Sunday, November 29, 2015
Need to Disappear? - Mirrorcube
Tree hotels, while cool, are totally passé. Been there, done that, amirite? Well, the Swedes have stepped up their tree hotel game with Mirrorcube, the world's first invisible room. Nestled in the trees of the town of Harads in northern Sweden, the cube-shaped room is made of mirrored walls so that it blends in with the environment and virtually disappears. Even the birds didn't know it was there and kept crashing into it, so the designers had to add on an infrared film that only they could see.
My only question: When is Ikea gonna start selling these invisible cube rooms? I need one for my backyard. Although, thinking about it, the self-assembly could get a little tricky.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Atlantis is in China - Shicheng Underwater City
I bring news. Atlantis is real, my friends! And it's located in a lake in China. Also, it's not actually Atlantis, but an ancient Chinese city called Shicheng that was purposely flooded with water in the late 1950s to make way for a dam.
The water-preserved city was largely forgotten about until 2001, which was when the Chinese government decided to dive down and explore this historical and architectural goldmine. What they found were beautiful stone buildings, forgotten city streets, an imposing wall that encircled the city, and Chinese mermaids. Well, just kidding on that last one. But wouldn't that be the coolest?
Monday, November 16, 2015
Catching a Bite to Eat - Lambert's Café
If you find yourself in Missouri with a hankering for carbs, the place to go is Lambert's Café, where they apparently sell the biggest, most buttery rolls on this side of the Ozarks. The only catch? You'll need to know how to catch -- the only way to get your hands on the dinner rolls is to field one from the waiters, who chuck them at you from across the room.
Visitors come from afar just to catch the rolls at Lambert's, at the risk of getting bonked in the head by a stray piece of bread. But hey, I could think of worse, less delicious things to be hit in the head with.
Monday, November 9, 2015
Now You See It, Now You Don't - See-Through Church
Here's a church that won't stay put - not exactly a spiritually comforting notion, but definitely an awesome one architecturally. The See-Through Church of Limbourg, Belgium, is an art installation that was designed to look completely solid from certain angles and like it's dissolving into thin air from other angles. The piece is called "Reading Between the Lines."
So what were the artists trying to say? That art is impermanent? That churches are impermanent? That life is impermanent? Oh, that's deep.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Crimson is the New Green - Hitachi Seaside Park
Who says that botanical gardens need to be green? At Hitachi Seaside Park, in the Ibaraki prefecture of Japan, the dominant colors of the flowers and shrubs might be yellow, purple, blue, pink or crimson, depending on the season. The explosive colors are almost otherworldly, making ordinary old green gardens look passé.
I am, of course, jumping on the next available plane to Japan to see this natural wonder for myself and to frolic in all the color. Because I'm sure the urge to frolic (and to cavort and to gambol) will be very strong here.
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