[OMA via Dezeen]

To death I say! Jason, I'm ready. [Flickr via Neatorama]

The variable size of the windows is not just to make the building more interesting. According to the architects, the pattern was created to adapt to the wind and sun:

By mapping the different air flows and solar direction across the site, we were able to position different sized windows accordingly, minimizing heat loss in the winter and heat gain in the summer.

The building—located in a port city one hour east of Beijing—will be finished in 2012, including the big office tower and the smaller one, which will be dedicated to a hotel. [Dezeen]

You see, nanotubes separated by more than one wavelength (five micrometers) are invisible. And the one centimeter human-supporting rope mentioned above takes the five-micrometer principle into account. Imagine scaling such an idea to create a series of invisible ropes in architecture, a sort of flying buttress that you can't see.

But what's possibly even more amazing—that human-supporting rope weighs just 10 milligrams per kilometer. If the distance from the ground into space is 80km, that means that an 800 milligram rope could lift humans into space. 800 milligrams is less than the weight of three aspirin tablets.

Crazy, crazy stuff. [Springer via NewScientist]

The Frankenstein stadium of the future is composed of some technology that we have already heard about—like new Cowboys stadium and its gigantic video screen. However, you may not have come across plans for a single-piece steel roof that makes taunts more audible to opposing players in Liverpool F.C.’s new stadium, or the wireless screens set to be built in Oakland's new Cisco field. The interactive screens will allow visitors to order food, pull up stats, and even find the shortest bathroom lines from the comfort of their seat. There are also plans that make stadiums greener, cooler, and more flexible when it comes to configurations. Check out PopSci for more info. [PopSci]

Divided in three floors, Casa 11 Mujeres (House 11 Women, named like that because it was designed for a family with 11 daughters, ages four to twenty) was built with bare concrete with wood floors, glass, and steel on a 45 degree slope looking down Cachagua beach, 87 miles north of Santiago de Chile. The bottom floor contains shared spaces, while the second level has the daughters bedrooms—all overlooking the sea—, and the top floor has the master bedroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room.

I don't know about the 11 daughters part, but sign me up for the rest. [Dezeen]

Currently, the Albilmo temporary housing units are being rented out to customers in European countries only—but the idea seems to be catching on, so I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising individual tried their hand at setting something similar up in the States. [Abilmo via Cool Hunting via io9]

Fisher was inspired to design the Dynamic Tower during a visit to a friend's top-floor Midtown Manhattan apartment. "I had a view of the Hudson River and East River at the same time, it was beautiful and I wanted to make that feeling accessible to more people." He loves the idea of seeing the sun rise and set in the same room, and considers the building to be four-dimensional. "Time is always changing the shape of the building," he told me.

The rotation takes up to 3 hours (so you're not always spilling your coffee), and gets power from photovoltaic solar cells and 79 wind turbines, one located between each floor. The system is meant to create enough energy to power to the entire tower and still have juice to spare for some surrounding buildings. According to Fisher, two of these $700 million futuristic scrapers are planned so far, one each in Dubai and Moscow. They will be built using a truly radical technique.

Construction on the Dynamic Tower will be unlike anything that preceded it. The only part of the tower built on site will be the skinny center core. It is strong enough to hold the floors in place, and will contain the building's elevators, which transport people and cars right to their door. Each floor will be made piece by piece in a factory in Italy—a throwback to Fisher's previous life in prefabricated bathroom design—and placed onto the core using a lift system. With this method, each story is completed in about six days. By comparison, traditional ground-up methods can take six weeks per floor.

Groundbreaking for Dynamic Towers in Dubai and Moscow is expected to happen in the fall, with construction reaching completion by the end of 2010. If you're game—and very, very loaded—you can sign up now for a villa or office space. The going rate is $3000/sq foot. [Dynamic Architecture]

The DWP consists of 3,000 digitally controlled solenoid valves, several dozen pumps, 12 hydraulic stainless steel pistons, and a digital control system that uses open source software. The roof, 400-mm thick, is the only solid part of the building, and it moves up and down on pistons, depending on the weather conditions.
This is the opening ceremony. Very son et lumière, doncha think? Despite the cameraman's best efforts, you can see the time and effort put into the pavilion. I only wish I was still in Spain, then I could check it out for you all. [Building Design and YouTube]

In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.

How amazing is that? It took the family months to discover the scavenger hunt and weeks after that to figure it all out. It's like the live in a children's book of some kind.

