The houses are part of an art installation for the Museum of Modern Art exhibit “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling.” According to the New York Times:

The exhibition, which opens July 20, examines factory-produced, or prefab, houses from 1833 to today, through 60 projects shown inside the museum and five full-scale houses outside. These houses address issues of mass production, digital fabrication, sustainability and portability, using a variety of manufacturing techniques and aiming at several points along the price spectrum.

Below, you can see the house server rack being built. I can't wait to live in a server farm. Maybe there will be a big screen mounted on my wall that shows me all the search queries I'm crunching, or all the ads I'm serving up. Photos by Librado Romero for the New York Times.

Prefab Five in Midtown [New York Times]

The ceiling looks just as bizarre as you might guess. Below, you can see something even stranger. The oddly-shaped shiny cube is actually a kind of appendage to the rest of the museum, which looks like an ordinary nineteenth-century-ish rectangular, red brick building.

You can see the cube just peeking around the left-hand side and a little bit on top.

Telstar Logistics Photostream [via Laughing Squid]

All six planes were developed for the U.S. military, and some of them flew major recon and combat missions in the Middle East.

• Lockheed Martin/Boeing DarkStar, a stealthy recon plane.
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• AeroVironment RQ-14A Dragon Eye, a hand-launched camera plane.
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• RQ-2A Pioneer, a recon plane that a number of Iraqi soldiers surrendered to in the first Gulf War, the first time anyone ever surrendered to a robot.
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• General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. MQ-1L Predator A, a recon plane that has fired missiles in combat situations.
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• AAI Corporation Shadow 200, another recon plane. The plane on exhibit is called the Screamin Demon and flew missions in Iraq until 2005.
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• Boeing X-45A Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS), one of two scaled down flight test models. This plane is the first built with the intent of using it in a combat role.
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The @Murakami show in Los Angeles had huge numbers of visitors, were you surprised at the large turnout? The line on the final weekend stretched for blocks.

Yes, I was very pleased. It's all thanks to the chief curator Paul, as well as all the others involved. I'm praying that everything goes the same way at Brooklyn too. The expectations of the audience are exploding now, much like in the music industry in the 1970s. In order to meet their expectations, I've got no choice but to keep on running.

You've worked with many medium: sculptures, paintings, animation, the Vuitton purses, etc. What do you enjoy working with the most?

The collaboration I did with Mr. Marc Jacobs was really fun. "Monogrammoflauge," the most recent collaboration, came out of a conversation that I had with Marc Jacobs where I said that I'd like to do something original for the retrospective. The exchange of idea; the process that yields something real in the end. Everything is exciting.

There is a chance to experience an unfamiliar work process when you collaborate with a different industry, and therefore it is extremely exciting. I'm having fun working on my animation right now. That's because I'm excited about the completely new working process of controlling time. Work that takes you into worlds of new media or products. In that moment, as a creator, you are able to experience the pleasure of synapses in your brain linking together in a matter of seconds.

Do you have any specific science fiction influences to your work? Any movies or television shows you grew up watching?

I loved "Galaxy Express 999". When I saw the scene depicting Planet Maetel's collapse, I was moved from the bottom of my heart, and made the decision to work in the field of anime. Also, the amount of influence that the appearance of Star Wars exerted on my generation is tremendous.

I felt sympathetic to the revolution that George Lucas started, and my work has become a re-enactment of that sort of revolution in the art scene.

The S.M.P.ko² piece looks very anime-inspired. Did you draw from any particular project for that?

S.M.P.ko² was a continuation of my figure project, which included Miss ko², Hiropon and My Lonesome Cowboy. All of these characters were thickly wrapped in what I see as particularly Japanese psycho-sexual complexes.

The Tan Tan Bo piece is huge in scale, how did you conceive that piece and finally finish it?

In New Year's of the year that I finished this piece, I was struck with my first spasm of gout. The joint in my toe hurt so much it felt like it had been struck by a hammer, and I truly felt death and the aging of my muscles.

In that moment, I saw the art world's insistence on contextualization as something completely unnecessary, and felt that I needed to make a more honest work that was closer to me, and decided to project myself onto DOB, my imaginary character, and express living pain through him.

