Top Stories
Navy launches U.S.S. Independence, first of new class of weapons-bristling speedster trimarans
World’s tallest LEGO tower built in England
SHIFT: Image retention — plasma's dirty little secret
Sections
Archive
Buildings
I like devices where it's hard to figure out what they actually do, and the Octocube from French designer Vivien Muller is a fine example. Built entirely from 90 degree copper tubing elbows, the Octocube is actually a radiator...
POSTED Saturday, May 10, 2008
How brave are you? Because from the looks of it, the Sky Bridge in Langkawi, Malaysia will require some guts to gross. That's because this majestic cable-stayed bridge is supported by only one support column as it wraps its way...
POSTED Tuesday, May 6, 2008
The Brits are once more taking Singapore by storm, but this time with their snazzy, sustainable architecture. Firm Foster + Partners has plans for an over-1,600,000-square-foot (filling an entire city block), mixed-use structure that's completely decked out with green-friendly...
POSTED Monday, May 5, 2008
You're looking at the Greenpix Zero Energy Wall, a gigantic LED display that only uses as much energy as it gathers each day from the sun. It's been installed on the wall of the Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near...
POSTED Friday, May 2, 2008
We love environmentally-friendly housing, but there's no arguing that it can get very, very expensive. That's why we're so impressed by the new Dinkins Gardens building: it's Harlem's first "green" affordable housing. Named for the former New York City...
POSTED Thursday, May 1, 2008
It seems pretty bizarre that just as many Americans are losing their homes due to the sub prime mortgage crisis, others are building McMansions just for their dogs. Doggie Dream Homes look just like smaller versions of houses built...
POSTED Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Look, I'm all for sustainable housing and eco-building, but we've got to be sensible here. Spending $15 million on a house shaped like a bee hive because it's "eco friendly" is kind of insane. Sure, it's sitting on a beautiful...
POSTED Monday, April 28, 2008
Gigantic picture windows are awesome in that they give you a crystal clear view into whatever is outside your house, be it the majestic great outdoors or a view of the city skyline. The problem is that they're woefully inefficient,...
POSTED Wednesday, April 23, 2008
When asked to design a building for a vacant lot in downtown Manhattan, the designers at Work AC went hog wild. They're local foodies, you see, which means that they try to avoid buying produce that's traveled from far-flung...
POSTED Thursday, April 17, 2008
If young Nick Szalinski wasn't spotted amidst the spoonful of Cheerios in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, he'd have the same view awaiting visitors to the Corpus amusement park/museum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Part of a journey through...
POSTED Monday, April 14, 2008
The Guggenheim Museum has established a tradition of building structures to house and display art that are themselves works of art. Following the lead of the original Guggenheim in New York designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the stunning...
POSTED Friday, April 11, 2008
Soon, the small island nation of Bahrain may be known for more than having served as the temporary home of Michael Jackson. Its brand new World Trade Center twin towers are connected by three wind turbines that spun for...
POSTED Friday, April 11, 2008
The NE apartment building is a stylish approach to a motorcycle-centric living solution by Japanese architects Yuji Nakae, Akiyoshi Takagi and Hirofumi Ohno. It features eight apartments separated by seven concrete walls, all of which are accessed by adjacent...
POSTED Friday, April 4, 2008
No, this is not some new supersonic aircraft or UFO. It’s a house designed by Jérôme Olivet, who learned his stuff from the great Philippe Starck. Jet House is designed to look like it’s moving fast even though its...
POSTED Friday, April 4, 2008
How tall is too tall? I guess we'll know once one of these crazy building concepts ends up getting built — if it subsequently falls down, that is. The Ultima Tower is a conceptualization by designer Eugene Tsui and...
POSTED Thursday, April 3, 2008
Putting a twist on the conventional drawbridge, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge over the River Tyne in England tilts to let ships pass under it instead of parting at the middle. The bridge's crazy design is the result of a...
POSTED Thursday, April 3, 2008
NASA posted up some harrowing news to go along with their daily photo: In a surprising and potentially troubling request, the new space station robot known as Dextre demanded that astronauts refer to it in the future as "Dextre...
POSTED Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The Reactive Sparks art installation is a display by designer Markus Lerner that reacts to the volume of passing vehicles, turning those readings into wave-like visualizations that undulate across the face of the towers. It's positioned outside of light manufacturer...