Unfortunately, magical things like this really are only possible when you're loaded enough to buy an $8.5-million apartment and then give someone another $1.26 million to renovate it without much oversight. But hey, maybe if you're nice to the guys installing your new fridge they'll leave a post-it note with a poem stuck behind it as a secret prize for when you move. Not quite as magical, but I'm trying to work within your means here.

[NY Times]

Burden's fascination with engineering and architecture began early on and believes that Erector sets and similar toys are "the tools we use to inculcate children into how to be adults." He also noted that a child could have built his creation, theoretically, if given enough time and parts. Still, the work is impressive (although it is no 100 foot Lego tower). If you would like to check it out in person, the exhibit is officially slated to open today as part of Rockefeller Center’s program of monumental outdoor exhibitions and it will be on display there until July 19th. [NYT]

Its 13 floors are far lighter on columns that conventional buildings since the structure supported by its exterior. And rooftop green space dissipates heat while the building harnesses solar and wind power.

But the most impressive part of the Cybertecture Egg may be for its daily inhabitants. Office workers are treated to customizable workspaces that will apparently alter their "view" with the world locale of their choice—so much for all those gorgeous windows. In addition, bathrooms will monitor worker health by measuring weight and blood pressure. And a doctor will be alerted to any drastic changes. [WAN via Inhabitat]

The stadium is to have a permanent 25,000 seat main structure, but for the Olympics they'll also install a 55,000 seat upper tier. When the games are over, it can be (relatively) easily taken down and, if needed, shipped to another Olympic city for the next games. In fact, London is currently talking to Chicago, a possible host of the 2016 games, about sending the stadium their way.

Chicago is making a low-impact games a big part of their bid, proposing holding events in existing structures like Soldier Field and the Bulls Arena rather than the earth-raping clusterfuck that's happened in Beijing where they had to build all sorts of crazy stuff to prepare for the influx of people.

One could imagine a movable set of stadiums, moving from city to city and being set up for each games. It's a cool idea, one that I could see grabbing hold as the real impact of having to build a megastadium every four years in a different city becomes more apparent. [Guardian via Treehugger]

250,000 pounds in weight, the entire sign spans 43,720 square feet when including vinyl components. That easily trumps the old Times Square champion from NASDAQ, which covered a suddenly modest 11,000 square feet.

Cumulatively, all of this sign will cover three sides of 1 Times Square with a solitary animation. Never has a sale on pantyhose been so grossly over-promoted. [NYTimes via BBGadgets]

[Nest Rotterdam via rebel:art via Neatorama]

Powered by solar panels, the full-scale model house makes one complete rotation every 20 hours—which results in a rather disorienting experience for commuters who frequently travel in and out of the city. The house is uninhabited, but if a drunken bum should ever wander in there to sleep one off, he is in for one hell of a hangover. [Project Page via Flabber via RGS]

Built on a steel frame, this home office took only a few weeks to construct. It's particularly eco-friendly (as it can piggyback off heat from adjacent buildings otherwise lost to the alley's air), and while each level is absurdly small, the floor to ceiling windows do wonders to cut through the jail syndrome (evoking more of a caged hamster vibe). Really though, it all makes sense...other than the bathtub on the roof.

For more images from the project, hit the link. Next up: sewers. [Archinect via Treehugger] [Images by Luc Roymans]

Each of the units fit into standard ceiling or window grid systems and features fluorescent or LED daylight-balanced backlighting to both enhance the look and promote a sense of well-being. In fact, daylight balanced light is the same light that is used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder. I'll bet that if every boss in the US installed these in the offices of their employees, productivity and moral would skyrocket. [Sky Factory via Boing Boing Gadgets]

The display itself will consist of hundreds of rows of LEDs spaced 6 inches apart. Apparently, this will allow residents to see out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, but at a distance it will appear to be a complete image. Whether or not this over-the-top advertising will be as tacky and annoying as it sounds remains to be seen. In order for Astani's pilfered vision to come true, it still has to be approved by city officials. Let's hope they have some sense. [io9 via Wired]

First off, no two floors are alike. Ambani specified that each story of his home should be made using different plans and materials, with styles and architectural elements tying it all together. Furthermore, the odd shape of the structure is the result of a discipline called Vaastu, which is an Indian tradition that is similar to the principles of Feng Shui. As for some of the more technological elements, the lobby grants access to the home via nine elevators, and the elaborate crystal laden ballroom features a mount of LCD monitors, a huge sound system and a retractable showcase for artworks. There will also be an ice sauna where family and guests can escape the heat in a room filled with man-made snow. If that was not enough, there will also be a bad-ass home theater that is outlined in the gallery above.

