The central object is executed in the form of a traditional flower, a lotus.

VIA «The educational centre for all and for everyone or how to spiritualise an industrial building»

The Futuristic Structure

For the next addition to a sky of the city of Dubai architectural studio Graft Lab answers. The new object is called “Vertical Village”. This set of multifunctional buildings applies on LEED Gold Certificate.

The architectural decision is optimized for climatic conditions of a place; the building minimizes heating from the sun and on-maximum uses possibilities for solar energy manufacture.
The building for itself creates a shade, in northern block, and on east and a West side is built in such a manner that penetration of long solar beams is complicated.

The Architectural Generation

The Solar Energy in Dubai

Solar collectors in the south automatically rotate behind the sun. Crossing of intricate coal forms gives the chance to generate the internal block where pools are placed. The composite ensemble of separate buildings creates the integral project.

VIA «The Solar Energy Absorber»

The Shadow Concrete

As it is simple and as it is healthy! So it would be desirable to exclaim, looking at the simple object created by Portuguese architectural bureau Ateliermob. Under an amusing canopy the cafe disappears.

Shadow Surface consists of the concrete roof placed on three walls, creating a courtyard filled with sunlight spots, or even the whole hares getting through drawing from round apertures. Through the same apertures rain water inside gets, creating an original show. The one-storeyed cafe is between this canopy and a children's playground on which there are high windows.

The Project Purpose: to unite apartment houses

On the lift or on steps from under a canopy it is possible to go down in an underground parking.

VIA «The Concrete Romanticism in Lisbon»

Happy Holidays to all of you! I think this is the longest I have ever gone without blogging, and it will probably be like this for the next couple of weeks. This week was obviously busy with all of the holiday parties and things, plus I don't have a reliable source of Internet at my parents' house. On Tuesday I get on a plane and fly to Amsterdam. I will be gone for 17 days so I'm going to miss a lot in the blogosphere! I have a few posts scheduled and I will probably be able to go to an Internet cafe every once in awhile to update you all on my travels a bit, but I'll be so busy with other stuff blogging in obviously not going to be my main concern.

Did everyone get books for Christmas? I told everyone not to get me any-- but I'm pleased with the books I got. I got The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century

and Farmer Jane: Women Changing The Way We Eat

from my fiance's family. My mom gave me Clockwork Angel, which really surprised me! She must have really paid attention to me in the bookstore. My fiance gave me An Object of Beauty because I love Steve Martin. I also got an Iowa Bird book from my fiance and a set of binoculars-- I'm excited to do some birdwatching in 2011.

I gave a few books this year too. I gave my fiance's mother How to Repair Food, even though she is a wonderful cook. When I heard about it on Books on the Nightstand I immediately thought it would be something she would enjoy as a former food science major. I gave his sister Firefly Lane

per the recommendation of Jamie at Perpetual Page Turner because she really enjoys Nicholas Sparks. I gave my fiance The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City and Bicycling Science.

Out of all the gifts I got this year though, I would have to say the Wii my parents surprised me with is the total winner. I wasn't expecting to get much for Christmas this year because I only asked for money for my trip, which I got. I was totally cool with that and we had pretty much finished opening all out presents when my dad handed me this big heavy box. I thought it was for my mom and tried to give it to her. Let's just say I was in total shock when I opened it. I've already spent way too much time playing Super Mario on it! Hopefully the novelty will wear off before classes start again? Yeah, I kind of doubt it too.

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend! Did you get or give any books this year?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books

Essays Read this Week:
1. We reach the same the same end by discrepant means
2. On sadness
3. Our emotions get carried away beyond us
4. How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones
5. Whether the governor of a besieged fortress should go out and parley
6. The hour of parleying is dangerous

I read quite a few short essays this week so instead of talking about all of them I'm just going to talk about the three that interested me the most, which were On sadness, Our emotions get carried away beyond us, and How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones. Throughout these three essay the main subject is obviously emotions. In On sadness he refers to sadness as the Italian tristezza, which I always thought meant more melancholy than sad, but I could be wrong about that. Montaigne talks about the danger of sadness and he seems to think it is a bit of a showy emotion. One thing the essay made me think of is that age old question of "Can you be happy and be a writer or artist?" I think Montaigne would argue that you can-- and should.