The My Lonesome Cowboy and Hiropon pieces stand out as shockingly sexual among your other works. What has been the reaction to them?

It was so positive you'd be surprised. I feel that the fact that I was able to make my debut in America is thanks to those pieces.

Has there ever been any talk of adopting any of your pieces of art into film or tv projects?

I'm already working on one right now. It's an animation called "Kaikai & Kiki." Two episodes of the animation are now on display at Brooklyn Museum as part of the exhibit. I'm also working on a live action movie.

What artists do you enjoy?

Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Hayao Miyazaki.

Where do you do most of your work?

I work at both Kaikai Kiki's office and studio in Japan, and at our office and studio in Queens.

Has anything changed in the show from Los Angeles to Brooklyn? Will anything be different?

There is a new episode of the Kaikai & Kiki animation, new designs in the Louis Vuitton shop, and some new wallpaper and floor paper, created especially for the Brooklyn space.

Main image is:

727-727, 2006
Acrylic on canvas mounted on board
3000 x 4500 x 70 mm (3 panels)
Courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
©2006 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Artist Greg deSantis has also created incredible concept models of a reimagined Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, amazing steampunk British tanks, space pirates boarding a ship through a still red-hot sliced open hole, and even scifi handguns that come complete with their own carrying case.

Sadly, the museum has disappeared and no longer offers models for sale. This is tragic, because these are probably some of the coolest scifi models we've seen, and the attention to detail is incredible. We hope deSantis returns to making these one day, because those tanks would look awesome on our desk.

Chengdu, in Southern China, is one of the country's most important economic hubs. Images by Sutherland Hussey

Sutherland Hussey Architects main page via World Architecture News

What makes these photos art is the fact that humans have altered them, argues the Museum's Gary Vikan in a Baltimore Sun op-ed:

These photos of outer space, like all photographs in art museum exhibitions, earn their public display precisely because of the creative interventions of a talented human being. In the case of the Hubble, our visitors soon come to realize that the data from which these images are created are not visual but numerical, and that you and I could never "see" the Cat's Eye Nebula the way its photo shows it, even if a rocket could somehow propel us to its near neighborhood some 3,000 light-years away. Why? Because the radiation emitted by the nebula and given visual expression in the photographic print is substantially outside the boundaries of human sight.

The exhibit consists of four zones:
Zone 1: Aliens as imagination. This includes everything from movies in aliens, the movie Alien, and interactive games wher eyou get to stomp on animated monsters.
Zone 2: The science of aliens. Space exploration. Do aliens exist? If they do, where and how? This zone will tell ya.
Zone 3: A giant interactive display that shows you the world of aliens.
Zone 4: Communicating with aliens. How to send and receive signals to other planets. Images by Miraikan

Miraikan main page (Japanese)

You also might never guess that the metal he uses to create this intricate design comes from old drill bits and machine parts. Enoki's often categorized as avant-garde, but really, he's kind of in his own category. It's also hard to tell if this super-city is a utopia or a dystopia—on one hand, it looks like it could be Sheikh Mohammed's dream island, but on the other, Enoki deliberately positions it in a pitch dark room.

Enoki Chu via the Mori Art Museum

Then construction and fund-raising for the building will happen simultaneously until planned completion in 2011. Throughout all that, museum heads are going to be asking locals what they think.

From what we've heard so far, there are some pretty neat things about the redesign already. For example, it's going to have anchor galleries—rooms designed around a particular art piece. It's also going to have a sleek modern-meets-tropical-vegetation type of thing going, with tree-lined plazas and verandas. Grandmas in bikinis are currently not part of the blueprint, but hey, with enough community interest, they very well might be. Keep an eye out. Images courtesy of Herzog & de Meuron

Miami Art Museum to Unveil Design for New Building [NY Times]

Walt Disney once said, "Tomorrow can be a wonderful age. Our scientists today are opening the doors of the Space Age to achievements that will benefit our children and generations to come. The Tomorrowland attractions have been designed to give you an opportunity to participate in adventures that are a living blueprint of our future." However, it looks like that blueprint is sponsored churros and Coca Cola, and has no clue what it's doing. Which might not be too far off from the actual future we're heading towards as a society.

