The Cube may be the one that could give you your best fine dining experience. Combining ground breaking design, fantastic cuisine and stunning locations, The Cube by Electrolux is taking fine dining to a new level. Travelling across Belgium, Italy, Russia, Switzerland and Sweden, two spectacularly designed restaurants will be popping up at some of Europe’s most famous landmarks, inspiring guests with wonderful meals, events and once-in-a-lifetime views.


The Cube by Electrolux will feature a different hand-picked resident chef at each venue and will offer tailor made recipes using locally sourced ingredients and all prepared on state-of-the-art Electrolux appliances. When guests first arrive, the 140sqm space will be open for entertaining and some great sight seeing, especially from the external platform. When dinner is served the concealed dining table will drop from the ceiling so as to sit the 18 guests before being raised again for after dinner drinks and mingling.

Interested? Book online via www.electrolux.com/cube.

Here are amazing photos of ruins from Detroit by Parisian photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

[Thanks to steidlville.com and marchandmeffre.com.]

Aluna is a unique proposal for the world’s first tidal powered Moon Clock. It will change the way we consider time and understand our planet.

Larger than Stonehenge, Aluna’s forty metre wide, five storey high structure is made up of three concentric translucent recycled glass rings. By looking at how each ring is illuminated, you can follow the Moon’s movements, its current phase and the ebb and flow of the tides. This animation of light is called Alunatime.


Using the latest design and technologies, Alunatime will be powered directly by the tides using turbines.

A waterside landmark and a public sculpture, Aluna unites art, science and spirituality and is an ever-changing reminder of the natural cycles that have shaped our past and will determine our future.

Where will the Aluna Tide Powered Clock be Built?

Aluna’s concept is universal and its form and principles can be situated anywhere on Earth. Alunatime is global – wherever you are watching the Moon, half the planet is able to watch it with you.

UK & Australia: A Dual Hemisphere Project – Aluna’s universality is recognised by growing interest in the UK and Australia in making Aluna a dual hemisphere project.

The two structures would mirror each other. In the Northern hemisphere location Aluna would move clockwise and face due South; in the Southern hemisphere it would move anti-clockwise and face due North.

[Thanks to: Aluna.org]

Vincent Callebaut unnveiled coral-inspired carbon neutral eco village for Haiti. The Coral Reef project plans a matrix to build a three dimensional and energy self-sufficient village from one and only standardised and prefabricated module in order to rehouse the refugees from such humanitarian catastrophes. This basic module is simply made of two passive houses (with metallic structure and tropical wood facades) interlocked in duplex around a transversal horizontal circulation linking every unit.

Inspired from a Coral reef with fluid and organic shapes, the overall project presents itself as a great living structure made of two waves dedicated to accommodate more than one thousand Haitian families. These two inhabited waves undulate along the water on an artificial pier built on seismic piles in the Caribbean Sea. From concave curves to convex curves, the housing modules are aligned and piled up by successive stratums such as a great origami. Between the two inhabited waves is created a sumptuous interior canyon in pixels with terraces and cascades of food gardens.

[via: vincent.callebaut.org]

Look at this cool and functional design of the Herzog and De Meuron Vitrahaus in Switzerland. Design Boom says “The concept of the ‘Vitrahaus’ connects two themes which are occurring in the architectural practice of Herzog and De Meuron: the theme of the archetypal house and that of stacked volumes. The five-storey structure is comprised of 12 ‘houses’ – five houses are set at the base in which seven other houses are stacked upon one another.”

Vitrahaus Pictures:

Credit: All images from Design Boom and Vitrahaus.

I have seen so many beautiful cathedrals and basilicas around the world in all my travels. But which are the most stunning and beautiful architecturally-designed cathedrals or basilicas?

St. Basil Cathedral in Russia – built on the edge of Red Square between 1555 and 1561.


La Sagrada Familia in Spain – one of Gaudi’s most famous works in Barcelona. It’s a giant temple that has been under construction since 1882.

Notre Dame in France – Notre Dame de Paris is widely considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture in France and in Europe.

Catedral de Se de Sao Paulo in Brazil – Its construction, in Neo-Gothic style, began in 1913 and ended four decades later. Despite having a Renaissance-styled dome, the São Paulo Metropolitan Cathedral is considered by some to be the 4th largest neo-gothic cathedral in the world.

Hagia Sophia in Turkey – Many consider Hagia Sophia the supreme masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. A lofty central dome, 102 feet in diameter and 184 feet in height, spans its spacious nave.

Basilica of the Black Nazarene or Quiapo Church in the Philippines – This fascinating church was built in 1582.

