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Visit the Big Lebowski’s Crib, How Sci-Fi Will Inspire VR and All You Need to Know About Workbenches

Core77’s editors spend time combing through the news so you don’t have to. Here’s a weekly roundup of our favorite stories from the World Wide Web.

The Dude Abides

This week brought exciting news for architecture geeks and The Big Lebowski buffs—John Lautner’s 1963 Sheats-Goldstein House has been promised to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ensuring the angular gem will remain a part of LA’s cultural fabric. Although the house is famous in its own right, its star turn came in the the Coen brothers’ 1998 stoner masterpiece, where it was immortalized as Jackie Treehorn’s sinister lair. 

—Rebecca Veit, columnist, Designing Women

Dispatches from the Virtual World

At virtual reality companies like Oculus and Microsoft, science fiction helps founders and employees imagine possible use cases for their technology. The fact that sci-fi writers like Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, is employed at Magic Leap as its “chief futurist” is a compelling argument for how these tech companies envision their place in the cultural landscape.

—Linyee Yuan, managing editor

Robert Caro on New York’s Past and Future

Caro gives some insight into the production — 7 years! — of his book on Robert Moses, *The Power Broker,* with many anecdotes of the old days/ ways to amuse and dishearten today’s fine-journalism fetishists.

—Eric Ludlum, editorial director

The Bewildering Beauty of Recycled Waste

Paul Bulteel’s sweeping photographic series “Cycle & Recycle” documents recycling facilities across Western Europe, highlighting how different materials are taken apart—only to coalesce into an entirely new matter, a strangely evocative consumer-made landscape. 

—Alexandra Alexa, editorial assistant

Art for Instagram’s Sake

Social media affects our consciousness in many ways, but I’m sure the majority of us haven’t considered how it changes the way we view and process art. The Atlantic discusses the curious phenomenon of immersive exhibitions popping up in museums and how it might just be a clever way for museums to capitalize on visitors’ Instagram addictions…

—Allison Fonder, community manager

Workbenches: From Design Theory to Construction Use

This week I’m reading Christopher Schwarz’s seminal “Workbenches: From Design And Theory To Construction And Use,” which was recently re-released in a slightly revised edition. The longtime woodworker and woodworking editor goes over French, English and Continental styles of workbench, with a chapter on the famous Roubo. He also covers all of the workbench principles, and potential building materials, for those looking to build their own bench. (Warning: Do NOT buy the digital edition being sold on some websites–all it is, is a straight PDF rip with no formatting considerations for e-readers.)

—Rain Noe, senior editor

A Design Patient’s Bill of Rights

Common Edge is a New Orleans–based nonprofit and website “dedicated to reconnecting architecture and design to the public.” Since its launch last month, the site has published a number of interesting interviews and opinion pieces—including Eva Hagberg Fisher’s “Design Patient’s Bill of Rights: A What-If,” a funny and provocative thought experiment in what it would mean if design recipients, i.e. all of us, could have some of the same expectations of the built environment as patients have of their health-care experience.

—Mason Currey, senior editor