remember the boat-shaped shopping centre that was doing the rounds a few weeks ago? i’ve found something similar, but bigger. it may be a gimmick but it makes for some great photos.

all i know about this beast is that it’s a 325 room hotel (land-based). it’s been built to look like a cruise ship, it cost around us$50m to build, it’s called the ‘queen elizabeth hotel’ and it can be found between the turkish towns of kemer and antalya. unfortunately it also doesn’t exist yet on google maps. have any of you people stayed there? if so, does the manager dress like the captain of an actual ship?

the hotel’s website, home to more mental photos, can be found here.

photo sources: 1, 2, 3

wow.

it’s surprising that there’s so little (english) information available about this house as it seems to be such a piece of engineering brilliance and a building which, when designed, was way ahead of its time. it was built and lived in by an italian ship engineer by the name of angelo invernizzi (along with assistance from architect ettore fagiuoli) between the years of 1929 & 1935 and can still be found in marcellise, italy. have a look and see if you can work out the unique feature.

incredible. the top half of the building rotates around the centre of the circluar track on which it rests (which happens to form the roof of the lower, static half of the building), much like the hands of a clock. invernizzi was intent on designing a house whose main windows would always be facing the sun, so he came up with the idea you see here. the ‘tower’ which forms the pivot is 43 metres tall and the power needed to move the structure is generated by 2 motors (3 horsepower in total): a full revolution of the 1′500ton building would take just over 9hrs, travelling at a speed of 4mm per second, unless of course the rotation was delibrately slowed.

the house is called ‘il girasole’ - the sunflower - and, while not the best quality, some plans of its development can be seen below.

below is the house on google maps, the link to which is here.

as always, if you have any more info, let us know.

sources: spotted last year at skyscraperpage, recently seen again at german site dynamic architecture, which led to this post where you can find a couple more photos. google then uncovered this italian forum where some photos were nabbed. using google book search you can also read about the building here.

without further ado, the coolest sculpture ever to grace a town centre…

photo source

it’s a fucking tripod from the war of the worlds and can be found in horsell woking, england (h.g. wells’ hometown and the area in which the first martian cylinder landed). imagine walking round the corner and coming face to face with it for the first time, groceries in hand. i’d be close to soiling my pants.

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photo sources: left / right

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built in 1998 by michael condron, the 23ft high sculpture was “commissioned to celebrate the centenary of hg wells’ the war of the worlds” and as you can see in the last photo, next to the tripod, seemingly half-buried in the ground, is the cylinder. there are also bacteria represented by designs on surrounding stones - go here to see them. as with the baby tower, congratulations to the local authorities for giving this shiny chunk of brilliance the greenlight. it’s fantastic. if something like this existed outside my local shopping centre then i might actually go near the place.

center pivot irrigation is basically a method of agricultural irrigation which results in a circular field of crops. a huge column of sprinklers, fixed to the ground at one end, slowly travels around in a circle whilst spraying the crops below. you can see the sprinkler arms, some of which can reach a kilometre in length, in the photo below.

idaho, united states :: picture from wikipedia :: area on google maps

it’s a fairly unremarkable sight, as you can see. however, as you gain some altitude these circular fields start to look more and more surreal and just unbelievably brilliant, especially in areas where these systems are commonplace and visible en masse from the sky. check these pictures out and make sure you follow the google maps links as some of these photos don’t do the areas justice. also, zoom in when looking at the libyan example - it’s part of the ‘great manmade river‘ project - and tell me what those hexagonal features are to the left of the crops…

wadi rum, jordan :: picture from astrosurf :: area on google maps

nevada, united states :: picture from flickr :: area on google maps

sahara desert, libya :: picture from flickr :: area on google maps

al kuhayfiyah, saudi arabia :: picture from google maps

kansas, united states :: picture from wikipedia :: area on google maps

you’re looking at the top of the south tower of one rincon hill in san fransisco, a building that boasts 60 floors, a total height of 641ft and a spot at the top of a hill in one of the windiest and most earthquake prone parts of north america. bearing in mind the skyscraper sits alone on the hill, without any surrounding protection from other high-rises, it’s therefore surprising to discover that one face of the building is curved, top to bottom, and as a result “like the wing of an airplane, it has lift”.

obviously there’s a solution to what could have been a problem.

see the rounded section that sits on the building? it isn’t full of apartments. it’s an enormous storage tank that houses a tuned liquid mass damper, and it’s full of water - at maximum capacity, approximately 100′000 gallons of the stuff.

the tuned liquid mass damper :: photos’ source

you may remember taipei 101’s (less damp) mass damper from a few weeks back, an enormous steel ball that swings like a pendulum to counteract the building’s sway. well, one rincon hill’s water tank is a different technology designed to battle a similar problem. as the tower sways one way, the water in the tank naturally moves in the opposite direction, the force helping to dampen the building’s movement. hence the name.

incredible engineering aside, if i owned that building i’d be in that tank most evenings, polystyrene bodyboard in hand, armbands fully inflated, praying for high winds.

below is a news report about the building’s mass damper (plus another neat and groundbreaking feature), explained by the tower’s architect. i’ve awarded the guy extra ‘brilliant points’ as his little talk resulted in my brain picturing a skyscraper skiing down a mountain, a scenario i’ve never imagined before but will definitely imagine again.

back in the 17th/18th centuries the people of poland were subject to a property tax which varied according to 2 things: the width of their property’s street-facing wall and the number of windows within that same wall. so, owners of houses with wide, window-peppered front-ends were victim to a higher rate of property tax than those who owned slim-faced houses without street-side windows.

it seems that some people took this to the extreme in an effort to save zloty, none more so than the owner of the incredible house above (if you’ve not spotted it yet, it’s the pale yellow sliver of building in the corner of the square). i’ve seen narrow houses before but none as crammed as this.

i’ve also heard some intertubes-based claims that this is actually the narrowest house in europe. however, as with most intertubes-based claims, it’s hard to verify that. plus i simply can’t believe that the entire house maintains that maximum width the whole way through.

photo source

if anyone knows any more about the house it’d be great to hear from you - i’d also love to see some photos of the house’s back-end and interior. is the whole house actually this width? i really hope so.

