i’m starting to think that anything can look interesting provided you get the right angle.

center pivot irrigation is basically a method of agricultural irrigation which results in a circular field of crops. a huge column of sprinklers, fixed to the ground at one end, slowly travels around in a circle whilst spraying the crops below. you can see the sprinkler arms, some of which can reach a kilometre in length, in the photo below.

idaho, united states :: picture from wikipedia :: area on google maps

it’s a fairly unremarkable sight, as you can see. however, as you gain some altitude these circular fields start to look more and more surreal and just unbelievably brilliant, especially in areas where these systems are commonplace and visible en masse from the sky. check these pictures out and make sure you follow the google maps links as some of these photos don’t do the areas justice. also, zoom in when looking at the libyan example - it’s part of the ‘great manmade river‘ project - and tell me what those hexagonal features are to the left of the crops…

wadi rum, jordan :: picture from astrosurf :: area on google maps

nevada, united states :: picture from flickr :: area on google maps

sahara desert, libya :: picture from flickr :: area on google maps

al kuhayfiyah, saudi arabia :: picture from google maps

kansas, united states :: picture from wikipedia :: area on google maps

one rincon hill’s south tower :: photo source

you’re looking at the top of the south tower of one rincon hill in san fransisco, a building that boasts 60 floors, a total height of 641ft and a spot at the top of a hill in one of the windiest and most earthquake prone parts of north america. bearing in mind the skyscraper sits alone on the hill, without any surrounding protection from other high-rises, it’s therefore surprising to discover that one face of the building is curved, top to bottom, and as a result “like the wing of an airplane, it has lift”.

obviously there’s a solution to what could have been a problem.

see the rounded section that sits on the building? it isn’t full of apartments. it’s an enormous storage tank that houses a tuned liquid mass damper, and it’s full of water - at maximum capacity, approximately 100′000 gallons of the stuff.

the tuned liquid mass damper :: photos’ source

you may remember taipei 101’s (less damp) mass damper from a few weeks back, an enormous steel ball that swings like a pendulum to counteract the building’s sway. well, one rincon hill’s water tank is a different technology designed to battle a similar problem. as the tower sways one way, the water in the tank naturally moves in the opposite direction, the force helping to dampen the building’s movement. hence the name.
incredible engineering aside, if i owned that building i’d be in that tank most evenings, polystyrene bodyboard in hand, armbands fully inflated, praying for high winds.

below is a news report about the building’s mass damper (plus another neat and groundbreaking feature), explained by the tower’s architect. i’ve awarded the guy extra ‘brilliant points’ as his little talk resulted in my brain picturing a skyscraper skiing down a mountain, a scenario i’ve never imagined before but will definitely imagine again.

kanonia square, old town, warsaw :: photo source

back in the 17th/18th centuries the people of poland were subject to a property tax which varied according to 2 things: the width of their property’s street-facing wall and the number of windows within that same wall. so, owners of houses with wide, window-peppered front-ends were victim to a higher rate of property tax than those who owned slim-faced houses without street-side windows.

it seems that some people took this to the extreme in an effort to save zloty, none more so than the owner of the incredible house above (if you’ve not spotted it yet, it’s the pale yellow sliver of building in the corner of the square). i’ve seen narrow houses before but none as crammed as this. i’ve also heard some intertubes-based claims that this is actually the narrowest house in europe. however, as with most intertubes-based claims, it’s hard to verify that. plus i simply can’t believe that the entire house maintains that maximum width the whole way through.


photo source

if anyone knows any more about the house it’d be great to hear from you - i’d also love to see some photos of the house’s back-end and interior. is the whole house actually this width? i really hope so.

[update]
thanks to the many people who left comments and emailed me about this slender property. as mentioned in the comments, the square can be found on google maps here. below is the view you’ll find. it doesn’t help an awful lot but there’s definitely a building behind that corner - whether it belongs to the narrow front-end, i’m not sure.



i also received the following photo from david which is a section of a photo seen here. still not conclusive.

these days it’s not often you’re treated to stained glass artwork that hasn’t been used to illustrate passages from the fact-filled bible, so when i came across the stained glass version of mega man last week i quickly decided to find out whether any other geeky stained glass windows exist. sure enough, after a frustrating search, i found the ones you see below. they’re all brilliant in their own right and none are photoshopped (if you fancy looking at some ’shopped versions, head over to worth1000 and search for ’stained glass’, there are plenty to choose from) which makes these efforts all the more impressive.

so anyway, in no particular order, here are 9 of the best.

1. link / zelda




found on flickr, this incredible stained glass depiction of link from legend of zelda was created by lynda macrae of the glass house in ontario. the colours especially are stunning. see the original (and larger version) on flickr here.

