If art school was in our future we might opt to study under, or on top of, the amazing green roof at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This 5 story facility sweeps a wooded corner of the campus with an organic, vegetated form that blends landscape and structure, nature and high-tech and symbolizes the creativity it houses.
The glass façade provides a high performance building envelope that reduces solar gain and heat load while allowing the benefits of natural views and daylight into creative spaces. The glass walls provide a visual exchange between indoors and out allowing students and teachers to experience the building, the surrounding landscape and the interior plaza as fluid spaces. Diffused natural daylight is abundant throughout studios and classrooms, filtered through the surrounding foliage.
The curving green roofs distinguish the building from among the other structures on campus but the line between landscape and building is blurred. The roofs serve as informal gathering spaces challenging linear ideas and stirring perception. The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting.
Finishes are intentionally raw to act as a backdrop for the art, media and design projects. Concrete walls and columns, cement-sand screeded floors, timber railings and a neutral palette define the interior spaces which vary in shape and size. This amazing design seems to offer a new experience at every elevation or perspective fulfilling the intent that a school for art should inspire creativity.
Did you know that one in every ten people in the world lives on an island? There is even a word for a “craze or a strong attraction to islands” - islomania! From places of paradise to the last refuge of pirates each of these islands has set at least one world record and some have stories that are truly stranger than fiction. From the greatest and grandest to the most remote, mysterious, deadly and least populated, here are seven amazing islands from around the world.
The Pitcairn islands are best known for being the home of the descendants of the HMS Bountymutineers and the Tahitians who accompanied them, an event retold in numerous books and films. Due to infighting, famine and disease, many of the initial compliment of the island perished. Today, Pitcairn boasts only 50 inhabitants (from nine families) and is also notable for being the least populated jurisdiction in the world. The wreck of the HMS Bounty is still visible underwater off the shores of the main inhabited island, and the Tahitian/European descendants speak a unique language: a mix of Tahitian and English known as Pitkern.
Palmyra is the quintessential combination of classic island stereotypes. It is simultaneously a kind of desert island paradise as well as a mysterious source of superstition. Its long strange history includes buried pirate treasure, tragic deaths, shipwrecks, military use and abandonment and a recent grizzly double-murder of a vacationing couple. Some believe the island to be cursed, but even rationalists are astonished at the number of bizarre happenings that have plagued the island since its discovery in the 1700s. It remains currently the only unorganized incorporated U.S. territory.
Bouvet is the remotest uninhabited island in the world. Is roughly 75 square miles of surface is mostly covered by glaciers and and very little survives on the island aside from moss, seals, seabirds and penguins. However, the island has been at the center of some peculiar mysteries. An early discoverer of the island documented second island nearby that was never seen again. In the 1960s an abandoned lifeboat was found on the island, though nothing was ever seen of its passenger. In the above satellite images, it can only be picked out by spotting disturbances in the weather patterns.
Tristan da Cunha is the remotest group of inhabited islands in the world, thouand of miles from South America and South Africa deep in the Atlantic Ocean. Among other strange native species, the Inaccessible Island is home to the smallest living flightless bird. Only 272 people live on the islands. The islands have seen there share of troubles, having been blamed for dozens of shipwrecks over the centuries. More recently, the populace had to be temporarily evacuated in the 1960s during a volcanic eruption that destroyed multiple buildings on the island.
Bishop Rock holds the Guinness Book of World Records title of smallest island in the world. An amazing lighthouse, built in 1858, is the only thing stands on this tiny island off the coast of Britain. The first lighthouse erected on the island was washed away before it could be completed. The current lighthouse has managed to survive currents and winds for well over a century. In historical times, convicted criminals were left with bread and water on the island to die.
Nauru is the smallest independent island country in the world. This Pacific island is only 8 square miles, and is the third smallest country in the world next to Monaco and Vatican City. Once its natural reserves of phosphate were depleted, this once-rich island nation first became a haven for money laundering and then had to seek aid from Australia. The island has since become a way station for asylum seekers looking to enter the land Down Under.
