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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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

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4. cantina petra, suvereto, italy :: website

architect - mario botta

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

pavillion architect - zaha hadid

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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

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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)

(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?

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

now for some clips…

here’s another video. skip to about 1:30 for some dancing action.

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

so, with depression now approaching, it seems like the perfect opportunity to point out some workplaces where a lucky few experience an emotion other than dread as they walk past reception every morning, to be greeted with an office interior which has actually been designed by someone possessing more creativity than a gnat.

1. pixar - designed by bohlin cywinski jackson

for the pixar staff to work in a space anything other than brilliant would’ve been an immense shock. i can’t imagine the team churning out films like the incredibles whilst sitting on a collapsable plastic chair, colleagues fighting over the only pritt-stick in the room. the staff don’t have normal cubicles to work in, rather wooden cabins full of comfortable furniture and gentle lighting. the whole place looks extremely comfortable and, more importantly, productive.

2. red bull - designed by jump studios

ironically, the red bull headquarters’ offices resemble a workspace designed by a human recently injected in the spine with the energy drink. everything about this place is shiny, smooth, angular and slightly manic and there’s even an effort-negating slide connecting floors for the lazy bastards who forgot to drink their regulation can of the good stuff in the morning.

3. google zurich

anyone who’s been plugged into the intertubes in the past few years will probably have seen the google offices already. the photos above are of the zurich office, surely the most non-productive workplace on earth. they’ve got slides, ballpools, countless pool tables, relaxation pods, a fireman’s pole… all to please people who are already getting paid an obscene amount of money just to turn up and work for one the most powerful companies on earth.

4. tbwa - designed by klein dytham

at first glance the tbw office in downtown tokyo looks more like a recreational park with a roof. look a little harder though and beyond the grass and beautiful wooden seating areas are staff, apparently hard at work. unless your colleagues were a complete pain in the arse it would be difficult not to at least slightly enjoy your time here and it’s a credit to the design firm, klein dytham.

5. pallotta teamworks - designed by clive wilkinson architects

pallotta teamworks’ headquarters can be found in los angeles inside what must be the world’s most homely warehouse. due to budget constraints all the offices and workhouses have been constructed using recycled materials, the majority of the staff’s offices housed inside old shipping containers. it could’ve looked awful but an intelligent colour scheme and a lot of imagination have made this easily one of the world’s most intriguing offices.

6. threadless

i’m not sure who was responsible for the design of the threadless office but, judging by the brilliance of the product they sell, i wouldn’t be surprised if the staff themselves did. the place looks like it’s been this office for decades: worn in but incredibly ‘hip’. walls and furniture are covered in graffiti, high ceilings somehow result in a cosier environment and no staff member can be seen to possess less than 2 widescreen monitors at their desk.

7. ilse media - designed by wat design

the staff at ilse media like pixels. massive pixels. the interior of their office is covered in huge pixelated pictures - an ice-cream truck in the cafe, a mail-van by the toilets and telephone booths in the main office - to the point where the table cloth is home to pixelated dinner plates holding pixelated food. the icing on the blocky cake would surely be a zx spectrum at every worker’s desk.

8. danone waters - designed by klein dytham

the last thing you want to be surrounded by while you’re at the office is thousands of the products you’ve been paid to create / sell and subsequently have nightmares about. however, the klein dytham designed danone waters office in tokyo is excused due to the fact that the use of the product actually serves a purpose: to divide the rooms into workspaces. thousands of empty plastic bottles have been arranged into dividing walls and it looks pretty good, if not slightly fragile.

9. three rings - designed by because we can

according to their website, three rings are responsible for developing ‘persistent world online games’. more importantly, their staff work in what i believe to be both the coolest office on earth and one of the very few steam-punk workplaces in existence. there’s too much to mention for a man as lazy as myself so go to the designers’ website here to read more info and stare at more photos, including one of a (not very) secret door which leads to an equally secret lounge.

10. mother, london - designed by clive wilkinson architects

advertising agency mother enlisted clive wilkinson architects to design their cubicle-less shoreditch offices and the result is incredible. one continuous 240ft long concrete table, which the designers claim is ‘probably the largest table in the world’, sweeps through the building and can seat up to 200 staff, all of whom are encouraged to sit at different locations every 4 weeks to shake things up a bit.

sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

photo source: ian iong

approximately 3′000 years ago the people of cordillera took on one of mankind’s most impressive landscape modification projects in order to farm effectively on the surrounding mountainsides and slowly transform the region into what some now call the eighth wonder of the world. due to the sheer scale of this farming system it’s hard to disagree: the rice terraces of the philippine cordilleras, if laid out end to end, would stretch halfway round the globe. if this ingenious feat had been accomplished in recent times the clearly enormous task would have seemed more than impressive, however the fact that it was completed thousands of years ago without the use of modern apparatus and machinery takes the terraces and integrated irrigation systems to a whole new level.

photo source: dudz torres

the idea behind field terracing is simple and something not unique to the philippines: carve horizontal ledges into hills, essentially creating thousands of small walled fields from base to peak in which to grow crops and retain much needed water. however, in the cordilleras region this has been applied to an area on an elsewhere unseen scale: approximately 10′360 square kilometres. entire mountains, sometimes thousands of feet high, sculpted like blocks of wood. that itself is incredible. then you have the irrigation system: the natural streams and rivers of each terraced mountain and its forests have been diverted using a huge and complex arrangement of canals, sluices and taps, the same water is then pushed to the highest terraces using miles of wooden piping. when the terraces fill up they overflow and start to fill the terraced field below, and the cycle continues until the entire mini-waterfall covered mountain is carrying an immense weight of water.

photo source: ian iong

the rice terraces are, understandably, a huge tourist attraction and have attracted attention and money from across the world. however the tourism is also thought to be responsible for the start of what could be a slow death of the terraces for a couple of reasons. firstly, the new generation of locals see the hospitality industry created by the terraces as a far more appealing line of work than the constant farming and attention needed to sustain the terraces themselves. secondly, water isn’t as readily available as in the past due to the effects of an earthquake in 1990 and the new demand for water itself from the tourist industry.

for that reason unesco has placed the terraces on a list of world heritage sites it believes to be ‘in danger’ in hope of starting a successful rehabilitation of the world’s most incredible agricultural engineering system.

sources: 1, 2, 3