Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was an art school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term Bauhaus – literally “house of construction” – was understood as meaning “School of Building”. read more…
One World Trade Center is the primary building of the new World Trade Center complex in New York City‘s Lower Manhattan and is the tallest building in the United States. The 104-story supertall skyscraper stands on the northwest corner of the 16-acre (6.5 ha) World Trade Center site, on the site of the original 6 World Trade Center. The building is bordered to the west by West Street, to the north by Vesey Street, to the south by Fulton Street, and to the east by Washington Street. Construction on below-ground utility relocations, footings, and foundations for the building began on April 27, 2006. On March 30, 2009, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed that the building would be known by its legal name, One World Trade Center, rather than the colloquial name, Freedom Tower. read more…
Taipei 101, formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, is a landmark skyscraper located in Xinyi District in Taipei. The building ranked officially as the world’s tallest from 2004 until the opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in 2010. In July 2011, the building was awarded LEED Platinum certification, the highest award in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and became the tallest and largest green building in the world. Taipei 101 was designed by C.Y. Lee & partners and constructed primarily by KTRT Joint Venture. The construction was finished in 2004. The tower has served as an icon of modern Taiwan ever since its opening. Fireworks launched from Taipei 101 feature prominently in international New Year’s Eve broadcasts and the structure appears frequently in travel literature and international media. read more…
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) from the North Pole. The facility preserves a wide variety of plant seeds in an underground cavern. The seeds are duplicate samples, or “spare” copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide. The seed vault is an attempt to provide insurance against the loss of seeds in genebanks, as well as a refuge for seeds in the case of large-scale regional or global crises. The seed vault is managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen). read more…
University Library of Humboldt University
The Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre will be jointly developed by the University Library and the Computer and Media Service as an open information and communication space on the midtown campus of Humboldt University in Berlin. read more…
The Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development will continue the building and electrical mobility research from October 2011 on with the successor model of the energy-plus house, which will combine building and transport, stuffed with an awesome amount of green features. read more…
Everyone knows it, even if the personal or private vocational orientation have nothing to do with the construction industry. Looking at this part of the history of public and commercial architecture and the resulting economic use, then these two building complexes were to some extent “The invention of the wheel.” Since then planners and architects are trying to reinvent this wheel again and again – with more or less success. Of course, there always have been results of progress and development of building materials to set new milestones, but really new developments weren’t given since. This is partly in the nature of the building and construction business: A building structure remain a building structure and have to follow structural requirements, which in turn follows the laws of gravity. On the other hand the results of the much-vaunted “think outside the box” quote are sometimes not only surprising, but simply led by misled passion. read more…