He also discusses different types of sadness, talking about a story (which he often does) in which a man sees his daughter working as a servant and his son led to execution with no reaction on his face, but when a friend of his is brought in a negative situation he becomes very sorrowful. When asked about his emotions the man said the first two could basically not be expressed properly so it was better to not express any emotion at all. Montaigne also suggests that it was the build-up over time that made the man express sorrow during the last incident rather than the first two. Later he says, "We cannot display our grief or our convictions during the living searing heat of the attack; the soul is then burdened by deep thought and the body is cast down, languishing for love" (9-10). He ends On sadness saying that he is not controlled by violent emotions, but that he controls them by arguments, which I thought might mean he believes analyzing or essaying the world allows him to control his feelings, which is something I definitely feel as someone who writes essays. However, my essays are often drawn by emotions, which forces me to ask if Montaigne is bluffing?

He carries on these ideas in Our emotions get carried away beyond us, but focuses more on the relationship between body and soul. In this essay he wonders by humans worry so much about what will happen to them after death, citing many humorous stories about human burials, when their body is really not "them" it is their soul that is them and their soul will not be in the ground. At least that is how I understand it. While his main argument is about death, I took away more of a "Don't worry about the future, focus on the now," message from the essay.

In the final essay I want to talk about, How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones, he talks about people placing their emotions on a physical manifestation rather than dealing with whatever emotion they have (perhaps through essaying or observing the world around them). He says, "it seems that the soul too, in the same way, loses itself in itself when shaken and disturbed unless it is given something to grasp on to; and so we must always provide it with an object to butt up against and to act upon" (19).

Questions from This Week:
1. What do you think is the best way to deal with strong emotions? Do you react to small upsets more violently than big ones because you don't know how to react?
2. Do you displace your emotions just so you have something to make you feel better? Do you think this works?
3. If you read any of these essays, which one stuck out the most to you and why?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Copyright by Svenja Knoppik | Photography Michael Kohls & Cathleen Falkenhayn | Models Leon & Christine S.
Why is the third dimension so fascinating? A further dimension gives more information and space for opportunities, allows a higher scope for communication and visual experiences. James Cameron’s 3D science fiction adventure Avatar (2009) started a whole new era in form modeling. the influence of the third dimension was felt not only in fashion but also in film, architecture, photography and more. This hype, however, was not entirely new. the swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd (*1915 in Stockholm, 2. Febuary 2002) and the english mathematician Roger Penrose devised the so called ›Impossible Object‹ - a two dimensional triangle that appears to be closed from a certain perspective, however its three dimensional form is entirely different. the effect is realised by tricking our visionary senses. And here, a master of this discipline, one must mention M.C. Escher.
This collection is inspired by impossible constructions, multiple dimensions and the art of tricking our visionary senses.
Svenja Knoppik (27) recently graduated in Fashion Design at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld in Germany and now finally presents her diploma collection. In the past she worked for Gareth Pugh as an intern. During this internship Svenja worked on Pitti Menswear and on Autumn/Winter 2011/12 films directed by Ruth Hogben.

VIA Svenja Knoppik Collection

The British Museum is considering three further overseas loans from the Elgin Marbles – but a reluctance to entertain the sculptures’ return to Greece is set to provoke renewed anger in Athens.

Last year the British Museum allowed part of the Marbles to leave the country for the first time when it lent the headless statue of Ilissos, a Greek river god, to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Greece, which is seeking to reclaim ownership of the 2,500-year-old sculptures removed from the Parthenon in Athens in the 19th century by Lord Elgin, described the Russia loan as “provocative”.

A current request from the British Museum for a key antiquity from the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens for a forthcoming exhibition on classical sculpture has been delayed, in what is being seen as retaliatory move by the Greek authorities.

The work has been requested for the show, “Defining Beauty: the Body in ancient Greek Art”, which opens in March.

The delay is ascribed to “tensions” with the Greek government, despite friendly curatorial relations between the two institutions – the British Museum currently has 24 items on loan to the Cycladic museum.

However the chances of securing the loan in time for the exhibition may be harmed by the news that the British Museum is seriously entertaining bids for further Elgin Marbles loans to museums outside of Greece.

“Three serious bids are being considered,” The Art Newspaper reports, including one informal loan request made before the Hermitage deal was revealed.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Berlin’s museums and the Louvre in Paris are the kind of institutions which “stand the best chance of success” when formal loan requests are submitted, the art title suggested.

