I’m not much fan of the snow these days too many dreadful memories of having to shovel the driveway off multiple times during winter. But when I saw the ICEHOTEL I immediately wanted to buy me some snow gear and head out to Jukkasjarvi, Sweden, which is 200 kilometers north of the arctic circle. The ICEHOTEL was conjured up by group of foreigners who stayed in an igloo one night, and the rest is ICEHOTEL history. The hotel is rebuilt every year from scracth, artists, architects and designers from all over go to Jukkasjarvi to build the ICEHOTEL out of water and ice from the River Torne. Each year the hotel takes on a whole new look and interior based on view of the designers and architects working on it. You can view more images of the current ICEHOTEL here, plus a little video.
The tallest skyscraper in the world is almost done, the Burj Dubai tower is currently at 650m and is estimated to end at 818m (2,684 ft), and should have 162 habitable floors. The skyscraper is already shaping up to be something amazing, Gizmodo has more images of what has currently been constructed as well as some incredible interior images, all shot by David Hobcote. The interior alone is something out of a futuristic movie, like a Matrix-esque experience when riding an elevator up 162 floors, better not have a fear of heights if you plan on visiting the Burj Dubai.
Austria isn’t exactly a well known country besides Arnold Schwarzenegger and the guy who created Red Bull they don’t really have much else to known for, that was until now and the Amalia House. The house was built by GRID Architects and is a two level home with the outer surface covered entirely by artificial grass. Now that’s just one more thing we can associate with Austria, oh, and they do currently have 3 medals (1 silver, 2 bronze) in the 2008 Olympic games. Keep working hard Austria you might get confused with Australia soon enough.
I think glass buildings are and probably will be some of my favorite structural designs forever; just they way the glass can be played with and used in so many ways just fascinates me. And the building by Barkow Leibinger Architechts in Seoul, Korea is just another example of how if used right a glass building can create an amazing look. The Trubec Building which it’s called is made up of glass panels that form triangular and trapezoidal shapes giving it a some what of a carnival mirror look.
The Switch building is located in the Lower East Side of NY and it houses apartments and an art gallery. The building was constructed by the nARCHITECTS, they also handled the interior design of the building as well. The building was designed to look like one of those sideways light switches and I’m definitely a fan of the off-setting switches/window designs going up the building.
In the Swisshorn Gold Palace everything is made of gold, even the toilet seats. It took 5 years, over $50 million and 2.5 tons of gold for the gold palace to be completed. This was a joint collaboration between the Swiss watch brand, Swisshorn, and Hang Fung Gold Technology Group. The golden palace was created as a new tourist attraction in Hong Kong and was a way to help expand the Swiss watch brand into the Asia Pacific market.
“The Las Vegas of the Middle East, on steroids”. If you follow architecture, design magazines or travel magazines Dubai has been the talk for over a year now, having some of the worlds best architects come in and build some of the worlds most dynamic structures to ever be built. With all the money being pumped into Dubai it’s already becoming a dreamland, I know I dream to visit. So with all the hype Current TV did a report on the fast growing architecture boom being constructed over in Dubai, soon to be the “new” city in which the rich and the want to be rich will vacation and live (well, have homes there). The video will take you through a look at some of Dubai’s architecture and even a close look at The World Islands. The man made islands are designed to represent all the world continents, when finished there will be 300 small islands broken up into 4 categories. They even show how they created the islands.
So what do Russian gangsters do with their spare time, they build the worlds tallest wooden building, well that is if you’re Nikolai Sutyagin. It took Nikolai 15 years to get up too 13 floors, 144 ft and possibly a world record. All that even with a 4 year hiatus when he was sent to prison back in 1998 on racketerring charges, his 3rd time serving a prison sentence. But even at it current status the building isn’t complete and will it ever, who knows, but it’s tall enough right now to compete with the old women who live in a shoe.
Remember as a child how much you loved pop-up books, how you could spends hours just closing and opening the book on your favorite pages. And then your parents did the unthinkable they told that you were too old for pop-up books; from that point on it just seems like all your hopes and dreams in the world just shattered to pieces. You were doomed to a 2 dimensional world with things you could only look at but not touch. But ha, how all our parents were so wrong we aren’t too old for pop-up books we just needed age appropriate pop-up books and thanks to Anton Radevsky and David Sokol for making “The Modern Architecture Pop-Up Book”, we have that book now. The book has 20 notable architectural structured pop-ups including works by famed architects such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Lloyd Wright. You can buy the book at Rizzoli or pre-order for much cheaper at Amazon.
Dutch architects UNstudio’s proposed flagship Louis Vuitton store in Japan. The 10 storey retail structure doesn’t have a site location or build date as of yet, or atleast not one they want to release to the public. But if completed it will be another hit on a series of LV stores that blend architectural refinement with retail elegance, plus UNstudio, is known for taking projects and making them just a little better then you even hoped to imagine. Plus it’s no surprise LV picked UNstudio, we’ve already given them TTS approval.
It’s inflatable yep, that’s right that huge structure is blown up. The mobile performance venue was designed by various architects in Norway, the venue holds 3,500 people and has a main performance hall surrounded by other facilities within the structure. The entire thing can be deflated, packed up and moved to another spot in a week.