POSTED Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Touch The Light is an interactive work of art in Osaka, Japan. At the top of the KEPCO building is a large circular lighting fixture. Stationed one kilometer away is a 1/100 scale model of the KEPCO lighting fixture....
POSTED Friday, March 28, 2008
Eco-friendly buildings are all the rage among high-profile architects these days. The latest example is the new Clean Technology Tower in Chicago, designed by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill architectural firm. What makes the Clean Technology Tower stand out is...
POSTED Thursday, March 27, 2008
The green building movement has come a long way in the last few years, with features such as solar panels, green roofs, and wind turbines being integrated into residential and commercial building designs. But Daekwon Park apparently thinks it's time...
POSTED Wednesday, March 26, 2008
We’re sold on cardboard. We’ve seen it used to build sturdy cribs, an iPod boombox amplifier, and someone even made cardboard blocks that look like building materials for a castle. We just never envisioned a future where we’d all...
POSTED Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Apparently, by 2015 London will need to provide housing for a million more people. That's no easy task, but as we told you a few weeks ago, the UK company of Popularchitecture is proposing a completely insane 5,000-foot-high tower that'll...
POSTED Tuesday, March 25, 2008
With the developers in Dubai constantly looking for new ways to spend their massive piles of petro dollars, it was only a matter of time before The Donald started poking his nose in. Looking like something from a 1950s...
POSTED Saturday, March 22, 2008
Built mostly from recycled materials, Studio RMA's EcoHouse uses SCIPs (structural concrete insulated panels), constructed from a concrete shell wrapped around a core of foam braced with steel mesh. Because of their exceptional strength to weight ratio, the house...
POSTED Saturday, March 22, 2008
These awesome stairs are literally hanging from the ceiling, floating free from any walls around them and defining the room their in rather than being tucked away and just serving their utilitarian purpose. They leave plenty of open space around...
POSTED Friday, March 21, 2008
When you think of a nice resort to run off to, it probably isn't the shape of a dome and surrounded by miles and miles of snow and ice. You may reconsider after checking out Hotel Kakslauttanen in Saariselkä, Finland....
POSTED Wednesday, March 19, 2008
What will San Francisco be like 100 years from now? The History Channel sponsored a City of the Future contest for architects to show us their vision of Utopian metropolises from 2108, and the winner for the San Francisco...
POSTED Friday, March 14, 2008
As global warming gets worse, the ice caps will melt. This will raise the levels of the world's oceans, flooding costal areas and cities. So long, NYC! It was nice knowing you, Tokyo! Boy, it sure will be interesting to...
POSTED Monday, March 10, 2008
Anyone remember the Simpson's episode where Bart and Lisa built a huge fort using shipping boxes? Well, perhaps if they had used Bloxes instead, the resulting structure would have lasted longer than one episode. Bloxes are cardboard panels that...
POSTED Sunday, March 9, 2008
Let’s get away to the lake house for the weekend. If you don’t mind a long plane flight, imagine taking off to your own 2153-square-foot villa at the Hingarae Residences and Resort on Lake Taupo in northern New Zealand,...
POSTED Friday, March 7, 2008
While most eco-friendly buildings try to cut down or supplement their power consumption, there have yet to be any buildings that go so far as to generate more power than they consume. Not so with the Masdar Headquarters in Abu...
POSTED Thursday, March 6, 2008
You've gotta love the cahones that some architects have. I mean, designing a crazy building for a place where crazy buildings are the norm, such as Dubai, I can understand. But to design a crazy building that's meant to go...
POSTED Thursday, March 6, 2008
If there's one thing the upcoming Olympics in China are doing, it's motivating China to build all sorts of crazy, sports-centric buildings for the events. Take the crazy Moebius strip soccer stadium currently going up in Shenyang. Even though it's...
POSTED Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Living in a big city is great for a number of reasons, but unless you're totally loaded, you generally need to make some sacrifices on living space. Especially in places like Manhattan, space is a premium. But what about that...
POSTED Monday, March 3, 2008
Popular Architecture designed this mile-high "eco-friendly" tower to be located in East London (not to be confused with this mile-high building designed for the Middle East). The London tower would stand 500 stories tall and house over 100,000 people,...
POSTED Monday, March 3, 2008
This new apartment building that's going up in Wuhan, China, has a pretty unique element to it: private hydroponic gardens for every apartment. Yes, every unit in the tower has a 100-square-foot trellised hydroponic garden that's designed to produce fresh...
