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.

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 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

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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

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

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2. bodegas ysios, rioja, spain :: website

architect - santiago calatrava valls

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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

photo source

photos’ source

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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?

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

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

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’.