A vertical forest is expected to be completed this year in Milan. There are two tower apartment complexes which contain a total of 400 residential units. The facade of the buildings will be covered with 730 trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 perennial plants. It is expected to have the same ecological impact as 10,000 square meters of forest.
Aside from fighting smog and producing oxygen, the foliage is expected to provide insulation to the residential units.
It’ll be really cool to see how these trees grow in order to maximize access to sun, water, and nutrients. Also, a step towards a sci-fi solar punk future – I’m in.
I sure hope the structural engineers planned for the buildings to increase in mass as the trees grow.
Well, or else for maintenance labor to keep the trees rigorously trimmed to prevent too much increase in mass. Or both? (The wikipedia article says the engineering team consulted botanists and horticulturists in planning how much weight the buildings could bear, so it seems likely that the fact that trees grow would have come up.)
This is a pretty cool idea regardless and I hope they get it right. I wonder if anyone will do anything like this in New York.
This falls in the “I really hope they do it but I’ll believe it when I see it” category for me.
It’s been up for 2 years, inaugurated in October 2014, and still going strong. It’s won multiple awards.
Soooo many pictures. Too many for the Twitters, so I’m dusting off the ol’ Tumblr.
In anticipation of next season’s American Gods, my girlfriend and I visited the House on the Rock. It’s a little hard to explain, but here’s the short version: an architect/engineer climbed up a rock and built Frank Lloyd Wright’s worst nightmare. It struck Neil Gaiman so deeply he included it as a critical location in American Gods, and it’ll be featured in season 2 of the Starz series.
So we went. Behold.
This was what greeted us when we pulled up: a ¾ full parking lot, and a big one at that. I was a little surprised; Gaiman’s descriptions of the place gave me a seedier, hole-in-the-wall vibe, but this looked like some mid-level theme park entrance. Hmm.
We started the tour and ventured around … and I was starting to think we came to the wrong place. Sure, the statue in front was kind of iffy, and some of the rooms looked a little retro, maybe gauche … but not the mindfuck I had anticipated.
Then … then we came to the Infinity Room.
… um. Okay. Hey, there’s a glass floor at the midway point, what’s under ther–
What are those, bushes? Wait … treetops?
HOLY FUCK YOU BATMAN IT’S AN UNSUPPORTED ROOM HANGING OUT OVER A FUCKING CLIFF YOU GO JUMP UP AN ASSHOLE
(It also creaks and sways. I thought it was just an old house, not a FUCK YOU CLIFF OF DOOM.)
Once back on solid ground, we found a door.
After that, shit got … weird.
I call this the Impractical Rejected Weapons from Fallout 3 collection.
Including a literal HAND CANNON. What the what?
Um.
This is getting unsettling.
The pooping dog piggy bank’s eyes won’t stop following me.
Ooohhhkay … hey, look! Another one of them doors!
I wonder what’s behind this–
… well, I would have never guessed “replica American Main Street inside a house.” You win this round.
“I wish I was BIG.”
And because why the hell not, he’s a goddamned carnival pipe organ.
Then we came to this sign.
What? Bullshit. Bullshit you have a whale in this house. I will *shit myself* if you have a whale in th–
OH FUCK YOU MATE.
NO FUCK YOU THAT IS A THREE STORY TALL WHALE.
THAT IS A THREE STORY TALL WHALE FIGHTING A GIANT SQUID IN YOUR HOUSE YOU HAVE TOO MANY DRUGS
YOU PUT A FUCKING MOTORBOAT IN ITS MOUTH WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU
THIS DUDE GETS IT.
“I have seen some shit.”
And after the whale was just menagerie after menagerie of random audacious bullshit.
“Hello, I’ll be waiting in your closet tonight.”
“YOUR SILENCE GIVES CONSENT.”
Okay, this made me smile.
Fun fact: Burma Shave ads were the precursor to WTFIWWY.
Wait, where is that noise coming fro–
Oh yeah! There’s a HUGE assortment of these weird mechanical music machines assembled from real instruments, electronics, pneumatics, and madness.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Then we stumbled on the “Abominations in the Sight of God” section.
And at the very end … this. If you’ve read American Gods, you know *exactly* what this is. If you’re only watching the show, consider this spoilers for season 2.
Then we went outside, and there was a kitty.
I petted the kitty.
The end.
Bonus: Here is a machine that perfectly replicates the sound of Steve Martin falling down a flight of stairs.
So I’ve been there. It lives up to this post so very much. See we went up to busy my brother who lived in Madison at the time. He decided we should go see a Frank Loyd Wright house. We… ended up here instead so that was a bizarre mistake.
On top of that the current owners collected Santas. And it was sorta winter time so all the Santas when on display. Thousand of them. On all surfaces. Those main living areas? Covered in Santas. Yeeep.
We all agreed an amazing mistake on my brother’s part.
I took my kids this summer, they are 4 and 6. I thought it would be fun for them to half remember when they are older and question if it was all just a dream.
One thing that’s missing is the exit from the carousel room is a demon’s mouth. The room beyond I like to refer to as the boss fight.
The architect group, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh,
built this church in Borgloon, Belgium. It doesn’t look like anything
special… from certain angles.
From other angles, the structure reveals itself to be something else entirely.It consists of 100 layers of stacked
steel, that are equidistantly staggered in a way that illusively change
in appearance based on where the viewer is standing.
Yeah I think my games broken this church isn’t loading correctly
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 