Gizmodo: birds nest

Herzog & de Meuron's Latest Project: Disc Tower in an Arabian Garden in Madrid

John Mahoney — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:50:00 EST

These guys don't know when to stop—after wowing with the Bird's Nest and an upcoming Jenga apartment tower in NYC, H&dM have just unveiled their equally stunning design for a bank HQ in Madrid.

Aside from looking like a delicious 'nilla wafer standing upright in a field of whipped cream, or a sailboat at sea in a crazy greenhouse ocean, the BBVA building incoporates a ton of cool ideas that sound like the most perfect work environment ever.

The main buildings are long, horizontal and onlythree-stories tall, and in the alleys and other nooks and crannies surrounding, a "carpet" of plants and trees grows. This will give each workspace a garden view and create "a cool, moist, fresh microclimate analogous to an Arabian garden" in the desert-y Madrid suburbs. And from it all springs the aforementioned wafer, excised from the carpet and set vertically at a slight angle.

Hey BBVA - you hiring? [Dezeen]

Beijing Olympics Fireworks Line Will Light Up China This Spring Festival

Elaine Chow — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:00:00 EST

If there's one thing you can't overstate, it's how much the Chinese people loooooved the Olympics. So it was kind of expected that Chinese fireworks makers would capitalize on the magic of the Opening Ceremonies by selling similar DIY pyrotechnics. This Chinese New Year, watch for the Bird's Nest series of fireworks going off all over the country, including smiley faces and footprints, blossoming peony flowers and “silver and red waterfalls.” Gizmodo-readers in Beijing can grab their share of explodey things at over 200 locations across the city come Nov. 15th. [The Beijinger]

Bird's Nest Architects' Latest Unveiling: A Vertigo-Inducing Jenga Apartment Tower in NYC

John Mahoney — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:40:00 EDT

Fresh off the billions of eyes that have been on the beautiful Beijing National Stadium, Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron have set their sights on NYC with this incredible 57-story residential tower, unveiled today. It consists of 145 unique apartments that are stacked into the sky like a Jenga tower that's already been well-poked by a party of well-lubricated players. Especially when you get up to the penthouse level—if you're motion sick, you might want to think twice about dropping $33 mil for such a beautiful place when you'll wake up every morning feeling like you're dangling off a cliff...

Yeah, yikes. If anyone goes for custom glass flooring, there better be plenty of airsickness bags on hand. The building, which will be built in Tribeca at 56 Leonard Street, uses extreme cantilevers to achieve a look that H&M describe as "pixelated vertical layering." Or, stacked shanty town trailers.

Herzog and de Meuron designed just about every aspect of the interiors as well, from the 12-foot glass doors that open out onto your private deck, the massive floor-to-ceiling fireplaces—even the coloring of the individual interior elements. If you want to live in an apartment designed by the same folks that brought us one of the coolest works of architecture of the 20th century (and you've got $3.5 mil for a small, low shanty or $33 mil for a top shanty), this is your place. From the top you can more closely watch the real-time collapse of Wall Street (just a few blocks away!), that is if the whole house of cards doesn't fall before this thing makes it into the sky.
[Gothamist]

Blue Screen of Death Strikes Bird's Nest During Opening Ceremonies Torch Lighting

John Mahoney — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:45:00 EDT

Well, this is just perfect. At the exact moment Li Ning was rounding the lip of the Bird's Nest during the amazing torch-lighting climax, someone snapped this photo of our good friend the BSOD nestled among the Nest's steel twigs. Perhaps an Opening Ceremonies IT dude spit out his coffee on the machines in the server room when Li took to the sky? Another question is what a projection screen is doing inside the Nest at that location, but I think the better question is what wasn't going on inside the Nest's roof—did you see that thing during the ceremonies? Lights! Fireworks! LED screens! Everything! Anyway, if only one image of this perfectness existed we'd be skeptical, but thankfully, someone has grabbed more from a different angle that pretty much seal the deal.

UPDATE: And it's been confirmed on the NBC broadcast by commenter cirby on his DVR.

Click for high-res:

Ouch! More super-zoomed images for error message decoding here:
[Powerapple Forum (Chinese, original pic), and Rivercool (alternate angle pics) via Dvorak - props to Dvorak commenter Improbus for "Olympic Fail"]

Read more pan-Gawker coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games.