposite the Tate Britain gallery in London (Photo 2). The work, called Don't Miss A Sec, is made out of one-way glass which means you can see out but not in.

The toilet was also exhibited at the Messeplatz in Basel, Switzerland (photos 1,3)

Saturday, October 8, 2011

"stay hungry, stay foolish" - the whole earth catolog


The Whole Earth Catalog was an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds – things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle) the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items. This led to a need for the Catalogs to be frequently updated. (Wikipedia)

Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech. "When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation.... It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions." During the commencement speech, Jobs also quoted the farewell message placed on the back cover of the 1974 edition of the catalog: "Stay hungry, stay foolish." (See previous post)

Generally the catalog has been divided in to seven sections: Understanding Whole Systems, Shelter and Land Use, Industry and Craft, Communications, Community, Nomadics and Learning. The whole earth catalog (1972 edition) won the US National Book Award, the first time a catalog had ever won such an award.

visit WEC website
Read about Stewart Brand