2. einstein



this 60ft high tribute to einstein can be found at grace cathedral in san fransisco and was installed in 1964. according to the cathedral’s website, ‘einstein was chosen to represent natural science in a twelve-window nave clerestory series called human endeavor’. read more about the window here.

3. pyramid head / silent hill




pyramid head is a character from the silent hill video games and featured briefly in the apparently shite silent hill movie. this stained glass version of the pointer-headed cretin is actually pretty good though and was made by deviant art user laernath. for a larger version click here.

4. mega man



there doesn’t seem to be much written info relating to this mega man stained glass window but that doesn’t matter. it’s brilliant on its own. it was created by flickr user ‘gary in cleveland’ and some photos of the piece’s creation can be seen here. spotted at neatorama.

5. pixels



situated in cologne cathedral is this enormous pixellated window design, designed by gerhard richter and based on his painting entitled 4096 colors. according to wired, ‘richter devised a mathematical formula to systematically mix permutations of the three primary colors and gray’. impressive. photos from here and here.

6. electromagnetic spectrum



this huge piece is called ‘the electromagnetic spectrum in stained glass’ and can be found at the national air and space museum. according to the museum’s website it’s ‘a large stained-glass work showing the range of light that shines on Earth and how deeply it penetrates the atmosphere’. pretty geeky.

7. darth vader / star wars



i think this is my favourite of the bunch. found on flickr, this hyperrealistic verson of darth vader was created for flickr user axoplasm by a friend, based on an old christmas card. it’s extremely charming and would be extremely welcome in my flat. see the original on flickr here.

8. spiderman



artist chris roth made this beauty, entitled ‘introducing spiderman’, as part of a show in 2007 called ‘100 artists: a tribute to stan lee’. remarkably this was his first ever stained glass piece. read an interview with chris here and visit the artist’s website here for many more photos and info.

9. master chief / halo



a couple of years ago, jacob’s stained glass in buffalo, new york, created this stained glass window dominated by halo’s master chief. at first glance i actually thought it was a ninja turtle. then i realised he was holding guns. and he wasn’t wearing a shell. originally spotted at kotaku.

so there we have it. 9 great geeky pieces of stained glass and not one picture of jesus.

know of any more?

i’ve spent the past couple of days attempting to read farsi and to be honest, i’m at a loss. the need to read a persian language stemmed from a photo i found of an incredible wooden mosque that turned out to reside in iran itself. through the power of google i’ve managed to work out that the mosque is actually part of the ‘wooden village’, an area of neyshabur city that, unsurprisingly, consists of purely wooden buildings - houses, shops, library, mosque and so on. that in itself isn’t exactly amazing - there are many communities whose architecture is wood-based - but the attention to detail and beauty of this village definitely is. it’s also nice to be able to look at something related to iran without bush-tinted glasses.


if you know anything about the wooden village, let me know as the majority of info available on the intertubes is, as i mentioned, written in farsi. there’s an iranian website dedicated to the village here but it seems to have been left for dead here (thanks rick). if you fancy looking for any info about the village yourself, here’s a hint - neyshabur (the city in which the woden village can be found) also seems to be known by the following names: neyshaboor, neyshabour, nishapur and, in persian, نیشابور.

anyway, have a look at these and tell me you’re not impressed…

the wooden mosque



sources, clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

the wooden library



sources: top / bottom

the wooden houses



sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3, 4

miscellaneous (all photos from here)







also, check out the photos’ source links for a limited amount of extra info.

…you’re sure for a big surprise…

stavanger, norway, 1998


sources: top / bottom

liverpool, england, 2005


sources: top / bottom 2

cuxhaven, germany, 1997

source

well, that’s if your local beach happens to be crosby beach in liverpool, a place which is now home to 100 of these 6ft+ iron men, scattered over a 2 mile stretch of sand and reaching out nearly a mile from the shore. this spooky crowd, previously installed on other beaches around europe but on a temporary basis, is called ‘another place’ and was created by antony gormley, the english sculptor also responsible for the angel of the north. following some controversy a couple of years ago the iron men are now set to stay on crosby beach for good, continuing to make nearby sunbathers feel uneasy.

while not as immediately frightening as the baby tower, there’s something brilliantly creepy about ‘another place’, a piece of art whose existence on crosby beach goes to prove there are some decision-makers who actually possess some taste.

check out the sculptor’s website for more similar work.

source

the plane in the picture above, seen here at nasa’s dryden flight research centre in california, is called the shuttle carrier aircraft and as you may have guessed is used to carry space shuttles (piggy-back style) should they land at this base. i mention this purely to give some sense of scale as the number 270 next to it is part of the largest compass rose on earth.

