From the Department of Creative Bank Accounting, Architecture Desk
I learned about Japanese lighthouses this week. Most of the lighthouses you'll see in Japan look like traditional western style light houses. In the Meiji era Scottish engineer Richard Henry Brunton supervised the building of 26 of them and established a system of lighthouse keepers. Prior to his influence, Japanese lighthouses looked like this:
There's only a handful of these left and they aren't very well known. All of these are Edo period and look distinctly Japanese. I love the squared off and squatty look to them.
For some reason whenever I've thought of lighthouses I always thought of the traditional New England cylindrical style. It never occurred to me that other cultures would need to have solved the same problem and would've done it in their own style. Something to think about next time you sit down to design a spaceship or castle. Try to think about how this particular alien or fantasy race would approach the problem and let that influence the design, from the bones up.
(Via @UrbanFoxxx)
-Jake