architecture

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  diana guerra

  Modern architecture: Culture Forest at Seoul

  The forest is our way to nature, joining air, trees, water, wind and soil. There, nature is linked on harmony: all the elements work together. This inner balance guided the creation of the Seoul's newest cultural and artistic centre. Designed by the Unsangdong (YoonGyoo Jang, ChangHoon Shin, SungMin Kim) architects, "Culture Forest" will be sign of innovation and intense interaction with nature....
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  diana ribeiro

  Know some of the strangest buildings of the World

  "Cubic Houses" Rotterdam, Netherlands. Projecting, organizing and designing are common action at architecture, this art (and technique) of projecting and planning buildings made by the hands of our humankind....
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  débora cambé

  Seoul receives the bridge of the future

  As London or Paris, The South Korea capital is crossed by a river. Near 30 bridges connect the two sides of the Han River, but Paik Nam June Media Bridge promises to be more than a simple crossing structure; it will be the new central point of the city. This is the ambicious target lined by Planning Korea architecture consultants, which presents a futuristic project conceived to be an...
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  sergio coletto

  Lace Hill: Artificial, Multifunctional and Self-Sufficient

  The great question of the contemporary architecture is the untiring search for means to join functionality, sustainability and, of course, visual attraction. Lace Hill embodies all these aspects and applies them to the local reality....
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  rita novaes

  Eiffel Tower's 120 years of existence

  On March 31, 2009, the Eiffel Tower's inauguration completed 120 years. The event was the highlight of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle -- when the centenary of the French Revolution was celebrated. Along the XIX century, the universal expositions were the main advertising vehicle of the Occidental industrialized society, the shopwindows for the advanced technology where each country showed their most recent products. To the French people, it was...
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  rita novaes

  Rotational Villa Girasole

  Villa Girasole is an extraordinary work built during the golden ages of functionalist architecture. It lies at Marcellise, in the region of Verona, Italy, and was designed by the navy engineering Angelo Invernizzi -- who had the apparently senseless dream of being the owner of a house that could follow the sun movement. This kind of building wasn't easy to be constructed, as it evolved many complex and expensive...
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  benjamin júnior

  Metro Stations - hidden architecture

  All the great cities of the world have their metropolitan net. At the most part of the cases, they are only functional infra-structures with thousands daily passersby. In other cases, like Moscow, lines and tunnels link stations with grandiose and retro architecture, where the passengers feel like guests of a solemnity. Through all over the world, we can find fabulous metropolitan stations, ancient or modern ones. It's a pity...
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  andré montejorge

  (Un)limited creativity

  This unusual project is part of Pieter Peerlings & Silvia Mertens' sculp(IT), Belgian architects thirsty for innovation. In an exiguous 240m2 area, they could conceive a spectacular mix of house-and-studio in the midst of Antwerp, the second biggest city of Belgium. Over an iron foundation, four wooden pavements were laid, creating floors of 60 m2/each. The main idea was: a floor where you could work, have some rest, have...
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  benjamin júnior

  Night Garden fed by solar energy

  It's at night that this modest garden during the day gets alive. Huge flowers are illuminated, changing their colors or varying the intensity of their lights. At the same time, an indistinct music comes from somewhere no-one knows. Then, the ambience created is dominated by beauty and tranquility and we could also say that we're in a celestial place. However, we are in one of the most turbulent zones...
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  benjamin júnior

  Tianjin Urban Planning Museum

  The fact is that most part of the most spectacular and inventive styles of the present world architecture lies in China -- a result of the overture to the West and of the huge economic growth of the country. Some of the most outstanding architects of the world find there a good market for their projects and -- the most important -- for the edification of them. The architecture...
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  seven

  Modern architecture for elephants

  The guarantee the buildings they design are perfectly suitable to their users is one of the responsibilities of the architectures. If sometimes this task is difficult because of certain particularities of certain people, imagine when the users are not human (and neither inhuman) and, besides, huge. That's what happened with the elephants pavilion at the Copenhagen Zoo, in Denmark, conceived by the architect Norman Forster....
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  Carmosa Abreu

  The Extraordinary Caves of Ajanta - India

  Spread out through India, there are thousands of Chinese Buddhistic caves which were used at the First Emperor Empire to shelter Dalai Lama's hermits from all the places of the Orient. When Buddhism started disappearing, these caves were abandoned. They were discovered, many years later, by British people who looked for gold and spices and slighted fantastic symbols of historical and cultural value -- they even exploded some of...
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  Carmosa Abreu

  White Roofs

  Akbari Hashem, researcher of the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, in United States, affirmed in a recent study that painting the roofs with a white color can help to combat the global warming, decreasing the temperature of the urban heat islands at the great urban centers. As the dark covers absorb 80% of the extreme heat, the clear ones reflect until 90% of the solar light. The fact is: if...
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  Carmosa Abreu

  Green Roofs

  The "Green Roofs", very popular in Scandinavian countries and with a long history also in Germany, are conquering adepts in Latin America -- like Mexico, where the gardens implantation over the roofs of the edifications are directing interests and acceptance. Besides Mexico, where the govern studies the creation of laws to regulate the "naturation" in large scale, "green roofs" started appearing also in Bolivia and Cuba, where researches are...
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  benjamin júnior

  Battersea power station, the cover of "Animals" by Pink Floyd

  Pink Floyd fans will recognize this picture instantly: its the famous cover of the album Animals. The photograph was taken in December 1976, at the Battersea power station in London, and if you still don't remember it, a giant pink pig was part of the picture. The pig was actually a balloon filled with helium, tied to one of the building's chimneys and produced quite the anecdote. Shortly after...
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  benjamin júnior

