Bike component manufacturer, SRAM, is getting a new global headquarters in Chicago, courtesy of Perkins + Will. Located in Chicago’s Fulton Market District, the new two-story office will feature everything from bleacher seating to an interior cycling test track. Interestingly, the project repurposes an old cold-storage warehouse, thus presenting the architects with a very peculiar problem. Large structures of ice covered the walls, floors, and ceiling of the space, which, of course, had to be thawed before the architects could begin with their intervention. Lots of waiting ensued.

While the suspended ice ceilings and crystallized stalagmites created a beautiful winter scene, the cold refrigeration was less than conducive for traditional office work (it’s nearly impossible to type while wearing gloves!) Last November, propane heaters were finally brought in to speed the melting process, providing us with a mesmerizing, icy time-lapse video of the process. Click through for video and more images of the epic thaw.

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New York–Manhattan, in particular–has been the subject of many a video time-lapse, and for good reason: there’s no other city like it on earth, and few that are as photogenic. We already crowned the best of the bunch this past July–check it out here–but that doesn’t mean we won’t take more of this kind of work, especially if it’s as interesting and well-executed as director Philip Stockton‘s “New York: Night and Day”. The short film captures the city as it hasn’t been before by combining the New York by day and the New York by night into a stunning surrealist collage. Continue.

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empire state of pen from patrick vale on Vimeo.

The drawing timelapse (drawn timelapse?) is something to be awed and held in suspicion for its casual, near callous display of the talent and extensive effort behind the documented (i.e. finished) work. The great effort involved–we’re talking hours, days, and even weeks here–is condensed beyond all decency, streamlined to create the pretty effect of the continuous line. In nearly all cases, such as in “Empire State of Pen” by Patrick Vale, the artist/draftsmen is reduced to his or her wrist, the moving, “thinking” hand that seemingly roves in aleatoric fashion, haphazardly planning its next move. That isn’t to say that they’re not impressive–Vale’s “Empire” is an act of bravura, and as such, it’s exceedingly enjoyable to watch him map out the geography that unfolds south of the Empire State Building. He starts with the Flatiron district (just slightly south of the Architizer HQ!) before literally sweeping through Gramercy, the Villages, Soho, and Chinatown, thought the latter barely registers, overwhelmed as it is by new construction in Lower Manhattan–most notably 1 World Trade Center which anchors the top half of the drawing to the preceding cityscape. In keeping with Vale’s other work, the line work is willfully scraggly, imperfect without being whimsical or cute. See more of Vale’s work at his website.

‘Untitled (Project 8)’ by Patrick Vale

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We’ve been talking a lot about the transience — or temporality — of cities lately. There are the forced kind, like the temporary suburbs built in Japan by Shigeru Ban; or the planned kind, built in apprehension of such a disaster. Fake-out cities, and cities built for an express purpose – or intentional lack of purpose.

This video, made by Matthew Goodman and Peretz Partensky and brought to our attention by the Atlantic Cities, shows the construction of a temporary city rebuilt every year for Burning Man, that annual gathering of free spirits in the Nevada desert. Though Burning Man is a relatively inane study in temporary urbanism, at least in comparison with live-giving projects like Ban’s, it’s no less fun to look at. The festival brings more than 50,000 people for a week of “radical self expression” by means of art (usually involving fire), a bartering system, and whatever you want to call this.

The enthusiasm Burning Man’s patrons show for pyrotechnics makes for lovely time lapse watching. Bleeps and sputters of neon light announce the events of each night. Pastel colors ping between the larger flares – Bikes with lit-up spokes, art cars, and burning temples.

Here’s a different time lapse we found, this time from the ground:

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Pipe Plant from Sasha Aleksandrov on Vimeo.

It took 2 months of shooting for Moscow-based filmmaker Sasha Aleksandrov to capture the re-painting of the exteriors of an expansive Cold War-era industrial factory. It all unfolds in dramatic time-lapse in less than 4 minutes. To make the video, Aleksandrov shot by hand and on foot, using just a typical Nikon and a tripod. This meant that Aleksandrov, who calls himself an “operator”, had to set up a shot, take it, move the tripod over a foot (or precisely 29 cm, he maintains), before repeating the process thousands of times. He then used an off-the-shelf software to stabilize the shots in post-production.

The result of this intensive labor is a combination of stop-motion and time-lapse photography, otherwise known as hyper-lapse sequences, whereby the footage is made dynamic through the introduction of rotations and pans. So when the camera begins to move, that’s Aleksandrov following along the ground at 11-inch intervals over the course of an afternoon. As for the paint job itself, it’s a kind of Suprematist pastiche with typeface meant for Bolshevik slogans. But any excuse to photograph more decommissioned factories, right?

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It seems like the whole city is gearing up for the opening of the 9/11 Memorial this September, on the tenth anniversary of the attacks. ABC has a pretty remarkable eight-year-long time-lapse of the construction site. What it lacks in definition, it makes up for in sheer scale. Via ABC NY.

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What if tomorrow, every car in LA disappeared?

So asked Ross Ching, an LA director and frustrated driver. With photographer Matt Logue’s Empty LA as his creative impetus, Ching took time-lapse footage of LA freeways with a Canon 60D, and then (get ready) combed through the hours of footage to find the individual frames that didn’t contain cars. He masked all of those moments together, and voila – car-less LA (far more shocking to me, a frustrated Final Cut user, is that there’s a human on earth who has the patience to undertake such a project).

What’s LA without its loudest and most familiar inhabitants, but a static husk of a city? You can read more about the project on Ching’s site, or over on Yatzer.

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The Ark Hotel in China, being built over a period of six days.

Time lapse photography is almost as old as photography itself – the first recorded time lapse film was made in 1897 by Georges Méliès (Carrefour De L’Opera, or Crossroads of the Opera) . The technique has expanded out ability to perceive long-term and large-scale changes in the environment arguably more than any other – how flowers bloom, how the night sky changes over a year, how a skyscraper is built – these are visual concepts that had never before been ‘see-able’ in their entirety.

In the age of the megaproject, especially, time-lapse photography allows us to conceive of the process of building at a scale that we would never be able to imagine otherwise. Watching a skyline change over 35-years, like in one of the videos below, is an experience that would otherwise take half a lifetime and an amazing memory – and be  unique to a single person (though of course, there’s magic in that, too). Our favorite time-lapse construction & architecture videos, after the jump.

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