Olympic clouds

The transparent bubbles will soar over the main stadium of Olympic Games '12. This digital cloud will serve as a viewing platform, and also will be the stand for the huge plasma display.

Clouds over London

The Cloud — this enterprise advanced by the international command of architects, designers and the engineers, including one of known laboratories — MIT SENSEable City Lab. The project "The Cloud" is the applicant for the best ornament of the Olympic park proclaimed Boris Johnson (the mayor of London).

Olympic games is a fine occasion to introduce something not ordinary and innovative in shape of conservative London.

Clouds by Tomas Saraceno

Initiators "The Cloud" say, that the thought on a congestion of manned bubbles "has sprouted" from works of the German designer of the Argentina origin of Tomas Saraceno which built time and again inflatable sculptures and installations of a thin transparent film.

In all cases the plan provided interaction of object and spectators who were offered to plunge into a construction, and even to "do some flying" in clouds.

Mobile Interior by Creneau International

BASE in Belgium

Belgian design bureau Creneau International has finished creation of an interior of the central shop of the largest supplier of mobile phones in Belgium, companies BASE.

The Mobile Installations

Designers have suggested to install unusual furniture and mobile show-windows in a shop interior.

Sedentary places are scattered on all interior in the form of huge letters from which the brand name gathers: BASE.

Lisbon harbour

The interesting detail noticed in this hotel (the project of Portuguese bureau Risco constructed along harbour Belem in Lisbon) are jalousie which close not only windows, but also deep balconies.

Altis Belém Hotel

The design of an interior is executed by studio FSSMGN

Top 5 Recovering Real Estate Markets in the U.S.

Every city throughout the United States has been impacted by the recent economic recession. The combined forces of the credit crisis and the foreclosure crisis led to plummeting home prices in every region of the country. The ripples were felt from San Francisco condos to Knoxville homes for sale. However, some metropolitan areas were able to avoid the worst of the turmoil and are now emerging from the mess faster than the rest of the country.

The recovery is swiftest in those areas that didn’t have as much of a housing price run up to begin with, either because the economy in those areas has stayed healthy or the economy has been limited for decades and residents have adapted or left. The top recovering areas also had lower rates of sub-prime and negative amortization loans financed in the years leading up to and during the crash.

In December of 2009, Forbes Magazine released a list of the number of loans that were foreclosed upon in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Forbes then calculated the percentage of loans that were descending into further delinquency versus those that were improving.

For example, the number of foreclosed homes in Knoxville was examined to see which loans continued towards the path of complete default versus those which inched their way back towards normalcy. The lower the rate of deterioration was for a given area, the higher their corresponding ranking with regard to recovery.

Here are the cities that fared best by that measurement and are recovering the most quickly:

1. Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pa.
2. Austin-Round Rock, Texas
3. Ogden-Clearfield, Utah
4. Buffalo, N.Y.
5. Knoxville, Tennessee

Source: Forbes, Francesca Levy (12/09/2009)

The Pennsylvania region of Harrisburg, and the Austin area of Texas were rated the best, followed by Ogden, Utah and Buffalo, NY. Knoxville homes seem to be recovering quite well as that region came in fifth in the study.

«Desert Flower» by Manfredi Nicoletti

In Astana (capital of Kazakhstan) building of the Central concert hall has come to the end. One of the greatest halls in the world is constructed by architect Manfredi Nicoletti.

Flower in desert

«The huge space and emptiness of district create sensation of immensity of territory. Flying by over droughty steppes of Kazakhstan, we have decided, that the district does not suffice flowers, therefore, our creation is a flower of desert» — the press-secretary of the architect has told.

Desert flower in Astana

Besides a concert hall on 3,500 places, in a building shops, terraces, restaurants, the showrooms, two cinemas have settled down. The special attention has been given working out of technologies which will help to protect a facade from a severe climate of local district: temperature drops (+/-40 C) degrees and salty winds.

On December, 15th, in honour of the 18 anniversary of independence of Kazakhstan, in a new premise the concert has taken place.

The centre for visitors on the bank of the mountain river

Architects from studio Standardarchitecture-Zhaoyang Studio, authors of this project in places of tourist pilgrimage in Tibet, at building used technologies traditional for given district: bright pigments of local minerals used for colouring of walls of an interior.

Niyang River Visitor Center

The centre is named by name of the rivers, Niyang River Visitor Center. Here there will be a ticket office, a room for disguise and a bathroom. The building is on a tourist route, on border of Tibet and the Chinese province Sichuan.

Visitor Center in Tibet

Public health services high technologies

Company RTKL — the international architectural company which is engaged in designing of buildings and constructions — in the end of this year begins erection of an innovative hospital complex by the area of 361,000 m. The complex will serve simultaneously more than 2200 patients. Project cost: 2,82 billion yuans (or 304 million euro). The control and management of building will be carried out by the best experts RTKL from office in Los Angeles.

Innovative embodiment

Company RTKL has been chosen as the contractor of the project as a result of competition in which 30 architectural firms participated. Desire of the customer — create a building which embodies: the innovative, progressive and ecological concept of the health centre.

The Western technologies and East culture

In a hospital complex, besides chambers with hospital cots, will take places: hospitals, the centre of the emergency help, infectious branch, audiences and lecture halls for experts and students of medical HIGH SCHOOLS, a hostel for pupils, an office building, a conference — a hall and a reception.

Marriott Marco Island Hotel by RTKL

Google Books will scan the Italian libraries

Google Inc. and the ministry of culture of Italy have agreed about scanning of ancient books of national library of the country, informs The Wall Street Journal.

The Italian agreement

The corporation will be engaged in scanning of books in library of Rome and Florence. The agreement between the international corporation and the European country — the 1st for Italy. Google has similar agreements are available with the several large educational centres, for example: Oxford University, the Bavarian state museum and Madrid's Complutense University. All scanned materials will take places on web hosting by Google.

According to the representative of the ministry of culture of Italy Mario Resca, thanks to scanning of old books, access to knowledge which contain in these books, will become simpler for many people.

There is also one more benefit for Italy: the corporation has promised to incur all expenses on scanning of books and to construct in the country the special centre. It means, that the project will give hundreds workplaces. Besides it, corporation Google intends to invest in building of a new webhosting in suburb of Rome.

Google's Book Project

The house of the Italian photographer

The big window in this house is simultaneously both a wall, and the screen for a projector. All it was required to photographer Cellina von Mannstein, to the customer of a building.

The architect of project Peter Pichler

Unusual Italian Interior

In the house there will be a studio of the photographer and premises. To create on the ground floor a terrace, the two-storeyed inhabited block has been shifted.

The Architecture of the National Traditions

New Fine Arts Center

New Fine Arts Center becomes the first public building constructed in a small Texas city for last thirty years. Local artists and active workers, parents and teachers, historians and collectors of national creativity participated in center building. All of them thought over what should be their place for public meetings

Hi-tech Audience

Project by Kell Muñoz Architects is almost 2000 sq.m., a hall 975 places and an audience completed with the hi-tech audio-visual equipment.
The project budget has been limited enough, $5.7 million dollars. This building of time declaring a multicultural modernism, traditional for district (Rio Grande Valley), mixed with the international modernism associating with Mexico.

Art Center in Texas

To allocate a new public place, the construction facade has been raised. The front composition from the bright vertical strips organized according to a color spectrum, very brightly allocates a building in a silent and harmonious landscape.