before…



after…



the chimney stacks of this heating plant in bagnolet, paris, were transformed over a period of 2 months in 2007 by trompe l’oeil specialist frederic garcia. the largest of the water drops are 1.1m in diameter and to ensure the accuracy required he was guided by an assistant at ground level using a walkie talkie.
the skill and patience needed to do something of this scale, successfully, is incredible. but then when you spend your life doing just that i suppose the practice goes some way towards easing the pressure. when i saw this photo a couple of weeks ago it instantly brought jean marie pierret to mind, a guy i could’ve sworn i wrote a post about last year (a post which seems to have slipped from this site entirely. if you can find it i’ll be impressed), and a guy who, along with the help of 8 mountain climbers, was responsible for decorating the enormous tignes dam in france with a gigantic and awesome picture of hercules…



if the sight of that painting doesn’t impress you, bear in mind that the dam’s wall measures 181m in height, that’s taller than the blackpool tower (never thought i’d use that structure as a comparison).
pierret was also responsible for painting one of the cooling towers at cruas power station, france in 1991.



pierret was helped by 9 people (one of whom i think was frederic gracia) to paint ‘aquarius’ on the tower, a feat which required 4′000 litres of acrylic paint.

oh, just out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the following advert was actually painted onto the hoover dam? i suspect not but there’s an outside chance.



sources: 1, 2

running, driving, walking, dancing…

the majority of people on earth take part in one of these activities on a daily basis so imagine the potential when you think that all of these actions produce energy which, in conjunction with technology already available, can be harnessed and used as a source with which to power the tv at your gym, power the streetlights as you drive, power subway ticket machines as you walk towards them or power a nightclub’s sound system as you dance. all of these examples have been realised to date, successfully.

admittedly it’s early days and to implement these technologies on a wide scale would take years but it’s an ingenious concept and one which would guarantee sustainable sources of energy for as long as we keep on moving.

1. the bridge



this is the sakura bridge in tokyo, one of many bridges on the area’s shuto expressway. what makes the bridge unique however is the fact that the vibrations caused by vehicles crossing the structure are converted by way of the piezo effect (the ability for some materials, more often than not crystals, to produce electricity as a result of mechanical pressure) and subsequently used to generate the electricity needed to illuminate the bridge. the metropolitan expressway company aim to utilise this technology across the entire network of roads, eventually negating the need for any other kind of external power source when lighting the roads.

2. the nightclub

the sustainable dance club premiered its electricity generating dancefloor in rotterdam, october 2006 and instantly recieved worldwide praise. using a dance floor embedded with piezoelectric elements enabled the organisers to harness the collective energy of everyone who stepped foot on it and divert the converted electricity to the club’s sound and lighting systems. understandably, initial results weren’t mind-blowing but as the technology develops so will the electrical output. the long-term plan is to install these floors in clubs worldwide.

3. the train station


earlier this year at tokyo station, a second experiment was carried out by east japan railway company in order to discover just how much electricity could be produced by the thousands of commuters passing through the building on a daily basis. from january through to march a power-generating floor, embedded with piezoelectric elements, was installed at the yaesu north exit’s ticket gates, concourse and stairs and the experiment was a success. the next aim is to install these floors ticket gates station-wide, the resultant electricity used to power all automatic ticket gates, ticket machines and electric displays.

4. the gym

and finally, the place we all love to avoid. last year a hong kong branch of california fitness called in inventor lucien gambarota to modify some of some of its cardio machines using the trusty old dynamo. these adapted machines were then hooked up to the gym’s lighting system, the result being a well-lit room as long as a serious amount of effort was made. following this trial, as you’ll hear on the video, plans are apparently afoot to introduce these modifications on a company-wide scale.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

image source: popular mechanics

the enormous steel ball you see in the photos (and the incredible video below) is the world’s largest ‘tuned mass damper’ and sits near the top of the world’s largest completed skyscraper on earth, taipei 101 in taiwan. the idea behind a tuned mass damper is quite simple: as a building sways (resulting from high winds, earthquakes etc), its tuned mass damper, essentially a finely tuned and ridiculously heavy pendulum, will move in opposition to the structure’s oscillations and minimise any movement. if that makes no sense, watch the crude gif below.



due to both the immense size of taipei 101 and the fact that it sits just over 600ft from a major fault line, engineers had no choice but to install one of this size at a cost of $4m. too heavy to be lifted by crane, the damper was assembled on site and hangs through 4 floors of the skyscraper. it can reduce the building’s movement by up to 40%.

image sources: 1, 2, 3


image source: wikipedia

now for an incredible video. on may 12th, as the horrendous earthquake occurred in china’s sichuan province, tremors were felt for miles, including in taipei 101. youtube user phuaalvin was in the building at the time and said that as the building started to shake, dozens of people ran to the damper to watch it in action. here’s the video he took…



sources: 1, 2

on june 8th the brand new comcast center opened in philadelphia and immediately became the tallest building in the city. now, whilst the building itself is a beauty, the thing that made me dribble slightly and the thing that no-one seems to have picked up on yet is the phenomenal video wall in the skyscraper’s lobby, built by barco. first of all take a look at the pictures, watch the videos, wipe your mouth and then prepare for some facts.








i’m told that to see it in action, in person, is breathtaking. i’m also told that the screen cost a whopping $22million to design, construct and install.

for that money, you get the following…
1. the largest four-millimeter LED screen in the world, measuring 83.3ft x 25.4ft
2. 10 million pixels mounted in a seamless flat array - that’s 5 times the resolution of high-definition tv
3. an automated control room, home to 27′000 gigabytes of information, six dx-700 led digitizers, seven encore video processors and three matrixpro routers

wow.

at least we now know where some of the bandwidth charges are gonna go.

sources: 1, 2

all other treehouses now pale into insignificance.

i received this picture from a reader a couple of weeks ago, along with the next 2, and couldn’t tear my eyes away for what seemed like hours.



after a quick bout of googling i discovered the origin of the larger photo: it was taken by darius kinsey, a guy i’d previously been unaware of, who was a ‘prolific photographer of logging activities in the pacific northwest’. this particular photograph shows a cedar stump house in edgecomb, washington, dates back to 1901 and has instantly become one of my favourites. the other 2 photos, i’m still not sure of - if anyone knows of a source to be credited, please let me know. i’m guessing the clearer photo is also by kinsey.

anyway, this got me wondering about other hollowed-tree residences and after much hopping i eventually came across tunneltree.com, a brilliant site rammed full of old photographs depicting exactly that and more. to cut a long and boring story short: the site’s now offline. hopefully it’s temporary. unfortunately i only saved a few of the pictures from the site and none of the info. i’m just gonna post the pictures below and hope the site comes back online, at which point i’ll update this post. in the meantime, if you happen to know anything relating to the pictures feel free to spout it in the comments section.
(below) as you may have guessed, the interior of the enormous tree on the left has been hollowed to hold a shop, as seen on the right, with a “ceiling 50′ high”.



(below) obviously not residences but a couple of incredible ‘drive-thru trees’.