Let them Eat Cake—But Not From the Menu
BHSL Design’s restaurant overthrows the tyranny of the menu and puts the diners in power
Hong Kong-based BHSL Design’s menuless restaurant attempts to reconnect diners with primeval, naturalistic patterns of food consumption by presenting patrons with a field of hydroponic and aeroponically grown fruits and vegetables to be picked and prepared at their discretion. Its forward-looking design co-opts technology in a counter-intuitive effort to make food preparation more arduous and self-aware.

Nobody Doesn’t Like an Extra Extra Medium
As a thesis project at Iowa State, Nate Klinge, Assoc. AIA, and Brad Baer, Assoc. AIA, devised a schema for conveying a corporation’s brand through the total design of a building’s operations. The architectural medium is their message, and it’s extra-extra large. As their example, the designers chose Sara Lee.

Master Plan for Wuxi, China, Aims to Create an Urban Nucleus
Wuxi, China (pronounced Wuhsi), an old industrial city densely populated and highly cultured, recently has been dubbed "Little Shanghai" because of its surge in recent redevelopment. As part of this surge, Chicago-based Cordogan, Clark & Associates developed a conceptual master plan for a new district in the city, the Wuxi Transportation Center, which creates a modern "compact city” with forms of Chinese architecture. John Clark, AIA, partner and principal-in-charge of the project, says that although drawing the plan was a fantasy, there will in fact be discussions next month with China about potentially making the land ready for development. Will the Wuxi project be an example of fantasy becoming reality?