This is just a sample of what ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD can do !!! Crazy stuff !!!
Recently in Architecture Category
BUCHAREST, Romania The Habsburg family said Wednesday that it wanted to sell a Transylvanian castle famous for its connections to the 15th century medieval ruler who inspired "Dracula" for 60 million euros, or $78 million, to the local authorities, an attorney said.
The castle was returned to Habsburg, a New York architect, on May 26, decades after it was confiscated by the communists from Habsburg's mother, Princess Ileana, in 1948, the year the royals were forced to leave the country.
After the restitution, concerns were raised that the family could sell castle to a hotel chain and that the site could end up being the centerpiece of a Dracula theme park that would blight the surrounding, pristine countryside.
http://cbs2chicago.com/watercooler/watercooler_story_010123444.html
Khan Shatyry Entertainment Centre, Astana, Kazakhstan
Astana, Kazakhstan, 2006-2007
The Khan Shatyry entertainment centre in Astana will become a dramatic civic focal point for the capital of Kazakhstan, the soaring structure, at the northern end of the new city axis, rises from a 200m elliptical base to form the highest peak on the skyline of Astana.
via: Capital of Kazakhstan to be Covered in Gigantic Tent; Gizmodo HQ Moving to Kazakhstan - Gizmodo
Project Page: Foster Partners
The new Millau Bridge is considered to be the world's tallest. One of the Millau bridge's pillars reaches more than eleven-hundred feet into the air, making it more than 50 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. Designed by British architect, Norman Foster, the $523 million dollar bridge opens a new link between Paris and the Mediterranean.
artinfo.com has listed what they consider the Top 12 New Buildings of 2005.
My favorite is the Agbar Tower in Barcelona, (pictured above). It reminds me of something, but I can't put my finger on it.
Personally, this was my favorite of 2005.
Tell me they didn't rip this off from the Jetsons.
These things don't look like they would stand up to a strong wind.
Conceptual research project in rural areas of England such as Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. In partnership with local planning authorities and property developers we aim to develop a modular tree house concept. This could, with a flexible planning arrangement, encourage a more organic approach to country living.
Surprise and amuse your guests by offering a chilled beverage from Motoart's "Get Bombed" table. Hand crafted from a rare WWII Navy practice bomb and a B-52 jet engine turbine fan, it is artfully combined with a mirror and 1/2" green glass table-top.
Architect David Hertz of Santa Monica is going to buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals.
"We are trying to use every piece of this aircraft, much like an Indian would use a buffalo," says Mr. Hertz.
The San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent 7 part series on suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Even when the cooling fog blunts the view, the vast majority of jumpers take their last step facing east instead of west toward the Pacific.
People jump and kill themselves there, an average of 19 a year. In the peak year, 1977, there were 40 suicides.
Once a person dives, depending on where he or she jumps, the body plummets 240 to 250 feet in four seconds, traveling about 75 mph, and hits the water with the force of a speeding truck meeting a concrete building. Some die instantly from extensive internal injuries; others drown in their own blood.
The jump is fatal 98 percent of the time. The Chronicle's research indicates that at least 1,218 suicides were reported between the time the bridge opened, on May 27, 1937, and this past Friday.
The picture above is of Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai from 1991 and 2005. That's right! In just 14 years they did all that. I don't know about where you live, but in Illinois it can take them 14 years just to repave a residential street.
For the first time in its long history, the Netherlands has begun to strategically uncreate itself, in the face of future oceanic flooding. Last year the government, at the start of a 15-year program, began buying up land and reserving it as flood plain, mostly along river banks. The Dutch are also exploring a solution as old as the first flood: floating architecture
Without going back through the specifics of Dutch terrain – vast sections of which are actually reclaimed Atlantic seafloor, only existing as dry land through a complicated network of levees, canals, and seawalls – it is worth quickly highlighting the obvious: that in a "post-Katrina world," whatever that is, a world with rising sealevels and accelerating polar thaws, architecture that can adapt to its hydrological surroundings – that is, architecture that can float – is now very much in vogue.