Canterbury Cathedral in U.K. – One of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site.

St. Sophia in Ukraine – The spectacular St. Sophia’s Cathedral is the oldest church in Kiev and is known as one of the popular attractions in the city.

St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City – The Basilica of St. Peter is traditionally believed to have been erected over the spot where St. Peter was buried after his martyrdom in Rome around 64 CE.

Cologne Cathedral in Germany – Begun in 1248, the construction of this Gothic masterpiece took place in several stages and was not completed until 1880.

Las Lajas in Colombia – The cathedral is of Gothic revival architecture and was built from January 1, 1916 to August 20, 1949, with donations from local churchgoers, replacing an old nineteenth-century chapel.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the U.S. – New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral is built of brick rather than marble, because brick is stronger.

If I say crooked, it is really crooked. These houses define what crookedness is all about. They were not design flaws. The weird-looking, strange houses were designed that way as a form of art. See the pictures below.

Cubic Houses in Rotterdam, Netherlands – The original idea of these cubic houses came about in the 1970s. The concept behind these houses is that Piet Blom tries to create a forest by each cube representing an abstract tree; therefore the whole village becomes a forest. The cubes contain the living areas, which are split into three levels. The triangle-shaped lower level contains the living area. The middle level contains the sleeping area and a bathroom, while the top level, also in a triangular shape, is used as either an extra bedroom or a living space.


The Crooked House, Sopot, Poland – Opened in 2004. It was designed by the award winning Polish architect Szotynscy Zaleski. The designer was inspired by the fairytale illustrations of Jan Marcin Szancer and the drawings of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg.

WonderWorks – Central Florida’s only upside down attraction. An amusement park for the mind, featuring over 100 interactive exhibits for the entire family to experience.

Crooked house, Windsor – is a British building constructed in 1592. The building now stands at a marked angle, having been rebuilt with green wood in 1718.

Here are the list of winners of the just concluded 2010 Skyscraper Competition held annually by eVolo magazine. Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the use of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organization.

First Place 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Vertical Prison
This project examines the possibility of creating a vertical prison in the sky where inmates will have to work and live in a community that will contribute to the host city below. The prison will have agricultural fields, factories, and recyclable plants that will be operated by the offenders as a way to give back to the community. They will live “free” until they have completed their sentence and are prepared to rejoin their communities.


Second Place 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Ciliwung Recovery Program
The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a project that aims to collect the garbage of the riverbank and purify its water through an ingenious system of mega-filters that operate in three different phases. The first one separates the different types of garbage and utilizes the organic one to fertilize its soil. The second phase purifies the water by removing dangerous chemicals and adding important minerals to it. The clean water is then fed to the river and to the nearby agricultural fields through a system of capillary tubes. Finally in the third phase all the recyclable waste is processed.

Third Place 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Nested Skyscraper in Tokyo
The Nested Skyscraper adapts to climatic, urban, and programmatic conditions with the use of advanced materials and robotic construction. Its form and building method derive from the carbon sleeves and fiber-laced concrete performance. It is a composition of multiple layers of louvers which thicken and rotate according to solar and wind exposure.

Special Mention 2010 Skyscraper Competition: The Sky Table
The Sky Table is a large horizontal building suspended above six blocks of an abandoned neighborhood of a generic city. Its primary structure is a steel mesh that peels into four colossal columns that connect to plazas and parks at street level. Due to its large scale and the variety of programs this proposal could be considered a city within a city where offices are located inside the pillars, housing is available in ten levels within the platform and recreational areas cover the entire roof level.

Special Mention 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Hermit Mountains – Towers of Ancient Dreams
The towers are carefully designed to be integrated to the landscape and to provide a proper place to live and work for the different groups along the Lijiang River. It was designed with the use of three dimensional voronoi patterns that follow the configuration logic of the immediate landscape.

[source]

Here are photos of the 10 World’s Most Unusual Prisons!

1. San Pedro Prison ( Bolivia ): where inmates have to ‘buy’ their cells

San Pedro prison, the biggest in Bolivia ‘s main city, La Paz , is home to about 1,500 inmates. Once you pass the thick walls and the security gates, any resemblance to a normal jail disappears: there are children playing, market stalls, restaurants, hairdressers and even a hotel. It looks more like the streets of El Alto , Bolivia ‘s poorest neighborhood that sprawls on the outskirts of La Paz , than a prison. There are no guards, no uniforms or metal bars on the cell windows. This relative freedom comes at a price: inmates have to pay for their cells, so most of them have to work inside the jail, selling groceries or working in the food stalls.

