Even though we are not used to publishing villas on Edibek.com, this particular house caught my attention. If you look beyond the beauty of its shape, you can feel the complexity behind the structure that holds so discretely the building together. You might also feel, like I do, that you should live in a house like this one.     Dupli Casa has won this years "House of Year" competition from World Architecture News (WAN). This following text is from them: Dupli Casa displays sophisticated shape manipulation to transform a simplistic design into a complex yet comprehensible super-home.     “The geometry of the building is based on the footprint of the house that previously was located on the site,” say Dupli Casa’s designers J. Mayer H. Architects. “Originally built in 1984 and with many extensions and modifications since then, the new building echoes the ‘family archaeology’ by duplication and rotation. Lifted up, it creates a semi-public space on ground level between two layers of discretion."     The design therefore reflects a family vernacular – the different levels of a family presenting as twisted versions of the next, performing different functions but communicating as a whole. "The skin of the villa performs a sophisticated connection between inside and outside and ...

Architects Bosse and Wallisser of LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture Asia Pacific) just unveiled at the Cityscape property fair in Dubai Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower. The 59-storey skyscraper will has been built in collaboration with former Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher, and is described as “branded architecture’s next step”. Construction should start in 2009 and should end around June 2011.  

The world's largest LED screen is being constructed  by Tameer Holding in in Dubai's Majan district of Dubailand. The enormous screen will be on one of the facades of a commercial office building named The Podium. It will be 33 stories high and be readable from up to a mile (1.5km) away. However, the biggest challenge will be to the flow of natural light inside the office space, as promised. Once again, Dubai will have a "world's biggest..." construction. Now, what can they still build that they don't already have?

Dubai developers Nakheel just announced they are going to build a one kilometre high (3,280 feet) tower, the Nakheel Tower, beating the city state's own world record (with the the yet to be completed Burj Dubai, which reached a height of 688 metres (2,257 feet) last month and is still growing). The tower will be built in a whole new town that will cover 270 hectares. It is estimated the entire project will cost $95bn, of which $38.12bn will be for the tower alone. Nakheel has already built about $60bn worth of projects in Dubai. Nakheel Tower will have four individual towers within a single structure, which is very rare.

After all the conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks in september 2001 that have been seen around the internet, here is the official technical explanation of how fire could bring down the 47 stories Salomon brothers building, in 6.5 seconds. The skyscraper went down many hours after the attacks, simply because it took some time for the fire to destroy the metallic structure. This video was made by CBS and the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) a few days ago.   The 3D videos from NIST can be seen here. More Info NIST: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc082108.html

Here are some excellent video from Discovery Channel about Beijing National Stadium. We had already seen (previous article) some of the special facts of the construction. These video illustrate the whole thing, from the idea to the architectural concept, to the engineering challenge and the construction. If you find the videos too long, you might want to jump to parts 3 and 4 that have the most information about the engineering and the construction.   Part 1 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqBdlnSxlis[/youtube] Part 2 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7va-cLxtEQ[/youtube] Part 3 (Do not miss the second half) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks8kbZ8ftPw[/youtube] Part 4 (Do not miss!) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F9H-gTTKMI[/youtube] Part 5 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBLb60s9XXg[/youtube]   Source: Ingenieria en la red (Spanish)

The Moscow International Business Centre (MIBC or “Moscow City”) is an enormous multi-billion dollar project in the Presnenskaya Embankment area in the heart of Moscow’s Kremlin. The MIBC plan started in 1992 with the will to convert the old urban area of Presnenskaya, with its factories and industrial complexes, into a world class business complex. The project covers a square kilometer of land and incorporates all the elements for work and lifestyle.