Late last week, a bitter cold snap that swept across the U.S. brought temporary chaos to Chicago‘s south loop when the sprinkler system failed atop a 21-story hotel and storage facility. Water cascaded down a fire escape and quickly froze to a tower of ice. Street art photographer Andrew Hickey halted by and recorded some shots of this beautiful sight before it was cleared up a couple of hours later.
A $4 billion downtown Seattle office project from Amazon will open today, revealing a mini rainforest – dubbed the Amazon spheres – contained within three biosphere domes. Named ‘The Spheres,’ the glass orbs have no enclosed offices, conference spaces, or desks, and will be a place for Amazon workers to escape from the drudges of everyday office life. Employees can meet in tree houses suspended under towering trees or walk along stone paths beside waterfalls decorated with some 400 species of plants.
Following seven years of planning, at an unveiling event, today Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to the podium to introduce the firm’s new Seattle spheres office space. The HQ comprises of three steel-framed, glass-enclosed spheres – the tallest of which is 90 feet tall and 130 feet in diameter, Bloomberg News reported. They are home to more than 40,000 plants from around the world creating a tropical-like environment and botanical immersion amongst the urban Seattle landscape.
As well as tree house meeting rooms, rivers and waterfalls, across the three biospheres main features include a four-story living wall, paludariums, and epiphytic trees. the climate of the mini-rainforest will be controlled, being held at a constant 72 degrees while the humidity will be 60%. There is even a ventilation system that simulates an outdoor breeze. The spheres are a result of amazon’s studies into the improvement of office spaces by linking them to nature.
‘Our goal with the spheres was to create a unique gathering place where employees could collaborate and innovate together, and where the Seattle community could gather to experience biodiversity in the center of the city,’ said John Schuettler, Amazon vice president of global real estate and facilities. ‘I am very proud and thankful to the entire team who made the spheres a reality – they did a terrific job from the design all the way to the finishing touches. we are thrilled to officially open the doors.’
Said to have created more than 600 full-time jobs, the project will also provide educational opportunities to the Seattle community through tours, field trips and partnerships with local schools and universities. The project has been designed by international firm NBBJ during the application process three years ago, also responsible for amazon’s HQ1, which is also in Seattle.
Scientist and photographer Igor Siwanowicz have made a name for themselves assigning the unbelievable variety of shapes, colors, and structures of creatures from the planet. His most pictures of unique caterpillars include wild variations like feathery blue spikes, curling burnt-orange horns, and long black whiskers. Siwanowicz also works as a neurobiologist in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute‘s Janelia Farm Research Campus in Virginia. He shares over ten years of his photography on photo.net.
David Catá is known for sewing portraits and planting dirt under his skin — is beginning a new journal of memories, horizons. Once again, the stories will be written in ribbon, and the pages will be his palms. All these are just the first pages of that journal.
It isn’t about pain or self-infliction; the choice of canvas is one of the most intimate ones could be courageous — that the tissue of the center being one of the few more amorous to etch on. When he would, he probably would. In his videos, David Catá seems to spontaneously decide what’s worthy of piercing his skin for. A tired lover, a snowy mountain, a lighthouse guarded by a high fence onto a mountain, the sea: these are the type of muses he chooses to be a part of the body for awhile, before recording them, before ripping them away, before starting again with a fresh needle and landscape.
h/t designboom.com
Swiss sculptor Sibylle Pasche transforms large segments of Italian marble to boulder-like sculptures which are coated in a porous net. These holes offer a peek inside the works’ intricate insides while also evoking the structure of a capillary system or the dense composition of a sea sponge. These openings visually battle with the density and weight of her preferred material, which could often weigh up to several tons.
Pasche was born in Switzerland and studied art at the Liceo Artistico in Zurich. She currently keeps two European spaces for her job, splitting time between her studios in Switzerland and Carrara, Italy. You can view more of her large, sculptural forms on her Facebook and website.
