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A series of overgrown hill-shaped buildings may be the new architectural icon in South Korea in the future, thanks to Dutch architectural firm, MVRDV. The firm recently won a developer’s competition for designing a new town, Gwanggyo, to be erected about 35 km south of Seoul, in South Korea.
The city is said to be complete by 2011, and aims to be a “power centre” with high urban density.
The hill-shapes, or “green fingers” were produced by British engineer Arup, and has a not-so-subtle ‘green’ message as part of its design. The buildings will all have outdoor terraces, and many areas of plantation. There will also be floor-to-floor circulation systems for storage of water and irrigation for plants.
Rooftops will have planted box hedges, “creating a strong, recognizable, cohesive park.” All these designs are part of the conception of a new ‘green’ urban lifestyle and cityscape which may reduce energy and water usage, improve climate and ventilation, and creating a generally pleasing outdoor space.
For a luxurious floating spa experience, where the deck seating extends out to float on top of the ocean, and the seaside views are manificent and awe-inspiring, book yourself a pleasant stay at the Avi Spa at Avillion, Port Dickson, Malaysia.
The spa offers luxury spa suites including couple-rooms and a premium suite. Interiors are decorated with fresh colors and tropical serenity. “Avi” meaning “sun” in Sanskrit, was designed so that guests could experience the ultimate unwind and rejuvenation, with generous use of glass throughout the spa for panoramic ocean views.
“At Avi Spa, you choose to counter or reinforce an emotion. As such, you don’t just go for a spa treatment – you take home an experience,” says Gricia Gan, director of Avi Spa.
The treatments offered are all custom-made from pure essential oil blends, which means no harmful chemicals in the service. There are four ‘moods’ to choose from for the signature treatments: “Valour, ardour, lightness and poise,” which are based on the four elements in nature: water, earth, wind and fire.
There are also treatments available with traditional Malay and Chinese remedies, as well as therapeutic combinations of seawater and algae, which are rich in antioxidants for wrinkles, aging or damaged skin.
When it rains, it pours, especially with luxury phones coming out in the lead-up to Christmas, of course. The new Prada 2 Phone (or KF900) is actually very similar to the original Prada phone, yet this time it has a slide-out Qwerty keypad which makes it faster to write texts and emails.
I find this phone really similar to the Nokia N97 as it also has a 5 megapixel camera, but it’s lacking in memory with only 8GB (Nokia has 48!). Other than that, however it does have bluetooth, SD-card and USB access; so maybe internal storage is not so important.
The more flashy advantage that Prada has, of course, is that, well, it is Prada. And comes with gorgeous Prada carrying case, and communicates a sense, of, “Well, fashion over technology, dah-ling. I’m not such a nerd that I need 48 GB of memory space, yet I am fashionable enough to have this lush gadget.”
Lisa Airplanes is teaming up with Danish Yachts to provide their elite customers with a complete sea-air experience. The partnership will offer superyachts with a light aircraft onboard – the Akoya airplane, to be exact – for customers to enjoy the fun of setting out to the seas and then flying around to nearby islands all at their own leisure.
The Akoya airplane was designed with a rigid carbon wing and a flexible textile flap, which allows it to land and take off in less than 330 feet, as well as maintain high cruising speeds. The technology has been patented by Lisa Airplanes, particularly concerning the way they implement hydrafoil technology to enable fuselage to be aerodynamic. Thus the Akoya is “the first plane to be both agile in water and fast in air.”
The intial deposit will only cost you 10,000 euros.
Danish Yachts is a “super yacht” shipyard in Skagen, Denmark which specialises in building boats in carbon fibre, Kevlar and epoxy.
For all the real estate investors out there, have you ever wondered to yourself, how much would it cost in modern times to build an exact replica of the Taj Mahal?
Well, a wealth film-maker from Bangladesh can tell you, it costs around $58 million. And in fact only takes about 5 years with modern building technology.
Ahsanullah Moni’s dream was to be able to bring the Taj Mahal to Bangladesh, as he was acutely aware of many Bangladesh people’s desire to one day visit the real Taj Mahal.
Thus, he thought to himself, if they cannot get to the Taj Mahal – due to financial reasons, mostly – then why not bring the Taj Mahal to them? In the form of creating a complete replica.
Although construction itself only began five years ago in 2003, Moni had the dream of building this replica since 1980, when he visited the Taj Mahal for the first time out of many more to follow in his life.
“I used the same marble and stone as in the original Taj,” Moni said. “We used machinery, which is why it took less time. Otherwise it would have taken 20 years and 22,000 workers to complete it.”
The story behind the Taj Mahal is of course a romantic tale of the heart-broken Moghul emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th century who built the palace for his second wife who died during childbirth.