  Pete Nelson: tree houses

  Building houses on trees is not just for children anymore. Nowadays, anyone can have one and there are even people whose job is to design, build and sell them, by order. Pete Nelson is not only one of these people, he is a specialist on the subject and founder of Treehouse Workshop, Inc., in Seattle, USA....
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  benjamin júnior

  Model of Shanghai

  Shanghai is one of the most densely populated metropolises in China and, indeed, the world, with an urban area of over 5000 km² and over 20 million people. The city is in great growth and urban planners have already drawn the lines that will guide the future look of the city. This foresight can be seen at the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, where a huge model of the city...
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  benjamin júnior

  Spaceport America

  A new space era is dawning in the middle of the New Mexico (USA) desert, with the construction of the first private space port. And the Spaceport America could be just the first in a series of other similar infra-structures, should the investment in the space industry prove to be right. Behind this initiative is Virgin Galactic, belonging to multimillionaire Richard Branson, who invested 300 million dollars in the...
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  benjamin júnior

  Project for the new Hong Kong

  Hong-Kong is probably the most overpopulated city in the world, with a population density of 30 000 inhabitants/Km2, a staggering number! Living conditions are hard in this concrete, steel and glass urban jungle, that has been cut away from nature a long time ago, with pollution reaching truly alarming levels. Its Municipal Administration is bent on turning this situation around, and, as such, it has ordered an urban intervention...
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  seven

  Khaju bridge

  Located in the Isfahan province, in Iran, the Khaju bridges performs many functions. The first, most common one, is connecting the two banks of the Zayandeh river; at the same time, it works as a dam that separates two portions of the river with different water levels; finally, it is an excellent place for leisure, with its pavilions and steps over the water, in a region where the heat...
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  benjamin júnior

  Retro futuristic pictures

  Several people, throughout history have tried to predict what life would be like in a society in the future. From massive infrastructures, buildings, roads, vehicles to spaceships and outer space habitats....
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  benjamin júnior

  Ryugyong Hotel - the world´s biggest ruin

  In North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, is located one of the most grotesque buildings in the world, the Ryugyong Hotel. Its pyramidal shape (in itself quite vulgar), along with its huge dimension (105 storeys and 330 meters high), makes it worthy of any retro-futuristic mega-metropolis. But its most bizarre aspect is the fact that it is a colossal ruin, since 1992, when its construction stopped. Since then, in the middle...
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  benjamin júnior

  Modern architecture in service stations

  Repsol service station - Norman Foster Modern architecture is everywhere in our cities and landscapes, from simple houses to huge blocks of apartments, from public to commercial buildings. But, perhaps, one of the reasons why modern lines and concepts are so widespread and rooted in our minds is because they are present in even the most ordinary object. Even the great masters of modern architecture, such as Frank Lloyd...
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  seven

  Sustainable architecture in Malaysia

  Since the construction of the Petronas Twin Towers, Malaysia, and its capital Kuala Lumpur in particular, has become a reference in architecture worldwide. Thus, it is not surprising to see it produce other noteworthy buildings. Only this time, the main focus is not height, but, on the contrary, that they are good examples of bioclimatic and sustainable architecture. Eight unusual buildings will lengthen the urban front of Putrajaya, located...
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  seven

  A rotating city in Dubai

  The concept of "garden city" is fairly old, although it was never completely materialized. Utopic proposals and sporadic experiments have been made throughout the History of Architecture in an inconsistent way. However, the idea never died: bringing together the best of both worlds, an urban life in a natural environment still fascinates architects and people in general. Dubai isn't exactly within everyone's reach, but it seems pretty close to...
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  seven

  The royal stables of Hampi

  Hampi is a village in the south of India, located within the ruins of the ancient Vijayanagara, the proud capital of the empire of the same name. From the holy city a remarkable group of buildings managed to survive and are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Among temples, palaces, a baoli and other monuments, there is a unique set of buildings, that, perhaps, best portrays the splendor of Vijayanagara:...
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  seven

  Wave tower - Dubai

  Who better than an architect called Joaquín Torres (which in English means towers) to create the project for a sky-scraper? The Spanish architect seems deserving of his name by designing a sky-scraper for Dubai that is stunning for, among other things, the elegance of its lines. Built on the coastal line, with its base located underwater, it is connected to land through a slightly twisted arch, reminiscent of a...
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  seven

  Baoli, India`s stepwells

  India's stepwells - baoli, baori, baudi, bavari or vav, the names vary from one place to another - are huge water reservoirs, dug into the ground in ledges. They have a series of steps in one or more of its walls, that access the stored water. Some even have a ramp for cattle. This brilliant concept, born out of exclusively practical reasons, allows, not only a more efficiant use...
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  seven

  Modern architecture for elephants

  One of the responsabilities of an architect is to guarantee that the buildings they design are perfectly adequate to their users. If this task is sometimes difficult, due to the particular taste of some people, picture a situation in which the users, aside from not being human, are enormous. That's what happened with the elephant's pavilion at the Copenhagen Zoo, in Denmark, designed by architect Norman Foster....
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  seven

  Tropical Islands: reutilized old airship hangar

  The amazing airship hangars never cease to amaze and fascinate us. Although their creation has a very specific function in mind, its use does not necessarily need to be restricted to a single use. As such, the challenge of recovering and finding new uses for out-of-use hangars is as alluring as the contrast it can result in. That's what happened in the hold hangar in Berlin, from where some...