Salvador Dalí Museum 

Designed by HOK + Beck Group St. Petersburg, Florida. The architecture, greatly inspired by the great surrealist, “combines elements of the classical and the fantastical,” according to the director of the museum. The design speaks to the essence of Dalí while incorporating functional elements to combat Florida’s tough weather

GIGS.2.GO USB sticks by Bolt Group

The concept was inspired by Bolt Group designers frequently having problems sharing presentation and CAD files with clients. "Burning CDs is slow and impractical, and nobody wants to leave behind their trusty—and expensive—32GB thumb drive.

 We saw a need for a smaller pack of drives that could be shared and even left behind with a client," said designer Kurt Rampton. 

 Each tab on this credit card-sized pack by American designers Bolt Group can be torn off and used as a USB stick. The GIGS.2.GO pack by Bolt Group is made of recycled paper pulp and contains four tear-off tabs with a USB flash drive in each. 

Though the drives are designed to last for many uses, the paper and electronic components can eventually be separated and recycled. (dezeen)

Casa Batlló

This is probably one of my favorite buildings, and is definitely one of the first buildings i want to go visit in the near future. 

 Its a key feature in the architecture of modernist Barcelona. It was built by Antoni Gaudí between 1904 and 1906 having been commissioned by the textile industrialist Josep Batlló. 

Nowadays, the spectacular facade is an iconic landmark in the city. The "Manzana de la Discordia", or Block of Discord, is a series of buildings in Passeig de Gràcia. It is home to a collection of works by the most renowned architects, amongst which is Casa Batlló. 

The house, now a museum, is open to the public, both for cultural visits and for celebrating events in its splendid modernist function rooms.

 It is surprising to see how well the building is placed within context. Clearly standing out with all the strange curved shapes and completely different textures to the existing context, yet it still pics up on vertical as well as horizontal lines.

 The Whole building is tiled on the outside with different colors of mosaic. Not one wall or opening was designed with sharp 90 degree corners giving it a very organic shape.

Silent-Evolution-Sculpture-Under-Water-Art-By-Jason-deCaires-Taylor

 This exhibit, completed in 2010, sits on the floor of the Mexican Caribbean off the coast of Cancun and in case you thought it was just art, it has a very practical purpose as well. 

The Cancun Marine Park attracts over 750,000 tourists a year and this places a lot of pressure on the natural coral reefs. 

These sculptures are designed to encourage coral growth and thereby add to the oceans biological flourishing.

 The project is unique in its variety of public art with environmental conservation and is a visible depiction of the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.

....Cloud Gate....

This sculpture was done by Anish Kapoor in Millennium Park, Chicago. The sculpture is shaped like an ellipse, and its legume-like appearance has caused it to be nicknamed “The Bean”. 

The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of 168 highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect Chicago’s famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high.

 ROLLIN BRIDGE, LONDON

The brief was to design a pedestrian bridge to span an inlet of the Grand Union Canal at Paddington Basin, London, and provide an access route for workers and residents. The main idea was that the bridge needed to open to allow access for the boats.

 

 

 The aim was to make the movement the extraordinary aspect of the bridge. A common approach to designing opening bridges is to have a single rigid element that fractures and lifts out of the way. Rolling Bridge opens by slowly and smoothly curling until it transforms from a conventional, straight bridge, into a circular sculpture which sits on the bank of the canal.

 

The structure opens using a series of hydraulic rams integrated into the balustrade. As it curls, each of its eight segments simultaneously lifts, causing it to roll until the two ends touch and form a circle. The bridge can be stopped at any point along its journey.

 

 

 The whole structure was constructed at Littlehampton Welding on the Sussex coast and then floated up the Grand Union Canal, before being lifted into position and attached to the hydraulic system which powers its movement.

  The Rolling Bridge won a number of awards including a Structural Steel Award, and an Emerging Architecture Award. -designdautore

THE STUDIO on Clevedon

The Beauty Salon opened in 2003 in a renovated house on Clevedon road, Mount Croix, Port Elizabeth.    

The Owners have always kept in mind the heritage of the building, thus restoring the fascades to their original condition, and only changing the building on the inside.   

The original floors have been replaced by similar looking floor boards in the older part of the house, and big white glossy tiles where there use to be carpets.

 Over time parts of the roof replaced with corrugated Fibre Glass sheets to collect more sun light. The House always use to be cold and damp, which made the paint peel of the walls and the floor boards swell, but after all the changes it is now a plessant building all year around.

The Garden is a 65 sqm backyard that has been turned into a "Zen"- garden. This creates a relaxed environment for the client to enjoy a cupachino or read a magazine, while they wait to be helped.

The following link is a video about how the technology has changed inside the New York Library, making it a faster, and cheaper to sort books. It was installed in 2010 and can now sort double the amount of books it use to, thus 47 000 books in a 7 hour shift, using only a third of the staff that they previously required.

 

http://nyti.ms/VxNt59