When the connection between two Scottish canals was disconnected, a clever solution to reconnect them was employed. Instead of linking them by a series of locks, a giant rotating wheel was constructed to lift and lower the boats the 79 feet from one canal to the other.

These caissons always weigh the same whether or not they are carrying their combined capacity of 600 tonnes (590 LT; 660 ST) of floating canal barges as, according to Archimedes’ principle, floating objects displace their own weight in water, so when the boat enters, the amount of water leaving the caisson weighs exactly the same as the boat. This keeps the wheel balanced and so, despite its enormous mass, it rotates through 180° in five and a half minutes while using very little power. It takes just 22.5 kilowatts (30.2 hp) to power the electric motors, which consume just 1.5 kilowatt-hours (5.4 MJ) of energy in four minutes, roughly the same as boiling eight kettles of water.

Here’s a time lapse of the wheel at work, also embedded below.

— Via kottke

Underground homes tend to conjure mental images of hobbit holes and otherwise rounded, earthen residences. This extremely modern house by KWK Promes defies popular conventions and, despite its organic green roof, is constructed of clean lines and clear shapes.

Viewed from above or around, the house blends wonderfully into the landscape – even the gentle curves and straight lines seem to work with the horizon and trees in the distance. The grass also absorbs moisture and helps regulate temperatures inside of the home.

The barrier between inside and outside is highly permeable, providing continuous connections for residents with the natural world around them through giant sheets of floor-to-ceiling glass.

Best of all (for the owners anyway): the lush green roof is only accessible from inside of the house through a set of secure stairs, reserving it as a private getaway for the home.

While from certain perspectives the home blends visually with its surroundings, from other angles it appears to be simply a well-designed modernist house like any other.

— Via dornob

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Sisyphus Office is an exhibition organized by San Francisco based artist, curator, and co-founder of The Thing Quarterly, Jonn Herschend and based out of Skydive, a Houston, Texas gallery. The artists involved in the project are collaborating with businesses and offices in and around Houston in order to highlight art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life. The artists and offices involved in Sisyphus Office are working physically and conceptually with the notions of existentialism, capitalism, artistic romanticism and deadpan slapstickism as a means to examine the artifice that keeps us clinging to reality and distracted from the void. Sisyphus Office is about punching the clock, and then punching it again…but harder the second time. It’s about transcending the mundane through the beauty and absurdity of distraction. It’s about recognizing the comedy in the tragedy of the day to day… and then waking up again to do the same thing all over again the next morning. David Fullarton’s contribution is an installation in the offices of Houston radio station 90.1 KPFT entitled “What I do at work when I’m supposed to be working.” It consists of a number of small works made entirely from office supplies, which are pinned up randomly around the office, in amongst the notices, flyers and memos that were already existing in the environment.

Pop’s ‘Stache by Shane Blomberg, Andrew Reeves and John Healy. Just pack a style, attach it to your favorite soda, haha, you will have a mustache! Good idea!