POSTED Saturday, March 1, 2008
A British company known as Inflate sells easily-erecting structures akin to — get ready for it, this reference is embarrassingly dorky — the capsule home technology in Dragon Ball Z (you can kill me in the comments for that). Nick...
POSTED Thursday, February 28, 2008
A while back we showed you an old water tower converted into a living space. Well, the residents of Thorpeness in Suffolk, England enjoy their own five bedroom, three bathroom home resting 70 feet above the ground as well. Known...
POSTED Thursday, February 28, 2008
Screw aesthetics. Hyder Consulting is only concerned by how tall its building is, not how it looks. The group is planning to build an epic, mile-tall block somewhere in the Middle East, though whether or not it's painted red or...
POSTED Friday, February 22, 2008
Welcome to life on other planets, as designed by Romanian architects at A.A. Studio. This is how some lucky people live in Bucharest, in The Big White, a magnificent apartment that takes organic shapes and teams them up with...
POSTED Friday, February 22, 2008
After Arquitectura Organica's Javier Senosiain created his organically-inspired Nautilus House, he's done it again, this time with a wild design that looks like a serpent in repose. Quetzalcoatl Nest, named after the Aztec snake/bird god of learning and knowledge,...
POSTED Wednesday, February 20, 2008
We all saw the Katrina disaster as it played out on our TVs, along with the rather feeble Federal response both in the immediate aftermath and the months and years since. Even now, with the news off the front...
POSTED Sunday, February 17, 2008
Who cares what the neighbors think? Let's build a house that looks like a snail shell! That's just what a Mexico City couple did, with the help of the astonishing imagination of those wild and wooly architects at Senosiain...
POSTED Thursday, February 14, 2008
The future will soon arrive. The House of the Future is coming back to Disneyland, and this time around, Microsoft, HP and LifeWare will be paying the bills instead of Monsanto, which originally sponsored the first House of the...
POSTED Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Oh Dubai, you're such a crazy place. With more money than you know what to do with, you never stop trying to create the biggest and the craziest of every structure under the sun. The latest plan? To build the...
POSTED Monday, February 11, 2008
What if New York City were totally trashed in a disaster? That was the premise for a design competition that spawned this Cloud City idea by Studio Lindfors. It was one the Selected Entries in the "What if New...
POSTED Friday, February 8, 2008
Wouldn't it be a shame if climate change engulfed the Netherlands with rising sea levels? Where would we go to smoke legal dope? Fortunately the world's most humane nation is also one of the more ingenious ones. Architects there...
POSTED Friday, February 8, 2008
This might be the coolest building design I've ever seen, incorporating the surrounding landscape so well that it almost seems like part of it. It's a gigantic layered ski hotel set to be built on a Norwegian mountainside, with it...
POSTED Wednesday, February 6, 2008
In terms of building designs that are actually going to, you know, be built, I don't think they get much cooler than the new Hamburg Science Center and Aquarium. Yes, this thing is going to really become a reality. A...
POSTED Tuesday, January 29, 2008
We've seen shipping containers that have been converted into small living or business spaces before, but now architects are getting serious about this novel solution to the US container glut. The problem is that as a country we buy...
POSTED Monday, January 28, 2008
The city of Haifa, Israel is built largely on the slope of Mount Carmel, so its geography calls for an unconventional underground solution. And thus the Carmelit was born. The Carmelit is one of the smallest subways in the...
POSTED Friday, January 25, 2008
Plans are underway to build what is being called the "first sustainable city" in the United Arab Emirates. Masdar, which means "the source" in Arabic, will be nearly three square miles large, be walled in, house 50,000 residents and...
POSTED Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Ever wonder how they bore subway tunnels? It used to take a lot of explosives, but Germany is showing the world how to do it nice an easy: just make a massive drill. Several times the size of a...
POSTED Friday, January 18, 2008
A German design house managed to create concrete that'll let light pass through it by adding optical fibers to the mix. The optical fibers account for 4% of the translucent concrete formula, but it reportedly does not jeopardize the...
POSTED Monday, January 7, 2008
You know how when a lot of people get together it starts to get really warm in that space? Well, researchers in Sweden are planning to take all of that errant energy and use it to power heating systems...
POSTED Monday, January 7, 2008
Denizens of Singapore will be able to enjoy service without that pesky smile when they visit Kitchen MoguMogu, a Japanese-style fast food restaurant. Rather than tell a cashier what you'd like to eat, all you need to do is...