Kind of makes Bill Gates' $125 million home look like some sort of slum. [Yahoo Finance via Geekologie]

[EcoFriend via DailyMail via DVICE]

The customer that commissioned the patio wanted to incorporate a grill patio, hot tub, changing room, dining table, bar, stool, reading area, and security gates into the design while still keeping things as open as possible. Amazingly enough, Pique managed to deliver—but I can't say that I would dig this massive wooden eyesore jutting out from the back of my house. [Pique via Dwell via Treehugger]

See what I mean? Presumably it makes for a happy, fun-filled workforce. How they ever get time to do any work I don't know. Still, I work from my couch, so I could always put a slide in somewhere, and stick a bunch of beanbags about the place. It wouldn't quite have the same effect, though. [Swissmiss]

* BattleArena Toshinden, you pervs.

[Pritzker Prize and Jean Nouvel]

Located in Bordeaux, France, this house is like a space station waiting to be launched into orbit. Looking at it, you would expect the X-Men to walk by at any time. However, it also has a warm, sunny quality that makes it absolutely amazing. Koolhass Houselife is a film that captures these qualities perfectly, but adds another, more practical dimension to it by showing this high-tech home from the perspective of Guadalupe Acedo, the housekeeper and the person who actually has to take care of keeping all this amazing design alive.

Jesús Díaz: I find very interesting that you decided to focus on the live of the house itself, through the life of the housekeeper. What made you take that view?"
Ila Bêka: Koolhaas HouseLife is the first film of a series we are making on contemporary architecture entitled "Living Architectures." The concept of these movies is to develop a look on contemporary architecture that tries to escape from a strong current tendency of idealized representation of our architectural heritage that show us architecture as perfect icons and break the link between architecture and the life which is inside.

The character of the housekeeper, Guadalupe Acedo, embodies in itself this image reversal we are looking for, because during all the film she points out the complex world of daily life, the care and maintenance such a house requires.

JD: What was the main challenge in filming this house, compared to your other architecture pieces?
IB: The three films we have already done are each one exploring a different scale. Koolhaas HouseLife enters in the daily life intimacy of a private house. Pomerol, Herzog & de Meuron talks about a Herzog & de Meuron refectory for grape pickers, and Xmas Meier is a urban investigation of the impact of the Richard Meier's new church in the Tor Tre Teste neighbourhood, in the suburbs of Rome.

But the main intention of the Koolhaas HouseLife project was to "give life" to one of these architectural masterpieces that we can see everywhere without never being able to see them how they "really" are in everyday life.

JD: The concept is great indeed, but also the photography, which is beautiful. What equipment did you use for filming and editing?
IB: For this type of projects we have to be very "light" in order to be almost "forgotten" by the persons we follow in their daily activities. We try to work only in two, one for the camera and one for the sound. The video editing has been made on Final Cut Pro and the sound editing with Logic Studio, with a last generation Mac Pro. [Bêkafilms, Stories of Houses, and Wikipedia via Archidose]

The addition isn't permanent — don't worry, purists — but will be simply bolted in place and easily removed later. It's pretty amazing looking, a really interesting way of blending the past with the future. I like it. What say you? [Dwell via io9]

The project is expected to cost $300 million, and it will form an impressive center piece to Masdar City, which will be a $22 billion development stretching out beyond Abu Dhabi. The Masdar HQ is the very vision of a greener future. In fact, a roof pier will be the first part of the building to be hoisted into place, which will be covered in solar panels that will generate energy for its own construction. The complete structure will encompass some 1.3 million square feet, and we think the term "intelligent design" should now be redefined to accommodate the Masdar HQ's structural plans. [Product Page via Dvice]

The island will be divided into 25 identical blocks, which will be populated by a mix of tall and squat towers punctuated by more fantastic buildings, like a spiraling 82-story tower, and a 44-story sphere (trendy now, no?) that will be its own mini-city within a mini-city complete with a sprawling network of escalator tubes (pictured in the gallery). There's also traditional parks and stuff inside to keep it a little more earthly, but every new gargantuan development like this makes us wonder just how far Dubai will push it next. [NYT via io9]

Designed to protect 100 million of the world's seeds through fortified concrete and the surrounding mountainous landmass, the Global Seed Vault is prepared to withstand nuclear missile attacks and keep our plants' genetic codes safe. And while the plan is all well and good, if I'm anywhere near Longyearbyen when the sky rains radioactive fire, Man will be losing a few species of plants to prevent my seeds from dropping like acorns. [belowtheclouds via geekologie]