[update]

thanks to the many people who left comments and emailed me about this slender property. as mentioned in the comments, the square can be found on google maps here. below is the view you’ll find. it doesn’t help an awful lot but there’s definitely a building behind that corner - whether it belongs to the narrow front-end, i’m not sure.

i also received the following photo from david which is a section of a photo seen here. still not conclusive.

it’s a glorified linkdump, home to stuff i find on the tubes that won’t ever be used for a post here on deputydog. there’s a twist to the site (not a life-changing ’sixth sense’ kind of twist, but a twist nonetheless) that will hopefully keep the place interesting, but i can’t be bothered typing out an explanation. therefore, i suggest you go and have a look. hardcore, long-time readers of deputydog may remember justoneword - it’s basically that site with a new name.

wordepletion

that’s it. move along now.

so anyway, in no particular order, here are 9 of the best.

1. link / zelda

found on flickr, this incredible stained glass depiction of link from legend of zelda was created by lynda macrae of the glass house in ontario. the colours especially are stunning. see the original (and larger version) on flickr here.

2. einstein

this 60ft high tribute to einstein can be found at grace cathedral in san fransisco and was installed in 1964. according to the cathedral’s website, ‘einstein was chosen to represent natural science in a twelve-window nave clerestory series called human endeavor’. read more about the window here.

3. pyramid head / silent hill

pyramid head is a character from the silent hill video games and featured briefly in the apparently shite silent hill movie. this stained glass version of the pointer-headed cretin is actually pretty good though and was made by deviant art user laernath. for a larger version click here.

4. mega man

there doesn’t seem to be much written info relating to this mega man stained glass window but that doesn’t matter. it’s brilliant on its own. it was created by flickr user ‘gary in cleveland’ and some photos of the piece’s creation can be seen here. spotted at neatorama.

5. pixels

situated in cologne cathedral is this enormous pixellated window design, designed by gerhard richter and based on his painting entitled 4096 colors. according to wired, ‘richter devised a mathematical formula to systematically mix permutations of the three primary colors and gray’. impressive. photos from here and here.

6. electromagnetic spectrum

this huge piece is called ‘the electromagnetic spectrum in stained glass’ and can be found at the national air and space museum. according to the museum’s website it’s ‘a large stained-glass work showing the range of light that shines on Earth and how deeply it penetrates the atmosphere’. pretty geeky.

7. darth vader / star wars

i think this is my favourite of the bunch. found on flickr, this hyperrealistic verson of darth vader was created for flickr user axoplasm by a friend, based on an old christmas card. it’s extremely charming and would be extremely welcome in my flat. see the original on flickr here.

8. spiderman

artist chris roth made this beauty, entitled ‘introducing spiderman’, as part of a show in 2007 called ‘100 artists: a tribute to stan lee’. remarkably this was his first ever stained glass piece. read an interview with chris here and visit the artist’s website here for many more photos and info.

9. master chief / halo

a couple of years ago, jacob’s stained glass in buffalo, new york, created this stained glass window dominated by halo’s master chief. at first glance i actually thought it was a ninja turtle. then i realised he was holding guns. and he wasn’t wearing a shell. originally spotted at kotaku.

so there we have it. 9 great geeky pieces of stained glass and not one picture of jesus.

know of any more?

if you know anything about the wooden village, let me know as the majority of info available on the intertubes is, as i mentioned, written in farsi. there’s an iranian website dedicated to the village here but it seems to have been left for dead here (thanks rick). if you fancy looking for any info about the village yourself, here’s a hint - neyshabur (the city in which the woden village can be found) also seems to be known by the following names: neyshaboor, neyshabour, nishapur and, in persian, نیشابور.

anyway, have a look at these and tell me you’re not impressed…

the wooden mosque

sources, clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

the wooden library

sources: top / bottom

the wooden houses

sources, clockwise from top: 1, 2, 3, 4

miscellaneous (all photos from here)

also, check out the photos’ source links for a limited amount of extra info.

stavanger, norway, 1998

sources: top / bottom

liverpool, england, 2005

sources: top / bottom 2

cuxhaven, germany, 1997

source

well, that’s if your local beach happens to be crosby beach in liverpool, a place which is now home to 100 of these 6ft+ iron men, scattered over a 2 mile stretch of sand and reaching out nearly a mile from the shore. this spooky crowd, previously installed on other beaches around europe but on a temporary basis, is called ‘another place’ and was created by antony gormley, the english sculptor also responsible for the angel of the north. following some controversy a couple of years ago the iron men are now set to stay on crosby beach for good, continuing to make nearby sunbathers feel uneasy.

while not as immediately frightening as the baby tower, there’s something brilliantly creepy about ‘another place’, a piece of art whose existence on crosby beach goes to prove there are some decision-makers who actually possess some taste.

check out the sculptor’s website for more similar work.

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