POSTED Friday, January 4, 2008
Plans are underway to create the world's biggest building in Moscow, a gigantic monstrosity dubbed Crystal Island that'll dominate the skyline. The $4 billion "city in a building" will cover a whopping 2.5 million square meters of floor space and...
POSTED Friday, December 28, 2007
The Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin is home to the largest cylindrical fish tank in the world, standing at a whopping 80 feet tall and containing 260,000 gallons of water. It's got 2,500 fish inside that are spread across 56...
POSTED Friday, December 28, 2007
Because we all know that global warming is caused by all those pesky doghouses that are belching out carbon monoxide and piling up in landfills, Sustainable Pet Design created Greenrrrroof. It's basically the same thing as any old doghouse...
POSTED Thursday, December 27, 2007
If you ever find yourself out in Graz, Austria, you may want to pay a visit to Aiola Island, a man-made structure that bridges the banks of the Mur River. Opened in 2003, Aiola Island not only has a...
POSTED Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Plans are underway for China's capital city of Beijing to have the longest a subway system in the world by 2015. The expansion calls for five new subway lines with nearly 350 miles of track between them, and would...
POSTED Thursday, December 13, 2007
Dubai gets all the cool stuff. If it isn't the world's tallest hotel, or a building inspired by an iPod, it's a hotel that is underwater. The Hydropolis Undersea Resort will open its doors this month, offering guests 220...
POSTED Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Architecture these days has never been more advanced: Buildings are making their own energy and using ice as air conditioning. Creative buildings don't always involve special technology, however. One could build a home shaped like a giant toilet or...
POSTED Monday, December 10, 2007
Food. We need it. It comes from seeds. But what if there's a nuclear war and all of our seeds get weirdly mutated? What if global warming kills off all of the world's cranberries? Most countries prepare for such...
POSTED Monday, December 10, 2007
Ski resort owners are starting to find that the lower down a mountain your winter oasis is, the more prone it is to the effects of a warming clime. It's still efficient enough for high altitude resorts, such as...
POSTED Thursday, December 6, 2007
The Pad, joining the Omniyat Properties roster of other creative names such as The Square and The Binary, is a futuristic-looking structure home to 230 apartments, built at a 7° tilt and packed to the gills with high-tech furnishings....
POSTED Tuesday, December 4, 2007
We're just about to tip into Christmas country, what with December only a few days away. In the spirit of the season, here's a rather cold-looking LED Christmas Tree designed for display outside of businesses. It's got a thousand...
POSTED Friday, November 30, 2007
Architect Jason Mellard sketched up a design for a sustainable marine facility he hopes will allow researchers easier access to study marine and avian life. Where did he look for inspiration? Mellard cites the Star Wars movies, wildlife and...
POSTED Thursday, November 29, 2007
The Maeslant barrier, known as the Maeslantkering, which protects the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands was closed for the first time on November 8th and succeeded in protecting the port from flooding. The walls of the barrier took...
POSTED Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Solar panels are an easy way to harvest some of the abundant energy the Sun has to offer, but there are a few obstacles keeping us from covering every building and surface we can with them. It'd be expensive,...
POSTED Thursday, November 15, 2007
Everybody likes giant explosions, especially when they're combined with a sweet fireworks display. You know it, I know it, and Las Vegas knows it. That's why the destruction of the New Frontier hotel and casino in sin city was...
POSTED Wednesday, November 14, 2007
If you aren't spooked by elevators, that might change if you take a ride in Taipei's Taipei 101 building. That's because it sports the fastest elevator in the world, shooting people up from the 5th floor to the 89th...
POSTED Wednesday, November 14, 2007
If you're a fan of movies such as Bladerunner and Alien, the clean, energy efficient lighting that a system of LEDs can provide for buildings and corridors might cause you some dismay. What company would be crazy enough to...
POSTED Thursday, November 8, 2007
If you've ever lived in an old house, you know they need a little love to keep from collapsing. The "Yuka shita Inspection Robot" made by Sanyo won't fix a structure's foundation, but it will fill the very useful...
POSTED Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The Wind Shade Roof is a structure decked out with a bevy of wind turbines to power whatever it houses in climes where conventional energy can be hard to supply. Architect Michael Jantzen designed the structure to be able...
POSTED Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Next time you look at a billboard and swear you can smell what it's selling, it might not be your imagination. NTT Communication is working on its "Kaoru Digital Signage," which emits various aromas to try to catch the...