The British Museum would expect any museum to which it lends the Parthenon sculptures to “be generous in responding to loan requests” made in return by the London body. Requests for single sculptures will be more favourably received, it is suggested. Bids are also expected from the UK’s regional museums which could expect huge interest in displaying items from the famous collection.

The Museum confirmed that further loans from the Elgin sculptures are being considered. A spokesman said: “Museums around the world have shown interest in requesting to loan from our set of Parthenon sculptures, and we always welcome these conversations. The Trustees will consider any request for any part of the collection to be borrowed and then returned, subject to the usual considerations of condition and fitness to travel and this has always been made clear to the world.”

Further Marbles loans will inflame tensions with Athens. Antonis Samaras, the Greek prime minister, described the loan of the Parthenon sculpture to the Hermitage as “an affront to the Greek people”.

Some of the Marbles will be moved from their permanent display to the temporary exhibition gallery for the British Museum’s March show, including the pediment sculptures of Ilissos, which will be returning from Russia, Iris and Dionysos.

However time is running out to strike an agreement with the Museum of Cycladic Art for the work that the London museum is seeking. The British Museum spokesman said: “We have requested to borrow one object from Greece and await the official response. The Museum has very positive working relationships with colleagues in Greece and lends extensively to museums in Greece including 24 objects on loan to two temporary exhibitions at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.”

The Athens museum declined a request to comment. A source said: “The museum is happy in principle to lend the work but the Greek government is stalling on the paperwork.”

Greece refuses to recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures, which make up about 30 per cent of the surviving decoration from the Parthenon.

Author: Adam Sherwin | Source: The Independent [January 06, 2015]

Clouds over London

Clouds by Tomas Saraceno

VIA «Olympic clouds»

Please help us welcome back Mette Ivie Harrison! She wrote us a phenomenal guest post last week that also includes a giveaway of The Princess and the Hound. Make sure you check it out!
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Although your Princess books may not be a direct retelling of any one fairy tale fairy tale, there is a distinct fairy tale feeling to each of them, which is different from the way a traditional fantasy reads. Was this intentional, or just something that happened as you wrote?

I studied German literature in college, and I have always loved fairy tales. I wanted very much to get the feel of a fairy tale in these novels. It's part never-never land and part Germany in the Middle Ages and part my idea of the perfect romance world all combined. I think I still imagine that the world is full of people who are trying to be heroes, wherever and whenever they live.

As to intention, I wonder sometimes how much of any creative endeavor is really intentional and how much of it is simply the unconscious being let out freely. I don't outline my novels and I just have an idea of where the story might go, then let things play out on the page. My characters don't seem to be the kind who do what I tell them to do. Or maybe my unconscious just has better ideas than my conscious mind has. I think that I may be one of those people who is often thinking about how the world used to be and comparing it to the way it is now. I don't wish for that back, but I believe that people have not changed much over the centuries. Evolution just doesn't work that fast. So my characters are people in the same way that a contemporary novel's characters would be. I probably have lots of anachronisms, though I try not to write modern people back in time. I try to think how modern people would act if raised in the past and given the limited choices that existed in the past. How would they grow up? How would they think? How would they find a way to be heroic?

There were moments in each of the 3 Princess books where each of our heroines feel uncomfortable in their skin. Is this an idea you included in the books intentionally?

I don't know that I thought of it quite like that, but I suppose the teen experience is very much about figuring out how to feel comfortable in your skin. I know I felt very uncomfortable in my skin as a teen. Physically, I always felt like I was that fat kid in high school who couldn't run a mile and felt ridiculously self-conscious in a swim suit, despite the fact that I was on the swim team. Psychically, I was trying to figure out who my "group" was, who I belonged to tribally. I think I eventually found a circle of friends who remain friends of mine to this day, but it was a long road and it took the courage of refusing to be false to myself. I showed who I was and that was the only way I could find my real people.

This story of figuring out who you are is a pretty universal one, and it's not just for teens, though maybe that's the first time it happens. In fact, The Princess and the Hound wasn't originally meant to be YA. I didn't know what it was, to be honest, and at least one editor rejected it because George was simply too old and he got married at the end of the book, which some YA novels shy away from. I think I write on the seam of YA and adult, which is why a lot of adults like my books, too. And really, aren't adults constantly reinventing themselves? I think if we aren't, we are stagnant. I have been taking adult piano lessons for the last four years, trying to reimagine myself as a musician (still not working). I also discovered triathlon competitions about 7 years ago and it turns out I'm really good at them. One of the things I do every day is yoga and I spend at least a minute trying to accept myself in the skin I am in, my body as it is, with all its flaws and its power.

