ODA New York has released plans for “West Half,” a mixed-use development for the Capitol Riverfront neighborhood of Washington, D.C., that will offer residents views into baseball games at the adjacent Nationals Park. The 11-story building will also feature two floors of retail space and community amenities as it becomes a new visual complement to the neighboring cultural landmark.
The 456,000 square foot building has been designed to prioritize the experience of the building “from the inside out,” according to Eran Chen, Founder and Executive Director of ODA New York. The form of the building slopes as it rises, allowing for a gradual transition from the streetscape, to public spaces to private apartments. The incline also provides room for a series of stepped terraces and balconies with views into the stadium – nearly 50% of the total units in the building will feature direct sightlines onto the field.
The building will also contain 61,000 square feet of retail space and public resources accessible to both residents and visitors to the stadium, allowing the building to become an extension of the entertainment district.
Residents will have access to a rooftop pool as well as a landscaped courtyard located at the center of the building’s U-shaped footprint, which also helps to provide ample natural light into each of the units. Interiors will feature contemporary, minimalistic details and tectonic finishes.
Our US job of the week on the new and improved Dezeen Jobs website is for a designer/architect at Machado Silvetti in Boston, which has completed a gallery extension clad in over 3,000 ceramic tiles (pictured). Visit the ad for full details or browse other architecture and design opportunities on Dezeen Jobs.
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Can I be honest with you?
Most of the brain-boosting hobbies you’ve heard of are useless.
They require tons of time, and you’ll die of boredom years before becoming a pro.
Yes, you’d like to become a virtuoso on the violin. You’d love to run a marathon. And it’d be amazing to speak Mandarin.
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But frankly, you don’t have an extra hour each day to devote to learning a new skill.
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But still. You want to become smarter in your free time.
The good news? Plenty of hobbies improve reasoning skills and memory without taking much time. Even better, all are supported by research (even a weird study that involved stepping on poker chips—more on that later).
Start one or more of these in the few spare minutes you have—and skyrocket your intellect.
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No, literally. Make a fist. It makes you smarter.
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Multiple studies show a strong correlation between your grip and mental ability.
In the paper “Getting a Grip on Memory”, researchers found making a fist improves cognitive performance.
Specifically, clenching the left hand improves right hemisphere brain function, and vice-versa. Just making a fist before a job interview question might help you think more clearly.
There’s a long-term benefit to improving your grip strength, too.
Over the course of eight years, researchers tracked 550 people aged 79 to 87. They measured the grip strength and nonverbal reasoning of the participants three times during the study.
The surprising conclusion: grip strength and memory were “significantly correlated” in old age.
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We already know physical activity improves your mind, but you don’t have to sweat for hours on the crunch machine.
Just develop your grip strength.
Want to be the guy or gal everyone goes to for beverage recommendations?
Become a hot chocolate expert.
According to research published in Neurology, drinking hot cocoa may improve cognitive function. In the study, sixty older people drank hot chocolate twice a day for 30 days.
Healthy patients didn’t change during the brief study period, but those with blood flow problems improved memory and thinking skill.
Researchers believe an antioxidant in cocoa called flavanol led to the boost. The caffeine in cocoa can help too, provided you drink it after developing a skill. A study in Nature Neuroscience found caffeine enhances long-term memory after learning.
Sugar helps, too. It improves performance on demanding mental tasks according to an article in the British Journal of Nutrition.
Hot chocolate is perfect for your brain. Who knew?
See Also: 15 Healthy Foods That Can Make You Smarter
Research has shown internet browsing, even when you’re not trying to learn, might just be valuable.
One study showed that in older individuals, the internet could stave off the effects of mild cognitive impairment.
Researchers tracked how participants took part in various activities, including surfing the web, playing computer games, and making online purchases. The people who participated in these types of activities reduced the risk of cognitive impairment in later life.
In another study, researchers split older adults into two groups.
One group could watch a 20-minute montage of America’s Funniest Home Videos from YouTube. (To be precise: “100 Falling People, Part 1” and “100 Falling People, Part 2,” according to the paper.)
The other group sat in a room alone and was not allowed to read, talk, or use a cell phone.
The result? On a later test, the humor group’s learning ability improved by 38%, and their delayed recall improved by 44%.
So yes, hilarious videos of people falling over can make you smarter.
See Also: Use Your Brain: 7 TV Shows That Will Make You Smarter
There’s a large body of research proving smart people drink more.
Experts analyzed alcohol consumption and IQ across 99 countries and found a distinct correlation. The study focused on countries from Azerbaijan to Zambia, and controlled for factors like income and religion.
Still, the effect was evident. If you have a high IQ, you are “more likely to consume alcoholic beverages.” But just because smart people do it, doesn’t mean you will become smarter.
Or does it?
One study showed that if you drink one to three glasses of champagne each week, it might boost your memory and slow aging. Another study showed that older people who drank in moderation had better episodic memory compared to non-drinkers.
Have a toast—to your brain!
Want an exercise hobby that helps your intellect? Go running. But run without shoes.
In a study conducted at the University of North Florida, researchers instructed 72 people to jog along a 200-meter circular track. Oh, and poker chips were strewn across their path.
