Professor: architects are killing the public space Jan Gehl is sick of architects making so-called ‘bird shit architecture’, where grand designs are seemingly dotted on the map at random, making city planning only visible from above. (Photo: Anne Marie Lykkegaard) By 2050, 6.3 billion of the world’s population will live in cities, according to a 2011 UN report. And that’s something architects should take seriously when designing and developing cities around the world. But they’re not, says Jan Gehl, a Danish professor of architecture. Gehl sternly wags his finger at the architects that care more about form than functionality and fail to take the inhabitants into consideration when planning cities. This has been done in Copenhagen -- a city that is a good example of how architects and researchers can collaborate, he says. “It’s odd that so little research is being conducted in this field, as architects influence the lives of so many people. More space for cars – less space for people Artists don’t need researchers
Sochi 2014 Russia’s Yandex Offered at Double Google’s Value (Corrects date of report in 17th paragraph in story published May 23.) Yandex NV, the owner of Russia’s most popular Internet search engine, is offering shares at about twice the price of Google Inc. relative to earnings. The Moscow-based company, which has almost triple Google’s market share in Russia, plans to sell shares at a price equivalent to at least 23 times next year’s earnings, said two people involved in the sale who declined to be identified until the deal is announced. Google trades at 13 times expected 2012 earnings. Underwriters stopped taking investor orders for Yandex shares on May 20, rather than this week as planned, because of surging demand for Internet IPOs, said two other people with knowledge of the matter. “It’s a bit scary to pay such multiples, but if that’s how the market values it, that’s how much it’s worth,” said Dmitri Kryukov, founder of Moscow-based Verno Capital, which has about $150 million under management and is seeking to buy Yandex shares.
Ocean Spiral underwater city designed to harness deep sea potential An increasing world population means more strain on resources, and requires increasingly innovative solutions. Japanese firm Shimizu has come up with one such idea. Ocean Spiral is an underwater city that seeks to make use of the ocean's rich resources. View all Shimizu is no stranger to moonshot ideas. Shimizu says the basis for the concept is rooted in the huge potential of the deep sea and of the cycles that link in with the air, sea surface, and seafloor. The Ocean Spiral takes the form of a huge sphere known as the "Blue Garden." Access to the Blue Garden and the Ocean Spiral is through the "grand entrance" on the water's surface. Below the Blue Garden is a spiral that reaches 3-4 km (1.9-2.5 mi) to an "Earth Factory" on the sea-bed. The Earth Factory is anchored to the sea-bed and is connected to similar satellite facilities via transport tunnels. The basis for the construction of the Ocean Spiral is the Blue Garden's sphere shape. Source: Shimizu Share
Mikhaïl Boulgakov Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre. Mikhaïl Boulgakov Mikhaïl Boulgakov en 1914. Œuvres principales Mikhaïl Afanassievitch Boulgakov (en russe : Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков), né à Kiev le , mort à Moscou le , est un écrivain et médecin russe d'origine ukrainienne[1]. Mikhaïl Boulgakov travaille d'abord comme médecin durant la période troublée de la Première Guerre mondiale et de la guerre civile russe. Son œuvre la plus connue est Le Maître et Marguerite (Мастер и Маргарита), roman plusieurs fois réécrit et retravaillé entre 1928 et 1940, publié en URSS dans son intégralité en 1973, dans lequel il mêle habilement le fantastique et le réel, de telle sorte que le fantastique passe pour réel, et le réel pour fantastique, ainsi que les époques et les lieux, Jérusalem au Ier siècle, sous Ponce Pilate, et Moscou, dans les années 1930, sous la dictature soviétique. Biographie[modifier | modifier le code] Jeunesse[modifier | modifier le code] Nikolaï Boulgakov, vers 1916.
A Year in the Metabolist Future of 1972 With words such as ‘organism’, ‘cell’, ‘fabric’ and ‘regeneration’, Japan’s Metabolist movement articulated a distinct and idiosyncratic aesthetic for their projects and defined a new architectural vocabulary. Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower is an exemplary expression of this vocabulary. However, from the moment of its completion in 1972, the utopian structure was a fascinating yet wholly anachronistic remnant of a past future, struggling to survive. A late arrival, Nakagin represented the last opportunity for the realisation of the movement’s ideas. And while it was presented as the house of the future, the capsule design was in fact based upon the interpretation of several references and traditions from Japanese culture. In 1972 the Nakagin Capsule Tower was portrayed in the media as a sign of ‘the capsule era’. Yet even before it was completed the Nakagin Tower was hopelessly out of date. The bathroom is even more ergonomic. The individual capsules don’t have hot water supply.
Défilé de la Victoire: l'aviation russe a dispersé les nuages à Moscou | Défense L'aviation russe a dispersé lundi matin les nuages à Moscou pour garantir le beau temps pendant le défilé de la Victoire sur la place Rouge, a annoncé lundi le porte-parole du ministère russe de la Défense Vladimir Drik. "Un avion militaire russe a accompli la mission de protection météorologique de Moscou à 250 km au nord et au nord-ouest de Moscou, près de Tver", a indiqué le colonel Drik. "L'avion a volé à une altitude de 5.400 mètres", selon le colonel. Au total, le commandant en chef de l'Armée de l'air russe Alexandre Zeline a dépêché une dizaine d'avions pour protéger la place Rouge de la pluie. L'opération a été confiée au Centre d'essais Tchkalov d'Astrakhan (Volga).