You have a new book coming out, Tris and Izzie (that I'm crazy excited about), a retelling of the the German story, Tristan and Isolde. Is there anything about your new book that you can share with us?

Tris and Izzie is about a teen girl who doesn't know that she has magic. She has a boyfriend Mark King who is the basketball star and she thinks she is happy. But she tries to figure out how to make a love potion for her friend Brangane who obviously is in love with a guy who doesn't notice her. But it all goes wrong. She ends up falling in love at first sight with Tristan, the guy who was supposed to be Brangane's, and then she has to figure out how to be true to herself while the world around her is changing. There's a hidden magical world and lots of danger and a past she has forgotten and well, lots of other cool stuff.

I've been thinking a lot about what I hate about romance lately, and there's a certain irony in the fact that I hate love triangles and I hate love at first sight romances and I hate it when girlfriends compete for the same guy. But those are all important parts of this story. I hope that I use those old ideas in a new way that makes this story feel very contemporary. I spent many years reading only literary novels for grad school, and I read fantasy on the weekends, on the sly. I didn't dare to even check the books out of the library for fear my professors would find out. I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about the distinction between literary novels and genre novels. But I think I have finally become comfortable with the reality that I like my stories to have magic in them of some kind. It's not just that the stakes are higher. It's that I feel like there are certain experiences in life that are magical, and we don't have the right language to describe those experiences unless we turn to the supernatural. Romance is one of those experiences. It feels like it is part of another world, like we become different when we experience it.

None of your characters have the traditional 'Happily Ever After'. Although the books may end mostly happy, or hopeful, that semi-generic 'Happily Ever After' feeling is missing. I've read some of your posts and discussions about romance in stories, and I have a pretty strong hunch that this was intentional. Care to expound?

You should have read the first drafts. These are actually much happier endings than the versions I originally wrote. My editor convinced me to be slightly more optimistic. For example, at the end of The Princess and the Bear, I originally wrote that the bear gives up the ability to be human and she has to live as a bear the rest of her life. It made for a very odd wedding scene. I guess I don't much believe in HEA of the kind where they ride off into the sunset. The funny thing is, I consider myself to be a fierce feminist and yet a failry traditional wife and mom. I stayed home with the kids, but I have a PhD. So there's lots of weird combinations in my stories.

I love romance and I write romance. I am a romantic. I love romance movies. I love Jane Austen. But I think the punch of the romance is taken away if it's too easy, if that makes any sense. Real romance is about choosing to be with the person you are with, not events overtaking you and you having no other choice. That's my opinion, anyway. The best romance is when both sides are strong characters who have important things to do in their lives unrelated to the romance. I didn't give up who I was when I got married and had kids. It can be tempting to let go of yourself, but I have trained my kids that I am a writer as well as a mom. Since they were babies, there was a strict nap time rule. If they weren't sleepy, didn't matter, I got some time to myself. I think the same goes for real-life romance. It is desperately important, but it's not the only thing that's important in the world.

Although the story is very much your own, Mira, Mirror is a retelling, of sorts, of Snow White. How did you decide to tell the story of the mirror and the Queen rather than have Snow White be your main character?

Mira, Mirror began as a sort of experiment. A friend of mine said that you can't write a novel with an inanimate object as the viewpoint character. I took it as a challenge and tried to think of the most interesting inanimate object I could. The mirror in the Snow White fairy tale came to mind fairy soon, and I knew there would be magic in it. It was one of my first attempts to write YA fantasy, and when I brought it to my group, they all said that I had finally found what I should spend my life writing. They felt like it was just so unique and no one else could tell a fairy tale like that. It's not a retelling really and it's not a twisted fairy tale. I don't know quite what to call it. But in this case, I never intended for Snow White or the Queen to be main characters. It was always about the set up to the fairy tale and then the aftermath. In the original version, however, the mirror had never been human. It had a face and could talk, but it had learned everything it knew about humanity from the evil Queen. To make her more relatable, I gave her a backstory and then a quest to be human again.