POSTED Friday, October 19, 2007
It seems engineers are still trying to think up new ways to put tornadoes to work. This time, a twister 34.43 meters high inside the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Germany is designed to combat fire and dust. So how does...
POSTED Thursday, October 18, 2007
This Push Button House is the creation of Adam Kalkin, an architect who likes to design prefab houses with beautiful interiors from old shipping containers. While some of his designs are quite luxurious and complex, the push button house...
POSTED Friday, October 12, 2007
No one will complain that the waves are too weak in this pool. The engineers at HR Wallingford in Oxfordshire, Britain have built the world's first tsunami generator to help analyze the devastating effects the colossal waves can have....
POSTED Tuesday, October 9, 2007
China's pulling out all the stops to impress the international community for the Beijing Olympics next year. Just take a look at their new "multibillion dollar" airport terminal that's currently under construction. Set to open before the games kick...
POSTED Thursday, October 4, 2007
There are a few regions that still prove tricky for scientists looking to set up shop. Icy areas such as those found in Antarctica are especially troublesome for maintaining research stations because of the difficulty in getting researchers supplies,...
POSTED Wednesday, September 12, 2007
What is it with countries and pyramids? First Japan designs the world's largest structure in pyramid form, and now Germany goes ahead and does the same thing. To be fair, Japan wanted to stock their giant pyramid with living...
POSTED Wednesday, September 5, 2007
We like to see houses built in odd locations, and this one's a perfect example. Borrowing ideas from lollipops and billboards, a group of Polish architects designed this dwelling that sits atop a mast, giving you a two-story house...
POSTED Monday, August 27, 2007
We're big fans of people creating livable homes in the places you'd least expect, which is why we love this old water tower converted into a modern residence in the Netherlands. It doesn't look like the coziest of homes...
POSTED Saturday, August 25, 2007
Japan is a country full of crazy ideas, but their plan for the world's tallest building makes every single one of their insane USB devices look downright reasonable in comparison. It's a 13,123-foot-tall superstructure. To give you an idea...
POSTED Tuesday, August 21, 2007
First your mom told you not to stare at the sun, now she's going to remind you not to stare too long at this hypnotic building. Planned for Portland, Oregon, this storage facility is designed to house all the...
POSTED Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Glass buildings let in sunlight and heat. The problem is especially severe during Spain's hot, hot, hot summers. So aircraft engineers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid have found a way to use the windows themselves as cooling devices —...
POSTED Thursday, August 9, 2007
Do you like your photos big? And I don't mean 8x10 big, or poster-size big, or even billboard big. I'm talking three-storeys-high big — the size of the image captured on Monday by the world's biggest camera, which, by...
POSTED Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Cities are filled with people who are concerned about making the space they live in more interesting, and it looks like Hamburg is no different. Its Landmark design series represents a line of city fixtures that are pleasing to...
POSTED Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Burj Dubai, a tower under construction in the skyscraper-crazy United Arab Emirates, has now eclipsed the former world's tallest building in height and number of storeys. For those of you keeping track, the world's tallest completed building is still...
POSTED Monday, July 23, 2007
California architect Gregg Fleishman knows how to put together a house in a hurry, and that's just what he's done with this DH1 Disaster House. Unlike the Fab Tree Hab house we showed you here that needs to be...
POSTED Wednesday, June 27, 2007
High on a hill beside a neighboring city, a tower rises high above the dense woods below, its apex resembling a finely cut diamond. Sunlight reflects off it such that the tower glistens in the sky, twinkling like a...
POSTED Monday, June 25, 2007
This tower, being bathed in rays of glorious light from all sides, might look like some sort of religious icon, but it's not. No, it's actually a new power plant in Spain that harnesses the power of the sun via...
POSTED Friday, May 4, 2007
Due to the highly regulated building environment in Singapore, developers are forced to get creative when they want to cram as many apartments as possible into a building. Case in point: check this insane apartment building out, due to be...
POSTED Monday, March 26, 2007
Plenty of gadgets have borrowed from the iPod's design, so why shouldn't buildings get in on this action, too? The iPad (how original) will be a 23-storey residential tower with a look inspired by the Apple iPod. Crazy as...
POSTED Tuesday, January 2, 2007
What is Dvice?
Editor: Peter Pachal
editor@dvice.com
editor@dvice.com
Newsletter
Get the top stories from DVICE every week!