In January, Peugeot announced it had developed a car that ran on air. It officially launched the Hybrid Air vehicle at the Geneva motor show, saying it would be in production by 2016. The car did not run on air only – their new development assisted a petrol engine. However Peugeot believes their hybrid system […]
Speaking of gardens in the sky, I once lived in an apartment building that had one on the 25th-floor. It was just a couple of floors missing from the building and wasn’t really integrated with any other space. It had ponds and palms and even a bit of grass and, on the whole, there was […]
If ever you’ve noticed cloudless nights are colder than cloudy ones, then you’ve experienced Night Sky Radiant Cooling. The temperature of the surface of the earth is relatively constant so the amount of energy lost in the form of heat from the surface of the earth at night must be more or less the same […]
The building you see above is the oldest timber building in the world. It was built in the year 756AD. Hats off! It is the Shosoein Treasure House in Nara, Japan, built to house the treasures of the Emperor Shomu (701–756). Buildings like this are the only traditional Japanese buildings that don’t employ post and beam construction. […]
Chaparral Cars was a United States automobile racing team which built race cars from 1963 through 1970. They pushed race car technology and weren’t afraid to test new ideas. The Chaparral 2 was their first big success. Here’s a Chaparral 2. It’s a bit of a beast. The Chaparral 2 featured the innovative use of fiberglass as […]
Previous posts: Part I, Part II Back to STACEY and, this time, with DAYLIGHTING & VIEWS. Daylighting is a very important yet neglected aspect of buildings. In addition to its benefits for energy-saving, it has huge psychological and productivity benefits for a building’s occupants as well. As for productivity, studies have shown that daylight can have […]
No. It isn’t the very fancy and expensive decorations or the Court of The Lions, and it certainly isn’t the spiritual feeling that one is supposed to feel when looking at such an enormous built object. Those are not the things that amaze me so much about Al Hambra Palace in Granada, Spain. What does […]
Following on from the previous post, there’s probably not much chance of oil rigs ever being considered an expression of a new type of architectural beauty. Nevertheless, the idea is still out there, waiting for the right example to express it as the way for the future. The extremely scientific building known as the Large Hadron […]