Having written both a retelling and a fairy tale-esque story, which do you prefer? What are the limitations and benefits of each telling? What are your thoughts about writing for each of these very closely related genres?
One of the advantages of a retelling is that there is already a certain shape to the story, almost as if you had a first draft written for you by someone else, and you only had to fix it up as a second draft. There is less fear of the blank page, if that makes sense. The blank page is always a terrible thing to face. Where does the story go? What happens next? No one knows except you, the author. This probably tells you way too much about what my first drafts look like. They are often not a lot like what the second draft is like. Maybe I should call those first drafts "exploratory" drafts. I get to know the general world and characters, but all of the events change and often not one word remains the same. Well, maybe one or two.

Ironically, I spent about four years writing stories largely in first person, some in present tense. The Princess and the Hound was the first story I wrote where I tried to do a third person point of view. I had no idea if it was working or not, but it has been really successful. There's a certain fairy tale style in my writing that has a distance and an elevated language that is natural to me after years in grad school in German literature. It's updated, though, with a really intense psychological depth that you often get only in first person YA narratives. I am trying to combine the two. My readers will have to say if I've done it successfully.

Silly/Random

~ Rapunzel is named after lettuce; what odd thing would you be named after if you were in a fairy tale?
The number seven. I am obsessed with numbers and that is my favorite one. ~ Using that name, give us a line from your life as a fairy tale:
"Once upon a time there was a girl named Seven. She lived with her mother and father, One and Two, and her older sisters, Three, Four, Five, and Six."

~ Best fairy tale villain and why?
It's always been the stepmother from Cinderella, because she has no magic and she still has all this power. I love the idea of writing a novel someday about the stepmother who refuses to even see the magic when it's right in front of her face.

~ Favorite tale from childhood? Favorite tale as an adult? Least favorites?
I loved Hansel and Gretel as a kid. I think the idea of a gingerbread house really appealed to me. I liked to eat. A lot. I think I hate that fairy tale now because the parents are so disturbing. I like what Adam Gidwitz does to the story in A Tale Dark and Grimm.

As an adult, my idea of "fairy tale" has expanded. Right now, I'm quite taken with the idea of retelling The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Also, An Ideal Husband as An Ideal Boyfriend. I love Oscar Wilde. In fact, whoever is my favorite author at the moment is the author I want to do a retelling of. Oh, yes, Jane Austen is on the list, too. And Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. And Goethe's Faust.

~ If you could be any fairy tale character, or live through any fairy tale "happening," who/what would it be?
I think I'd like to be Jack the Giant Killer. It's interesting how girl-centered fairy tales are always about getting married and boy-centered fairy tales are always about adventures and killing people. But maybe Jack could meet a lady giant and fall in love with her? And that find out that if they kiss, she turns evil? Wait, that's Buffy, isn't it?

~ Would you rather:
- — eat magic beans or golden eggs?
As a vegan, I suppose I'll have to pick magic beans.

--style 50ft long hair or polish 100 pairs of glass slippers?
Long hair isn't so bad. You just keep it in a braid all the time. And I hate high heels. I own a couple of pairs for weddings, but almost all my shoes are flats. I think I have a strangely unfeminine dislike of shoes.

- — have a fairy godmother or a Prince Charming?
I guess I'll say Prince Charming, because I think every girl should be her own fairy godmother, in the end.
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What a wonderful interview! It's always great to hear the stories behind the books! It makes for truly fascinating reading! Thank you again Mette, so very much for being a part of Fairy Tale Fortnight!

Supermarket in Rotterdam

VIA «Rotterdam supermarket»

The museum is one of the city's main tourist sites, but in some areas, ancient wooden sarcophagi lay unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds, mounted on walls, crumble from behind open panels of glass. Tutankhamun's mask, over 3,300 years old, and other contents of his tomb are its top exhibits.

Three of the museum's conservators reached by telephone gave differing accounts of when the incident occurred last year, and whether the beard was knocked off by accident while the mask's case was being cleaned, or was removed because it was loose.

They agree however that orders came from above to fix it quickly and that an inappropriate adhesive was used. All spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisals.

"Unfortunately he used a very irreversible material — epoxy has a very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone but I think it wasn't suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamun's golden mask," one conservator said.

"The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material," the conservator added.

The conservator said that the mask now shows a gap between the face and the beard, whereas before it was directly attached: "Now you can see a layer of transparent yellow."

