The Flobin Files is a tumblelog.

This is so ugly in real life: Arnhem Central / UNStudio

[shared via Google Reader from ArchDaily]

Courtesy UNStudio. © Ronald Tilleman

Architects: UNStudio, Ben van Berkel with Arjan Dingsté and Marc Hoppermann, Marc Herschel, Derrick Diporedjo, Kristin Sandner, Rein Werkhoven
Location: Arnhem, the Netherlands
Client: ProRail, utrecht
Engineering: Movares
Contractor: DAM-Dura Vermeer
Gross Roof Area: approximately 8700 m2
Dimensions: 4 platform roofs of approximately 210 metres long, with varying widths from 9-14 metre
Structure and materials: steel, aluminum and cold formed glass roofs
Start of construction: 2009
Planned completion date: 2011

In terms of scale, we typically feature massive projects by UNStudio – such as their Kutaisi Airport, planning scheme for Union Station, and grand performance venues – which all bring the contemporary aesthetic of Ben van Berkel to meet the projects’ respective programmatic and contextual demands.  Recently, van Berkel’s team has crafted a covering for the Netherlands’ central rail line, bringing their elegant touch to a structure blanketing four train platforms measuring 210 meters in length.

More about the platform coverings after the break.

Courtesy UNStudio. © Ronald Tilleman

The number of passengers passing through Arnhem Central continues to grow, as the station converts several regional routes and high speed trains to Germany.  The increase in user flow has placed stress on the existing railway infrastructure which is now being substantially revitalized.

Courtesy UNStudio. © Ronald Tilleman

As part of this effort, UNStudio has designed platform roofs to replace the existing coverings, and cover a new added fourth platform.  Working off the idea of providing a sense of light and space, large roof lights, the glossy white materiality and abundance of glass provide an open atmosphere.

Courtesy UNStudio. © Tim Snoek

The elevated footbridge is fully integrated with the design, connecting the different platforms to each other and with the north entrance of the train station. The electrified system has also been integrated into the roof structure, giving a uniform appearance across all platforms.

Courtesy UNStudio. © Ronald Tilleman

Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome

[shared via Google Reader from Ars Technica]

Aurich Lawson

In 1999 a pair of researchers published a paper called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments (PDF).” David Dunning and Justin Kruger (both at Cornell University’s Department of Psychology at the time) conducted a series of four studies showing that, in certain cases, people who are very bad at something think they are actually pretty good. They showed that to assess your own expertise at something, you need to have a certain amount of expertise already.

Remember the 2008 election campaign? The financial markets were going crazy, and banks that were “too big to fail” were bailed out by the government. Smug EU officials proclaimed that all was well within the EU—even while they were bailing out a number of financial institutions. Fast forward to 2012, and the EU is looking at hard times. Greece can’t pay its debt. Italy can, but the markets don’t trust it to be able to. Spain and Portugal are teetering around like toddlers just waiting for the market to give them one good push. Members of the public are behaving like teenagers, screaming “F**k you,” while flipping the bird. The markets are reacting like drunk parents, and the resulting bruises are going to take a while to heal.

In all of this, uninformed idiots blame the Greeks for being lazy, the Germans for being too strict, and everyone but themselves. Newspapers, blogs, and television are filled with wise commentary hailing the return of the gold standard, the breakup of the Euro, or any number of sensible and not-so-sensible ideas. How are we to parse all this information? Do any of these people know what they are talking about? And if anyone does, how can we know which ones to listen to? The research of Dunning and Kruger may well tell us there is no way to figure out the answers to any of these questions. That is kind of scary.

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The AOL hotel

[shared via Google Reader from kottke.org]

Eric Simons is a 19-year-old entrepreneur who lived for two months in the AOL HQ in Palo Alto. Simons was given a badge while participating in Imagine K12, an education incubator housed at AOL. When the program ended, Simons’s badge continued to work. So he stayed, sleeping on one of three couches, showering in the gym, and eating for free in the cafeteria. There’s a walled garden joke in here, maybe even a domain squatting joke, too.

For someone with neither money nor an aversion to sleeping on others’ couches, the AOL building had plenty of allure. “They had a gym there with showers,” Simons said. “I’d take a shower after work. I was like, ‘I could totally work here…They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live.’”

It’s too bad Simons didn’t keep a Tumblr of his two months living at AOL, he’d have a book deal already. (via ★andrewsimone)

Ayyo this the Big Ghost aka the Mighty Hands of Zeus aka Galaxy Knuckles aka Thor Molecules aka Volcano Hands aka Phantom Raviolis aka the Inventor of Slaps aka Illustrious Panty Melter aka P-Tone aka Starky Love Aka Theodore Dini aka Ironman Starks aka Testosterone Tone aka the Wally Champ otherwise known as the one ‘n only Cocaine Biceps namsayin’?

This is long, but worth reading. Re: the fresh prince

for real the narrative of fresh prince is kinda fucked up. he goes to live an upperclass life and gradually forgets his roots in philly where his own biological mother lives to fend for herself. he goes back in one episode but his three friends are a charicature of blacks, especially the one big guy who is almost retarded. he is eventually “rescued” by carlton and they safely make it back to bel air. in a christmas episode, they invite reagan over because they live on the same street. ronald fucking reagan. the episode where will’s activist aunt comes over to visit? she’s portrayed as an irresponsible quasi-terrorist and uncle phil goes on a big rant about “we decided we could do the most change by fighting within the system” but let’s be real (ignoring for now that he’s a lawyer and still offers no legal counsel to will’s aunt, instead they tell her to hit the road and she goes back underground), he’s a petit bourgeois aristocrat who has a fucking black house-servant, who the show writers obviously gave a british upper-class accent to further mystify and distract. if he spoke with an accent most real black house servants would speak with in bel air, and uncle phil came in speaking his hyper-correct upper-class affectation and hilary wanted 300$ to go buy some alligator-skin boots, it would be a lot more uncomfortable without the british accent. will smith enrolls in an upper-class private school modelled after the kind of exclusive institutions perfected in turn of the century britain, the kind of education routinely denied to millions of american blacks simply by virtue of being born into the wrong skin and class. A school where probably 40 years earlier there might have been not only no black students, but a healthy undercurrent of racism in the classroom and hallway. A very interesting scene occurs when will first arrives at the school and wears his jacket inside out, an inversion that, although presents quite a display of colour, leaves the whole institution of the school or idea of dress code unchallenged in any meaningful sense. Of course the other mainly white students are quick to appropriate his statement for themselves, also flipping their jacket inside out and if I remember correctly also trying to imitate some of his cool urban speech patterns. Finally, everybody remembers the iconic scene where uncle phil throws jazzy jeff, embodying authentic black culture and the up-and-coming (still at the time political) hip hop movement, out the front door of their mansion. I’ve said my piece. In later years will smith would pretend act the story of a poor father trying to make it in america, predictably of course he perseveres and fulfills the american dream of social mobility.

(Source: reddit.com)