Dubai is home to an increasingly infamous set of awe-inspiring man-made islands, by far the largest in the world. One would almost have to be living on an island oneself to have not seen or heard of this project. These islands, in the shape of everything from a palm to the world itself, constitute the most massive land-moving operation of all time. Dubai has recognized that oil, its original source of wealth, will only last for so long. With islands like these and a thriving tourist industry around them there is no doubt that Dubai will outlast its oil supplies.
As a young child (or perhaps even an adult) who hasn’t dreamed of living tree houses? Some structures are built on trees or hung from trees, but some unusual tree house building designs are even grown from trees or built right into a tree. Some people live in trees as a luxury, some to help save the environment and others out of tradition or necessity. Here are ten incredible tree house designs that range from functional to fanciful, sustainable to strange and affordable to incredibly expensive.
Baumraum treehouses blends classic notions of a simple wood structure in a tree with modernist angles, clean lines and other design elements. These both blend with and stand out from their natural environs and are customized to client wishes before being installed. The Baumraum group is both experimental and experienced, wish expertise in tree types, capabilities and environmental impact.
The mobile, durable and somehow fanciful Free Spirit Spheres can be hung from anything from trees to buildings and rock faces. Webbing and ropes literally and metaphorically anchor these spheres to their locations. Just four anchor points are needed to carry the entire weight of the spheres. Each sphere is waterproof and impact-resistant, composed of an internal laminated wood frame and clear fiberglass exterior.
The 4Treehouse by Lukasz Kos floats like a “Japanese lantern on stilts” and is situated to accommodate four existing trees on the site. As with the best tree house designs, this project successfully worked around the existing natural site conditions. The three-story house itself rents suspended from these four primary site trees.
The TreeHouse Workshop is a Seattle-based company that takes the art of constructing tree houses extremely seriously. They build an average of one tree house per month and hire extremely able builders and carpenters to construct their projects. Their finished works vary in luxury but some even include (counterintuitive!) fireplaces.
The 02 Sustainability Tree House defies many of the conventions one associates with a typical tree house. The paradigm of a square shack-like wooden structure is replaced with a light and spacious geodesic dome structure that requires very little (and eco-friendly) material and has minimal impact on trees in which it is placed (hanging from cables rather than bolted to trees). It is designed for residential, meditation and meeting functions.
Of course, not all tree houses are avante garde examples of design and sustainability - some people live in far more traditional tree houses such as the tree dwellers shown in the photographs above. In the jungles of the Brazza River Basin in the Indonesian province of Papua the local tribes have slowly built their way up into the trees to escape pests and one another. Their residences now reach dizzying heights of over 100 feet.
This amazing Vietnamese tree house structure is a “tree house” in an entirely unconventional sense of the phrase and draws tourists and guests from around the world. Of course not just anyone can get permission to build a house like this: it helps to be the daughter of the ex-president of the country. Tourists are even able to stay in the rooms overnight.
It’s one thing to chain oneself to a tree in order to save it, but quite another to live in one! In order to save 400+ year old trees, a group of activists has been doing just that on impromptu suspended platforms that currently constitute the tallest “tree house” in the world (top images above). One clever designer has developed a series of conceptual strategies shown in the above images to take this approach to the next level. With just 13% of these old-growth trees left, these new structures would link from tree to tree providing habitats but also protecting the natural environment.
What if instead of building a tree house, you could grow it yourself? A combination of scaffolding and other systems could be used to direct the growth of these fascinating and creative concept tree houses over a period of years. Vines, roots and trees become organic architectural materials to create a flexible framework for these curious creations. Windows would be made of flexible soy membranes that would shift as the building grew.