Another museum conservator, who was present at the time of the repair, said that epoxy had dried on the face of the boy king's mask and that a colleague used a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches. The first conservator, who inspects the artifact regularly, confirmed the scratches and said it was clear that they had been made by a tool used to scrape off the epoxy.

Egypt's tourist industry, once a pillar of the economy, has yet to recover from three years of tumult following a 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Museums and the opening of new tombs are part of plans to revive the industry. But authorities have made no significant improvements to the Egyptian Museum since its construction in 1902, and plans to move the Tutankhamun exhibit to its new home in the Grand Egyptian Museum scheduled to open in 2018 have yet to be divulged.

Neither the Antiquities Ministry nor the museum administration could be reached for comment Wednesday evening. One of the conservators said an investigation was underway and that a meeting had been held on the subject earlier in the day.

The burial mask, discovered by British archeologists Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1922, sparked worldwide interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt when it was unearthed along with Tutankhamun's nearly intact tomb.

"From the photos circulating among restorers I can see that the mask has been repaired, but you can't tell with what," Egyptologist Tom Hardwick said. "Everything of that age needs a bit more attention, so such a repair will be highly scrutinized."

Author: Brian Rohan | Source: Associated Press [Jabuary 22, 2015]

Retro Philco PC

VIA «The retrocomputer»

Author Kenechi Udogu has been generous enough to offer us a copy of her book, The Other Slipper (two guesses where that story goes;) )

Synopsis:

When Jo finds a lone glass slipper on the night of the royal ball, she realises that there is more to the seemingly ordinary object than meets the eye. Searching for its owner, she is led to the palace where the princess sets her on a journey that thrusts her into an unexpected world of magic and illusions. It soon becomes clear that there is a lot more to her mission as she discovers startling secrets about her past and struggles to embrace her destiny.

To enter to win a copy of The Other Slipper, leave a comment telling me what you would do if you found *the* glass slipper!

This is for an electronic copy of the book, which means it's international! Also — be sure you've filled out the giveaway form! (and don't leave me any personal info in the comments!)

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Tent on a tree

VIA «Children's dream have realised»

I recently received the Happy 101 Award thanks to Helen Loves Books. The rules are: List 10 things that make you happy and then give this award to 10 book blogs that brighten your day.

So 10 things that make me happy are:
1. Reading

2. Working out

3. Sandwiches

4. Decorating

5. Piano Rock

6. Boots

7. My amazing boyfriend

8. Naps

9. Diners

10. Owls

And now I am going to pass this award on to:
1. Sasha and the Silverfish
2. Chasing Empty Pavements
3. Regular Rumination
4. In Spring It Is the Dawn
5. Miss Remmers' Review
6. Laura's Reviews
7. 1330OV (Vasilly)
8. Midnight Book Girl
9. Bloggers Heart Books
10. The Life (and Lies) of an Inanimate Flying Object

Once again thanks all of you for your support of my blog! I couldn't do it without you guys.

The Innovative Park in Australia

The new project of mixed use located in the north of Sydney, with the budget in 400 million dollars, urged to "plant trees and shrubs" in business. Developed by architects GHD, Innovative park Gore Hill is the newest building object Lindsay Bennelong Developments before which it's necessary to connect a problem ecological stability to business innovations.
Project Gore Hill will be the first technological business park received five stars AGBA and rating Green Star in Australia. In located on the former areas of studios ABC in Gore Hill, on the bottom part of northern coast of Sydney, business park, the area in 4.6 hectares, provides convenient places for offices, and as spaces under retail shops and the entertaining centers — including a separate site for retail trade in plaza-style, a zone of municipal departments, motor shows, the aqua-center, and also foot and bicycle paths.

The Australian Innovative Project

“Project of a glass cube so typical for given area is not pleasant to us”, main architect GHD Nando Nicotra speaks. “From the very beginning of the project we wished to create the unique building corresponding to aesthetic ideals, and have decided, that it's necessary to concentrate attention to appearance of a building”.
The given project, example of modern innovative architecture, also is realization of various innovations on ecological stability — including repeated capture of superseded heat, effective system of lifts and a central air “chilled beam”. It guarantees that the project will receive a five-stars rating and will set the tendency of new level of requirements to the future industrial and commercial projects. At present works on district to start building in January, 2009 are conducted.

VIA «The Gore Hill Park (Sydney)»