2. Cebu Prison ( Philippines ): meet the world’s most famous dancing inmates

Nothing says entertainment quite like murderers, drug dealers and sex offenders dancing to pop music in unison. Likely you’ve seen at least one of the viral videos posted online from Cebu prison in the Philippines – their “Thriller” video was ranked fifth in Time magazine’s list of Top 10 Viral Videos.

3. Justizzentrum Leoben ( Austria ): a 5-star prison

Beautiful glass and stainless steel office building? Nope – that’s a five-star prison in Styria , Austria

4. Kresty Prison ( Russia ): world’s most overcrowded prison

Russia’s prisons have a reputation for being the most overcrowded on earth, especially Kresty Prison in St. Petersburg . The official capacity is set at 3,000, but the actual population is always at least 10,000. Each prisoner is also said to only be allowed 4 square meters of space each and 15 minutes a week (a week!) to shower.

5. Sark Prison ( Guernsey ): world’s smallest prison

Sark Prison is located on the Island of Sark in Guernsey.It was built in 1856 and is apparently the smallest in the world. It can house 2 prisoners at a push and is still used for overnight stays – if you continue to play up after that you’ll get shipped off to a proper grown-up jail with corridors and staff.

6. ADX ( Colorado ): the Super-maximum security prison

The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) is a supermax prison in Florence , Colorado , USA . This is the ultimate prison, literally. Since it opened in 1994, ADX is nothing but slow and inhumane torture. Inmates are only allowed out of their cells for 9 hours a week and barely interact with anyone. There’s hardly any sunlight and you have to do everything in your cell.

7. Aranjuez Prison ( Spain ): a prison with cozy family cells

Welcome to a jail Spain says is the only the one in the world with cell units for families: Disney characters on the walls, a nursery, a playground for toddlers.

8. Bastoey Island low security prison ( Norway ): first ecological prison

The Bastoey Island low security prison uses solar panels for energy, produces most of its own food, recycles everything it can and tries to reduce its carbon footprint. The solar panels have cut the prison’s electricity needs by up to 70 percent. Hoping to install a sense of responsibility in their inmates, the authorities aim to instill a strong sense of responsibility towards mankind and our environment as well.

9. Cereso Chetumal ( Mexico ): where inmates solve their problems boxing

CERESO Chetumal is a unique prison that has seen no violence in ten years and that has an excellent arts/crafts program that teaches the prisoners and sells to tourists. According to Warden Victor Terazzas, “when there is a disagreement, we have the inmates involved put on the gloves and get into the boxing ring, after about two rounds the dispute is over.”

10. Alcatraz ( California ): world’s most famous prison

Alcatraz Island , sometimes informally referred to as simply Alcatraz or locally as the Rock, is a small island located in the middle of San Francisco Bay in California , United States . It served as a lighthouse, then a military fortification, then a military prison followed by a federal prison until 1963. It became a national recreation area in 1972 and received landmarking designations in 1976 and 1986. Today, the island is a historic site operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to tours.

Forget about 5-star hotels. Don’t even think of 6-star hotels. For hotels to be considered as one of the world’s best luxury hotels, they must be rated 7-stars! Seven-stars rating seems to be the norm nowadays, with new hotels aiming to be part of the best-of-the-best hotels list. So which hotels made it to the “World’s Most Luxurious Hotels” rankings (existing and under-construction)? No, not the Ice Hotel in Japan and no weird hotels included in the list even.

1. Morgan Plaza Beijing (now called Pangu Plaza 7-Star Hotel, under-construction) – Morgan Plaza is a super-luxury 7 star hotel under construction in Beijing, China. The plaza will contain two pavilions, a temple, a Japanese restaurant and a 600 meter long corridor.


2. Burj Al Arab Hotel – Dubai’s seven star Burj Al Arab Hotel is located in the premier Jumeirah Beach area of Dubai.

3. Town House Galleria – in Milan, Italy is the world’s first seven-star hotel.

4. Flower of the East - (under-construction) biggest project on Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, Iran. The project was slated to includes three hotels to be finished by 2010.

5. The Centaurus hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan. The project is set to complete in 2010 with a 37-story, 7 star deluxe hotel, with two 21-story residential towers, a 25-story corporate office tower, and a 5-story shopping mall.

6. The Pentominium – (under-construction) a supertall skyscraper in the city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

7. ITC Grand Chola – (in Chennai, India, under-construction) Commercial facilities include restaurants, a health spa, banquet space, an exhibition space and underground parking for 1,000-cars.

8. The Royalties Castle in Davao Philippines.