this one…




the compass has been painted on the bed of an enormous dry lake next to the research centre and measures a whopping 1.21km in diameter. according to wikipedia, ‘it is inclined to magnetic north (around 13 degrees east of true north) and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators’. next to the compass, also painted on the bed of the lake, are some of the longest runways on earth. you can see a couple of them in the next photo.



the size of this thing is amazing. check it out on google maps here - you can still make out the compass rose from quite a distance. also check out this page on flickr. a guy who works at the base has added some interesting notes to an aerial shot of the area.

i can’t actually believe i’ve not written about this tower before today.

i saw it for the first time a few years back and still remember how initially confused i was. maybe i blocked it from my mind to prevent nightmares. then this morning i, for some reason, had a flashback to that very day of discovery and actually got annoyed with myself for not writing about it sooner. anyway, better late than never. we’ll start the photos from afar and then get closer with each picture as i want to make the experience as creepy as possible for you.

žižkov television tower, žižkov, prague

source

source

source

source

source

source

that last photo’s the clincher for me - creepy as hell - and the fact that there are 10 of these huge crawling babies permanently attached to a television tower in the czech republic really does make me happy. not since watching the tripods as a kid have i been so affected by a 3-legged structure.

on to the facts.

the tower itself, sans faceless toddlers, was built in the mid-late 80s and stands 216 metres tall. even without the babies it’d be a strange looking beast, but that didn’t deter the geniuses in charge of the tower from permanently attaching david cerny’s sculptures to its legs - in 2000 they were added as a temporary installation but the public loved them so much that they were kept for good.

on that note, i’d like to personally thank the people of prague for having incredible taste. this tower is a work of art.

i remember the first time i walked into times square during the evening, blankets of flashing bulbs and electronic billboards burning brands into my retinas, finding myself literally having to look up at the skyscrapers to rest my screaming eyeballs after the onslaught. it’s an incredible experience. for a while.
if all the square’s skyscrapers had been anything like the examples below that skyward respite would’ve been absent. no doubt in a decade that will have changed as property owners latch on to the idea of media facades and join the race to wrap the largest number of LEDs around a building as possible.

in the meantime, here are 6 of the most illuminated buildings on earth.

1. national library of belarus

photo sources: left / right

the new national library of belarus was built in 2006 in minsk and revealed itself to be housed in a 23-storey diamond shaped building, each of the 24 panels covered in glass. during the day the surrounding light causes the building to ’sparkle’, at night the library turns into an enormous video screen due to 4646 colour-changing LEDs planted behind the glass. for more technical info go here and watch the clip below for a sample of the night’s lightshow.



2. electrabel power station

photos’ source

note: i realise it’s not a building as such but it just had to be included.

in december 2005 the electrabel power station in drogenbos, belgium was given an exterior makeover by magic monkey. 8,032 individually controllable rgb LED pixels’ were added to the cooling tower, each with the ability to change colour up to 30 times per second. the effect is incredible and surely a first on such a structure. if i had to live next to a horrible, belching cooling tower it’d be this one. for more photos and some video of the tower in action, go here.

3. aurillac multi-purpose hall

photos’ source

this stunning multi-purpose hall was designed by brisac gonzalez architects and built in 2004 2007 in aurillac, france. throughout the night the upper portion of the building, clad with glass bricks containing fluorescent lights, slowly changes colour. it’s nice to see illumination of this scale done tastefully, although i’m yet to see any video of the lights in action. i could be horribly wrong. more info here.

4. agbar tower

photo source

the agbar tower in barcelona, a.k.a. “el supositori” (the suppository), is a phenomenal skyscraper in barcelona that looks like something that’s either just landed or is about to leave. the building’s 4500 LED lights cover the building and each night the lightshow takes place. its architect jean nouvel said of the building, “this is not a tower, a skyscraper, in the american sense. It is a more an emergence, rising singularly in the center of a generally calm city. unlike slender spires and bell towers that typically pierce the horizons of horizontal cities, this tower is a fluid mass that bursts through the ground like a geyser under permanent, calculated pressure”. for technical info, go here.



5. uniqa tower

photos’ source

in 2006, vienna’s uniqa tower was transformed. over a period of 5 weeks a whopping 180′000 LEDs were fitted to the building’s exterior by LED specialists barco, the company also responsible for comcast’s ridiculously expensive video wall earlier this year. for a taste of the animations the building has to offer, watch the clip below. for more technical info, go here.

