Talking to the Daily Mail, a spokesman from Moscow's weather forecasting service said: "Several fronts have been passing through Moscow recently, there was an intrusion of the Arctic air too, the sun was shining from the west – this is how the effect was produced.

"This is purely an optical effect, although it does look impressive," he added.

Ok, so it's just clouds—but when you watch the video you still expect an alien ship to drop through that hole with lasers blazing. [Telegraph]

This amazing 320 square meter control room features a two-level, six-workstation podium to oversee the Moscow United electricity network. More after the jump.

Designed by Russian architects, Arch Group, and ABTB, the space includes a wall of 36 Barco video cubes detailing the network's current condition.

(Updated pic, thanks Larissa!)

The project was apparently built in 2008-2009, but it almost looks rendered with all those super clean lines. One thing's for sure: give me 5 minutes in the Captain's chair and my gear's cable clutter will have the whole shop looking more like something from the Matrix. [Arch Group and Dezeen via William Gibson and Unfolding]

Nonetheless, Apple believes that it can sell 3.5 million phones in the country within two years. That seems like a lofty goal, but let's not forget that Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. There could very well be enough wealthy citizens out there willing to drop nearly $1000 on a phone that has quickly become a must-have status symbol. [Washington Post]

[Cool Hunter]

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]

And because the developers are obviously all about being economical and eco-friendly, the building will generate electricity using exterior solar panels and wind turbines. It will also save money on heating using dynamic enclosure panels that can be adjusted to allow sunlight to enter deep into the structure. I'm sure that will offset the rage that many locals would feel if this ridiculous behemoth actually made it from concept to reality—which could come as early as 2012-13 [Times via Inhabitat]

Nokia opened the doors to its very first flagship store yesterday—in Moscow! I guess the budding mafiya market is something they want to grab early—after all, they go through cell phones like candy, changing SIM cards almost every day to evade Putin's raiders. Promising 17 similar stores in the next 2 years, Nokia says these openings are part of its "revised retail strategy" and have given no details on where the next stores will be located. So get ready New Delhi, Nokia may be coming your way! The company feels these outlets will be mostly used for customer feedback rather than main sales channels and they'll be wholly owned and operated by the Finnish company.

Nokia opens flagship Moscow store in retail push [Reuters]