RSS Feeds
|
BR DE ES FR IT JP NL UK US
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
Financial apocalypse be damned! The Shanghai Tower, set to reach a whopping 632 meters by the time it's completed, broke ground over the weekend. With its zenith a full 140 metres higher than the Mori Building (currently the world's highest observatory), it'll grab the honours of the tallest building in China.
Oh, wow. Apparently, in May, a Brit and a Frenchman snuck on to the under-construction Burj Dubai and BASE jumped from it at 650 metres up. Now, there's video available of their infiltration, jump and subsequent escape. The footage from up top and the jump is just incredible stuff. I wish I had the cajones to do something like this. Although my favourite part of the video may be the footnote at the end; wait for it, it's worth it. [Current via Neatorama]
Today's crazy building comes to us via the architects at design firms MVRDV and ADEPT. And no, "Sky Village" is not headed for Dubai. Instead, the 380-foot "pixelated" structure will rise above the city of Roskildevej—just east of Copenhagen, Denmark. The building will include apartments, a hotel, retail shops and offices as well as sky gardens for residents. The most interesting aspect of the design however involves the adaptability of the pixel living spaces.
If you thought the Leaning Tower of Pisa was messed up, get a load of the Capital Gate tower currently being constructed in Abu Dhabi. Actually, saying it is "messed up" is incorrect given that the 18 degree westward incline was completely intentional. In fact, the project's architects have submitted a joint application to the Guinness Book of Records to recognise the tower as the 'most inclined in the world.' In order to support the awkward angle of the 35-story structure, the design called for a foundation of extremely dense reinforced steel mesh and 490 piles sunk nearly 30 metres into the ground. Hmmm...I hope Abu Dhabi doesn't get a lot of earthquakes. [World Architecture News via The Design Blog]
After the Washington Post ran a story about how both Verizon and AT&T tripped over themselves to put up cell towers at John McCain's Arizona ranch to patch up his crappy reception, Verizon came out huffing with remarkable speed that it "was wrong," and they just put those towers up because the Secret Service said so and they had to, not because it was John McCain and he's more specialerer than you. However, the Atlantic's Joshua Green lays out why Verizon's denial doesn't quite add up.
We told you about the 460,000-brick, 29.48 metre Lego tower before, but here is the video showing how it was built by Lego experts with the help of 3,000 kids, who assembled 121 sections made with 2 x 4 Lego bricks to raise this titanic monolith--the highest ever in world. [460,000-Brick Lego Tower Breaks World Record]
We like Ericsson's idea for the original Tower Tube--take something as ubiquitous and ugly as a cell tower and add a touch of nice design and a streamlined manufacturing process that saves money and energy. Now they're taking the idea in another cool direction by adding a four-blade vertical wind turbine to the already-efficient design, allowing it to generate much of its own power. It's a concept in trial stages currently but something that makes a whole lot of sense. [Ericsson via PC World]
At 96.73 feet (29.485 meters) this Lego tower built in the Rathaus Platz in Vienna has broken the world record for the tallest Lego construction in the world. It took nearly 460,000 bricks and it was built over four days. The views from the top are quite stunning.
Italian architect David Fisher is building his first skyscraper, the Dynamic Tower, and it happens to be one of the most ambitious construction plans since the Pyramid of Khufu. Every floor of the 80-story self-powered building rotates according to voice command, and nearly the entire construction of the US$700 million structure is pre-made. I caught up with the architect in New York, and he blew my mind again and again.
According to a Fortune story today, in the span of only five weeks, six workers have fallen to their deaths from cell towers, half of which occurred on AT&T projects. This follows four months of zero fatalities in the... Read More »
We told you about the 