The world’s biggest street art exhibition was demolished this week in Paris just one month after opening to the public. Destruction of the wildly popular Tour Paris 13 was staged as carefully as its creation. This wall-to-wall-to-ceiling-to-floor painting project was performance art every step of the way.
Turkey is better known for these five unsustainable development projects and a new undersea rail tunnel near a major fault zone than green building. But Konya has just become home to one of the world’s first LEED-certified ice cream factories.
Israeli designers are working hard to curb bicycle theft. One group came up with the “fashionable” Foldylock and the Spine Bike breaks when stolen. But the Cricket uses bluetooth technology to keep sticky hands off urban wheels.
The Shard architect Renzo Piano has partnered with Italy’s Enel Green Power to design a new ultra lightweight wind turbine that has a smaller visual impact on the landscape than conventional wind turbines.
Most westerners imagine that Saudi women are completely deprived of opportunity, and in some cases that may be true, but the world’s largest women-only university in Riyadh, Princess Nora Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), may steer the kingdom in a more egalitarian direction.
Continuing the theme of mysterious abandoned developments, the identity of this one is better known than the desert lakes I featured in my previous two posts.
With Masdar City, Foster & Partners was the first international architecture firm to design buildings in Abu Dhabi that borrow from the region’s desert-savvy vernacular. Now they are continuing that tradition with the Zayed National Museum on Al Saadiyat Island, which will sport five wing-shaped solar thermal towers when completed.
The Middle East boasts some of the world’s saltiest waterbodies, but none approach the horror of Lake Natron in Tanzania, one of the harshest environments on the planet. It’s hot, chalky waters can turn birds and land animals into calcified statues, spookily captured by photographer Nick Brandt in his new book, Across the Ravaged Land.
A disused government-owned slaughterhouse in Casablanca that ceased to operate in 2000 now hosts art exhibitions, music shows, film screenings and other cultural activities run by La Fabrique Culturelle.
An emergent studio from Kazakhstan has designed a curious glass tube home that wraps around a large Fir tree in the tectonically active mountainous region of the country.
So many countries in the Middle East and North Africa rely way too much on concrete for their building needs, but Libya Design bucks the trend with Doshma – a new creative hub built in part with a used shipping container.
A young Israeli man has renovated and transformed a disused public transport bus into a double story apartment that even boasts a penthouse guest room and basement. This is the second such bus conversion we’ve seen in Israel recently, a trend that kicks dust in the face of high rent prices.
A group of friends from Tel Aviv got so tired of lugging enormous locks to foil would-be bicycle thieves that they got together to design what may be the world’s only fashionable solution: the Foldylock.
Can’t find a couch to surf? Too broke for Air BNB? No need to cancel your travel plans, just lace up a pair of Walking-Shelter sneakers and hit the road.
It’s something we can’t avoid as human beings: we begin as naked embryos that go through stages of gestation. We emerge naked, until clothed.