The Syberite tree house project blends modular design with low-impact living. Layouts are allowed to conform to the natural landscapes around them to take maximum advantage of views and natural light without disturbing the local environment. The thin foundational supports are designed to minimize impact on root systems and the ground surface. Rainwater collection, solar panels, wind collection and other sustainable systems are also integrated making the house mostly energy independent.
To wind down from the more wacky designs, the above video shows a simple traditional tree house being built - but sped up and using stop-motion techniques to illustrate the process.
Nothing last forever and that includes the most grandiose skyscrapers, luxurious hotels and beloved sports stadiums. It seems amazing at times that so much money, energy and material is invested in structures that ultimately get torn down so quickly. Some of these demolitions are simply damned impressive while other implosions are downright frightening.
In true Las Vegas style the New Frontier went out with (sorry, the pun had to be made) a huge bang. Watch explosive fireworks shoot outward through the windows of the building - all captured in closeups as it happens. Truly a genius way to destroy something.
Watching this one it is almost impossible to believe that it can end well: you have an extremely tall building surrounded by other structures that has nowhere to go but down. Sure enough, though, the experts did their homework and went off quickly and without a hitch.
If you had to make a list of frightening, gigantic and durable structures that might seem impossible to destroy a nuclear cooling tower would probably be pretty high on the list. The Trojan tower’s destruction actually happens surprisingly fast in the first video so be sure to watch the second one to catch it in slow motion!
This stadium really goes down like dominoes on a scale you’ve never seen before. While the above video gives you a general idea of how it happens you should be sure to check out this video (which couldn’t be embedded here) for a more comprehensive view of the events.
OK, so this isn’t a building demolition in the typical sense: it is just one crazy individual with a sledgehammer and no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. It starts off a little slow but as you might guess while watching the beginning: the end is worth sticking around for.
The burning question on everyone’s mind regarding this building is of course: was it supposed to fall on its side? It seems like any other implosion until a few seconds in when the building stops collapsing and begins to simply lean and then fall over still partly intact. Was it planned that way or simply a dangerous mistake?
Something clearly went wrong here. Could it be that they didn’t lay out enough explosives, or that perhaps they were put in the wrong place? Whatever went on one has to wonder: who is going to get close enough to this half-toppled building to set up more explosives and try again!
The sequencing on this one (with or without the background musical beats) is pretty neat. You can watch as they blow out each floor with bits and pieces flying from the structure before the whole thing collapses. Also, the video’s creator has a slow-motion version at the end.
Like the New Frontier: if you’re going to blow up a building anyway, why not blow it up in style? When the infamous Stardust was destroyed they decided to do just that. The building’s implosion is accompanied by fireworks that mingle with the explosions as the structure breathes its last.
Many building implosions start equally all around the base of the structure or are set off in such a way that they that the structure collapses in toward the center. This one seems to lean ominously as explosions start from one corner and the building falls slightly more to one side.
This structure and implosion are both fairly modest. What stands out in the video is how close the onlookers seem to be and the visibility of the explosions going off inside the building. This appears to be a big event in a small town judging from the cheers.
This one goes by extremely fast. It sort of looks like some high-speed racer shot into the building’s base at one side and plowed through to the other, collapsing the structure along the way.
Now this Intel building is a bit unusual: it sat idle for almost a decade, partially constructed, before they gave up on and decided to demolish it. The net result is a somewhat strange demolition of what is essentially a collection of columns, beams and unfinished floor platforms.
The Jamestown Bridge in Rhode Island went down in what can only be described as a choreographed dance of destruction. Almost elegantly simultaneous, the explosions help the main bridge structure shed all of its tension supports in a matter of seconds. Beautiful.
As night falls, puzzler enthusiasts gather outside a residential block in Ukraine in an attempt to decipher the world largest crossword.
But unlike your newspaper variety, this puzzle is more than 100ft high and fills the entire external wall of a tall building in the historic city of Lvov.
Clues to the massive puzzle, which is 19 squares across and 34 squares high, have been scattered around the city's major landmarks and attractions including parks, fountains, and theatres.