Building an identity: Immigration and architecture in Southern California When Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne looks at L.A., he sees the city shaped by immigrants. Landmark buildings in Koreatown that adapt and evolve with a new generation. Houses in Arcadia that allow Chinese homeowners a proud, conspicuous place in a new country. Street life across the region that takes its cue from the way Latino neighborhoods blur the line between public and private. In this three-part series, Hawthorne shows us how Southern California may offer the first look at post-immigration America. A woman walks by the Chapman Park Market, a 1928 landmark. Part 1: Koreatown Rather than tear down built-up history, the ever-expanding Koreatown adopts, adapts, preserves and perseveres. Koreatown's cool old buildings point to L.A.' Philip Chan, principal designer at PDS Studio, stands inside a home he worked on. Part 2: Arcadia How wealthy Chinese immigrants are remaking a Southland suburb. How Arcadia is making itself a magnet for Chinese money Part 3: Latino Urbanism
Человек как все - комикс про Путина! Эпизод I: Скрытая угроза Продолжение каждый месяц! А пока ответьте - кто все это заказал!? Результаты web surveys Englishski version at the request of the public ;) Polska wersja od naszych czytelników Deutsch version - dank Der Spiegel! If you want your language version - send your translation and we will publish it. Why I'm Mourning The Death Of A Mall The mall that played an outsize role in my adolescence is now a ghost town. I didn’t really believe that malls were going extinct until I saw my own mall dying. As a business reporter, I'm fully aware that people aren't buying clothes and food in the same ways they used to. White Flint isn't completely dead, but the outlook is not good. Seeing photos of White Flint as it looks today, I was overcome with blended feelings of nostalgia and a depressing finality, like when you hear a song associated with a specific memory -- taking your first road trip, or dancing the night away with your best friends -- and realize it was a defining experience you'll never have again. Let me explain. Inside White Flint Mall last month. The mall's empty escalators. White Flint is less than a mile's walk from my middle school and high school. We weren’t the only ones from school there. After lunch, we’d roam the mall’s fluorescent halls for hours. In the nearly two decades since, though, things have changed.
Russie: le mathématicien qui refuse un million de dollars s'exprime | Sciences et espace Sci-tech URL courte Grigori Perelman, le génie russe des mathématiques qui a résolu la conjecture de Poincaré, a accordé sa première interview depuis un an pour expliquer pourquoi il a refusé un prix d'un million de dollars. "Pourquoi ai-je mis tant d'années pour résoudre la conjecture de Poincaré? M. "Faut-il faucher l'herbe entre trois collines? En mars 2010, le Clay Mathematics Institute a octroyé à M.
Ghost town: searching for remnants of Russia in the Chinese city of Harbin It is not rare for a civilisation to abruptly falter, give way and fold into a new one. This insight seems obvious in the territories of the former Soviet Union — a universe transformed into a memory overnight. It is more rare that one settlement transforms into another, that a city turned ruin continues to be inhabited, that the collapsing buildings and boulevards stained by a thousand footsteps, after the apocalypse, host new forms of human life, new memories. Harbin, in the far north-east of China, used to be a very Russian metropolis. Not quite all: traces of the old city do remain. How did Harbin happen? Related Agata Pyzik examines Polish artists' responses to Russia's Baltic enclave The vast urban planning projects of Soviet-era Russia are being reborn in modern China Owen Hatherley on a lost generation of Yiddish writers How a street art collective is livening up Vladivostok A city flourished and grew in this most unlikely of refuges. Old postcard of Harbin
Russian Verb Aspects - Russian Grammar New: This Russian lesson is still in development. It is not complete and may contain some errors. Please report any errors to the corrections forum. Russian Verbs - Aspect The Russian language has only three basic tenses. Aspects are used to indicate if an action was completed successfully or is ongoing. The aspects are: Imperfective - Incomplete, ongoing, habitual, reversed or repeated actions Perfective - Actions completed successfully. The perfective aspect is not created by changing the ending. (Imperfective, Perfective) Жить, Прожить - live Любить, Полюбить - love Делать, Сделать - do, make Говорить, Сказать - talk, speak, say. Работать, Поработать - work Grammar Note: Aspects indicate whether an action was completed or not. If you are unsure which to use, then just use the imperfective. Here is a set of guidelines to help you choose which aspect to use. Imperfective Aspect Incomplete, ongoing, interrupted or repeated actions 1. 2. Я работал ... - I was working ... 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. Summary
Cities on Earth evolve in the same way as galaxies in space There are several laws known to sociologists that seem to govern, in unnervingly accurate fashion, how we live in cities here on Earth. One is Zipf’s law, which states the rank of a city is inversely proportional to the number of people who live in the city. So the biggest city in a country has 10 million people, then the second-biggest city is 10 million divided by two, the next by three, and so on. While most of these scaling laws, such as Zipf’s law or ones that determine the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases, have been observed to be true in the wild, we don’t have any real sense of where they come from or why they work. Scientists now think they have found the source for these scaling laws out in space. “We treat the population density as the fundamental quantity, thinking of cities as objects that form when the population density exceeds a critical threshold,” Lin and Loeb wrote in their 13-page research paper (pdf).