Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Self-driving cars, Cuba's lung cancer vaccine, Einstein's handwriting as a font and more in our weekly look around the web

1. Cornell Renames Institute After Carl Sagan Cornell University’s Institute for Pale Blue Dots is being renamed the Carl Sagan Institute: The Pale Blue Dot and Beyond in honor of the late astrophysicist and former Cornell faculty member. After Sagan’s wife and collaborator Ann Druyan visited the science center to give a speech, she was inspired by the innovative work being done and proposed the …

A Tom Dixon Takeover at NYC’s The Store

A new concept space from MING makes its debut by hosting the British designer's products for the next three months

Physical retail stores are no longer just places where credit cards get charged and items are purchased—online shopping satisfies those two requirements easily; but passers-by yearn for a place for interaction, discovery and being. Thus explains the recent crop of experience-focused spaces, like NYC’s intimate design store Calliope in the West Village. The latest comes from young creative company MING, who, aside from doing project …

Mad Max: Fury Road’s Incredible Cars

When production designer Colin Gibson was hired to design the cars for Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller told him, “Make it cool or I’ll kill you.” Instead of making them just look cool, Gibson made sure all of the machines were fully functional and completely bad-ass. To create each of the 88 mechanical monsters, Gibson and his crew scoured junkyards across Australia for …