 

6. dexia tower

photo sources: top / bottom

dexia tower in brussels boasts 150′000 LEDs on its exterior and that in itself is impressive, however it’s the building’s annual light-related events that really wow the crowds. late december 2006 the facade transformed into an interactive display, allowing th public to control the animated lighting via a touchscreen opposite the skyscraper (see video below). earlier this year the building changed colour every evening depnding on the weather forecast for the following day. for more info go here.



this is just a small selection of such buildings. if you’re looking for more, follow these links…

nait5
interactive architecure
LEDs magazine

photo sources: left, right

just came across the left-hand photo on flickr by chance and was immediately confused and intrigued.
to be found in berlin, it’s actually a faithful recreation of one corner of karl schinkel’s bauakademie (building academy), the building which used to stand in the same spot before being damaged during the war and subsequently demolished in 1962 to make way for the ministry of foreign affairs. needless to say, that building has also since been demolished.

due to the importance of the original bauakademie (both culturally and architecturally) there are now, apparently, plans underway to rebuild the entire structure as close to the original as possible. what i’m not sure of is why the single corner that was built (before being surrounded by the shell covered scaffolding you see below) a few years back. according to some dodgy translations via google i get the impression that it was built as a restoration exercise, both to teach students about restoration itself and to show the public how faithful the rebuild could be.

either way, it’s a great monument that makes for a strange photo.


photo source

:: bauakademie on wikipedia
:: association for the promotion of karl friedrich schinkel’s academy of architecture

a couple of months back a group of us ended up at a mate’s flat in order to continue drinking after a night out and at some point, before the sun told us to go to bed, i was shown an incredible book featuring the best of modern winery architecture. i remember being astounded at the time, completely in awe of buildings i’d never even considered as interesting before, but when the memory surfaced a few days later i assumed that night’s fascination to be a result of drink itself.

needless to say, i started looking into it, and the fascination was warranted. from the looks of it there’s some kind of race on between wineries across the globe to seek out super-architects willing to design their ultra-funky wine production facility. here are some of the best i’ve come across
.
note: just for the record, i am completely uneducated when it comes to wine itself. to prove it, i like my white wine medium-sweet and my red wine topped up with coke and ice (i believe it’s called a calimocho). i can think of no reasonable defence. 

1. dominus winery, napa valley, u.s.a. :: website

architect - herzog & de meuron



photo source



photo source left, photo source right 



photo source

2. bodegas ysios, rioja, spain :: website

architect - santiago calatrava valls



photo source top, photo source bottom



photo source left, photo source right

3. peregrine winery, queenstown, new zealand :: website

architect - chris kelly



photo source



photo source left, photo source right

4. cantina petra, suvereto, italy :: website

architect - mario botta



photo source



photo source top, photo source bottom

5. bodegas lópez de heredia viña todonia, rioja, spain :: website

pavillion architect - zaha hadid



photo source



photo source left, photo source right

6. weingut leo hillinger, jois, austria :: website

architect - gerner°gerner plus






all photos’ source

7. mission hill family estate, westbank, british columbia :: website

architect - olson sundberg kundig allen



photo source



photos’ source



photo source


so that’s just 8 of the many superbly designed wineries on earth. special mention must quickly go to frank gehry’s recent addition to the marques de riscal winery in spain. he was commissioned to design a hotel to compliment the winery, the extravagant results of which can be seen in the video below.



i’ve included a link below to the book on amazon in case you were curious. it’s fascinating.

wine by design: the space of wine (interior angles)

just in case the sky bridge wasn’t enough to make you shit your pants, i give you two three four communities where vertigo just isn’t an option.

(follow the photo source links for larger pictures)



photo sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3

[above] welcome to ronda (google maps here), a beautiful city in southern spain which is split in two by el tajo gorge. as a result, certain buildings have been perched on the edge of the gorge’s verticall walls, enormous cliffs bridged by the 200 year old peunte neuvo. now, although living on the edge of that gigantic 130m crack would give me the shakes, i’d much rather live there than bonifacio…


photo sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3

[above] this is bonifacio in corsica (google maps here). this fragile looking citadel sits precariously above limestone cliffs which over the years have been battered by the mediterranean sea, a process which is apparent by both the piles of eroded stone at the base and the overhang of the cliff walls. how long before the next building gets swallowed? no idea, but from the look of the first photo it can’t be long.

[update] 



photo sources from top: 1, 2

(cheers to qfwfq78) the photos above are of a tiny town by the name of castellfollit de la roca in spain, an incredible looking stretch of houses that all seem to be resting on a single ridge of rock. wow.

[update 2]


photo sources, left to right: 1, 2

[above] many people have suggested the hanging houses (casas colgadas) in cuenca, spain. apparently a large part of the town used to consist of these amazing houses, clinging onto rocks, unfortunately now only a few remain. for more photos just search for ‘casas colgadas’ on flickr or click here.
anyone know of any more frightening clifftop towns?