The ribbon was cut on Nokia’s New York and Chicago flagship stores in 2006, but just three years later the shelves are coming down and staff are having to make alternative employment arrangements from early 2010 when doors will close.
Chicago’s 820-feet-tall Aqua Tower is one of those buildings that make me dizzy. It looks like a vertical version of the stunning Lençóis Maranhenses, the sterile desert in the north of Brazil, full of turquoise fresh water ponds:
Part centipede, part flamingo, Nunnmps is a research studio designed by Cheunvogl and to be located in Chicago. It looks like the perfect place to scheme a coup d’état or work on whatever mysterious projects it is intended for.
Ticketing red light runners is standard practice in many big cities, but Chicago is considering doing one better and scanning every car going by for up to date insurance.
A giant joint? The horn on a unicorn? How about the taller Dubai Tower with its twists? One thing is for certain, the Chicago Spire will be the world’s second tallest building when it is completed in 2011. The Spire was designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, and it will rise 2000 feet over the streets of Chicago and feature 150 floors housing 1,194 residences. And, because of its unique spiraled design, each floor rotates an average of 2.44 degrees (360 degrees in total) so that no two apartments have the same view. And the building has a LEED gold rating for supreme greenness.
A video surveillance program, similar to the one that has proven to be so “effective” in London, is coming to Chicago with the help of Big Brother Blue, IBM. The cameras, which will reportedly cost less than current city-wide surveillance methods, will also be linked to intelligent software.