Tomorrowland has been reworked and relaunched three times by Disney since the park opening in 1955, with the most recent facelift happening in 1998. But 10 years haven't even passed since then and the park feels incongruous and meandering, plus the "Rocket Rods" attraction that replaced the boring "People Mover" hasn't worked since 2000, yet it still sits there, looking like a heap of junk. Visitors to Tom Morrow's (an animatronic goof-bot voiced by Nathan Lane) "Innoventions" seek the exits within moments of entering what used to be the kitschy but cool "Carousel of Progress." Mostly because they take everything that is cool about science and make it as much fun as getting a root canal. Plus, "Star Tours" feels like it's about 20 years too old, which it is.

Over the past few years they've attempted to zap some life back into Tomorrowland by adding Buzz Lightyear's Astro-Blasters, which is basically a video game turned into a ride (riders get a gun and "blast" aliens with it throughout the ride, which keeps track of your score), and the Jedi Training Academy, which is a stage show aimed at turning tots into lightsaber-wielding badasses. They get to face off with Darth Vader, who could quickly turn them into padawan-cutlets if not for the cutesy power of the Force. it just doesn't work for a place that's supposed to be showing us what the future is like. You mean, we get to see more Star Wars in the future? George Lucas will be so pleased.

What's really sad is that it's been 20 years since Space Mountain opened, and that's still the coolest attraction in Tomorrowland. With all of the gee-whiz special effects and design innovations we've had along the way, Disney chose to upgrade Space Mountain for a limited time last summer with music from The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Give us a break. It's high time that Tomorrowland started living up to its name and wowing us with the possibilities of unknown worlds and the wonders of science.

Here are a few places that manage to get it right:

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• The Science Fiction Museum: Located in Seattle, this museum dedicated to all things science fiction is massive, fun, and has a roof made out of glass so you can see the stars at night. It's couple with Paul Allen's Experience Music project, and will keep you entertained all day.
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• The Hall of the Universe at the Rose Center for Earth and Space: This giant explorable hall feature a circular staircase that tells you how the universe formed as you climb up. It's housed inside the giant glass and steel cubic Rose Center, and shouldn't be missed if you visit New York City.
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• The Exploratorium: San Francisco's huge science museum near the Golden Gate Bridge recently got a makeover, and it puts an strong emphasis onto hands-on exciting experiences about science. It might look like ancient Roman history outside, but inside it's a whole different world.
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Ackerman caught the scifi bug back in 1922 when he saw the film One Glorious Day, where a homeless spirit takes over the body of Professor Ezra Botts. A few years later he bought his first copy of Amazing Stories and his life was changed forever. He later formed "The Boys Scientifiction Club" in 1930, and began his lifelong pursuit of being science fiction's number one fan. Well, male fan anyhow. "Girl-fans were as rare as unicorn's horns in those days," he says.

However, that was only the beginning of his obsession. He also coined the phrase "sci-fi," wore one of the first ever fan costumes to a convention (he called it a futuristicostume), received a special Hugo award in 1953 for being the "#1 Fan Personality," and has amassed a collection of science fiction memorabilia that was so big, it has now become a part of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

He also launched and edited the magazine Famous Monsters Of Filmland which inspired the likes of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Jackson and Tim Burton. Today he resides in the "Acker mini-mansion" located in Hollywood where he holds court over a smaller collection of items, and gives weekly tours every Saturday. As far as fans go, he sets the benchmark for dedication and staying power.

Raymond Hood, who designed the Art Deco masterpiece at 20 Rockefeller Plaza in 1933, created a proposal in 1929 for a 1950s Manhattan joined to Brooklyn and New Jersey by a latticework of "skyscraper" bridges that could house people on the water and ease cross-water traffic, effectively eroding the boundaries between the island and its neighbors across the rivers. Needless to say, the idea was never put into effect.

Another famous plan spawned in the 1920s for New York's future came from The Regional Plan of New York and its Environs, and called for linked highrise apartment buildings along the Hudson waterfront. All images from The Skyscraper Museum.

Future City 20|21 [via Paleo-Future]