Lego has just announced that the next building in their Lego Architecture series (which has previously featured replications of the Guggenheim Museum, Falling Water, and the Farnsworth House) will be Dubai’s Burj Khalifa — aka the world’s tallest building. (This should not be confused with the world’s tallest Lego tower, a 102-foot-tall monstrosity which 6,000 people helped erect in Sao Paulo, Brazil last month.) An interesting bit of trivia: This marks the first time that the series will represent a building outside the United States; maybe we’ll see something like Turning Torso or Casa da Musica next. Look for the Burj Khalifa in Lego stores and online beginning June 1. [via Curbed]
Using his own pictures of cityscapes as the backgrounds for sci-fi fantasies, French photographer Cedric Delsaux digitally inserts Star Wars film characters into his urban realms. The artist’s Dark Lens series started out with his views of warehouses, harbors, and industrial spaces in the suburbs of Paris. Finding the pictures too ordinary, Delsaux added Darth Vader, R2-D2, Jabba the Hutt, and other Star Wars figures and vehicles to the settings and presto: they were suddenly fantastic!
Architecture! At its best, visionary, innovative, mold-breaking. At its worst, cheesy, overwrought, and ill-timed. The recent architectural follies of Dubai present a fairly good case for prudence in the building arts: a Marvel superhero-themed park is a questionable expenditure even in boom times; as for the world’s largest LED structure, a new opera house, a revolving “dynamic” tower, and an experimental resort dubbed “The Cloud,” well, it’s beginning to look like Gomorrah in Abu Dhabi. But as we know all too well, the current financial crisis is a global situation, which is why we’ve rated six new developments and their associated levels of what-were-they-thinking-ness. Follow along after the jump.
Architecture blog myninjaplease posted this jaw-dropping video clip shot on top of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai. Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill is nearing completion of the building, which is currently soaring at 2,300 feet but whose final dimensions are secret until the building opens on January 4, 2010. (Compare the Burj Dubai to the world’s other tallest towers here.) The aerial view from the top is just insane, from the sheer distance to the ground and severe wind gusts to the tower’s long shadow cast over the rest of Dubai.
If this is what the infamous Second Avenue subway line is planning to look like, then we’ll gladly wait until 2012 2034 when it’s finally finished. Dubai’s new luxury metro opened last week and the features are duly impressive. Stats and more photos after the jump. Read More »
According to this report from Bloomberg, “Dubai defied the economic crisis last night as stars flocked to South African billionaire Sol Kerzner’s Atlantis resort for a $20 million party that included the world’s largest fireworks display dazzling enough to be seen from space and a performance by pop singer Kylie Minogue.”
Fireworks that can be seen from space and Kylie Minogue? We think there’s a disconnect. She will always be the poor man’s Madonna to us. Odds are Kerzner used a British party planner — even frosty Queen Elizabeth flips out over Kylie.
If you were spending a reported $4.4 million to book the talent at the best party ever, who would you hire as the entertainment?
Two men play everything from bossa nova to Mozart using an old car as their instrument of destruction in new stage production in Berlin. This has us wondering what would happen if you took a sledgehammer to KITT.[Spiegel]
A popular new art museum in Munich that specializes in political graffiti was formerly a public outhouse. We doubt it can compare to CBGB’s bathroom. [CBC]
A Russian musician out on bail after being arrested for peddling hundreds of fake antique violins hung himself after police raided his apartment. He made an estimated £750,000 thanks to the scam. [Scotsman]
A controversial new art show featuring paintings of Muslim women in provocative poses has required the West London gallery hosting the exhibit to seek round the clock police surveillance. The show’s cheeky title? “This Artist Blows.” [The Independent]
The developers behind Capital Gate, a new 35-story tower in Dubai that leans four times more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, have submitted an application to the GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS to secure the enviable position of the “most inclined building in the world.” [World Architecture News]