Participants ran four laps: twice wearing shoes and twice barefoot. In one lap of each, researchers told participants to step on the poker chips. In the other, the researchers removed the poker chips.
Participants scored better on a working memory test after running barefoot and stepping on the poker chips. Researchers concluded your brain works harder when considering where to place your feet, especially when you can feel the consequences.
Want to increase the benefit? Run in nature.
A separate study compared participants who walked in nature to those who walked in the city. Results showed participants improved their performance on a memory test by 20% after spending time in natural surroundings.
Arguing about the president on Facebook is worthwhile? Yes, and you might boost your brain by making it your hobby.
A recent study showed we have an exceptional memory of what happens on social media.
Participants looked at Facebook posts and two control items. The results were astonishing: people recalled items on Facebook better than real faces and actual books.
The recall difference was equal to that between amnesiacs and those with an able memory.
Debating could help improve your mind even more. A different study of eight- and nine-year-olds provides a clue.
The children learned and practiced “exploratory talk,” in which you challenge ideas and provide reasoning. In other words, you create and defend an argument. The kids’ scores saw dramatic improvement on a nonverbal reasoning test after this debate practice.
You know a new outfit makes you feel better.
Just recently, science discovered it makes you think better, too. In the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers showed how you dress changes how you think.
In the study, participants wore a lab coat while doing a task that demanded their full attention.
When researchers said it was a doctor’s coat, people did better than when told it belonged to a painter. The researchers termed the effect “enclothed cognition” to describe the way clothes change how we think.
What about shopping? According to Gary Small, M.D., director of UCLA’s Longevity Center, mall shopping can stimulate different parts of your brain.
Walking around, talking to others, and comparing prices combine to boost your cognitive abilities.
Want a hobby none of your friends will expect?
Look no further than a study published in Perceptual and Motor Skills.
Researchers divided participants into three groups. One group watched a lecture, another did yoga, and a third climbed trees.
The researchers wanted to see if learning or moving in isolation improved brain function.
But neither of those groups performed as well as the tree-climbing folks.
Why? Researchers believe the secret is moving while responding to stimuli. Climbing a tree, for instance, while making sure that teetering branch isn’t about to send you tumbling.
Yes, true mastery of any hobby can be difficult. Many of those activities take years or even decades.
But when you choose the right hobbies, it’s much easier.
Start today and round up a friend to start with you. Without spending years or even hours, research says you’ll become smarter.
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The post 8 Little-known Hobbies Proven to Make You Smarter in Minutes appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Italian design collective Nucleo has tweaked its popular design for a grass armchair that grows over time, relaunching it with a crowdfunding campaign. (more…)
Belle Isle – Detroit – Michigan – USA (by Mike Boening)
House ARM is a game of extrusions and sections, caching the natural sun light.
We understand this project as an exercise to get a good house, non expensive and functional, in a large enough plot, able to get all the client brief in only one level.
This is why we decided to build the house with structural walls, because we do not need to get too high with them, saving time and money to our client during the construction process, and thanks to their thickness, those walls will also help to contribute to save energy and improve the sustainability of the house.
This structural walls come from the extrusion of two sections, generating two long parallel pieces starting from the street façade and getting into the yard. They don´t touch each other but they are connected by some flat roofs, covering the utility spaces like the hall, the laundry or the parking.
The interior of one of the main long pieces has no walls and we will find there a large open space where the living room, the dining room and the library-studio are all the same, getting light from everywhere, the street, the skylights on the roof and the yard, but with the possibility of being divided thanks to mobile partitions. The client will be able to play with this space depending on its use.
The other long piece has inside all the bedrooms and kitchen, it holds the most intimate spaces, and it ends up on a great porch, where it merges together with the other piece and the yard, and also a pool, where for sure the client will have good moments and will enjoy the good weather that they use to have on this site during most of the year.
For a better passive energy performance, the house has ceramic ventilated double façades, with exterior isolation, also the windows are opened thinking on those places were sun doesn´t heat too much. The interior cooling and heating will be done by a special radiating floor. Both passive and active energetic systems will become this house really efficient, and our client will be saving money and energy every day, becoming a cheap house to live in, recovering soon the initial investment.
This is a really studied project. With low resources it gets great goals!.
HENN Architekten has won a competition to design the new Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Building for the Technical University of Munich at the Garching research campus, which is Europe’s largest research campus. The design features four rectangular buildings encircling a central glass hall envisioned as a beacon and hub to promote interaction among students and academics.
The project site is located approximately 18 kilometers north of Munich on a rectangular piece of land, surrounded on four sides by roads. As a part of the larger Garching Science City masterplan by KCAP Architects & Planners, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building will integrate into existing academic community and spur new construction on the adjacent undeveloped land.
The ensemble of buildings will provide space for workshops, testing halls, laboratories, seminar rooms and offices, while the glass central hall will house two large auditoriums and additional space to hold conferences, events and exhibitions. Public spaces in each of the surrounding spaces will face the atrium, promoting transparency and interactivity. Three of the buildings will also be punctured by their own central courtyard/atrium spaces to allow light to penetrate into the classrooms and group work spaces.
HENN’s design will be built over several stages; the first stage will accommodate up to 150 employees and 300 students.
Sig Nordal 