Incredible new architecture

South Korea's Samsung Corporation has won the contract to build the world's tallest building, the Burj Tower in Dubai.




Samsung won the $306 million deal, after an 11-month bid process.

The concrete and steel tower will be part of an $8 billion 500-acre project in the United Arab Emirates.

Workers have already started to clear the ground for the 800-metre high, 160-floor skyscraper and it should be completed by November 2008.




Burj Dubai will radiate out in a series of ellipses from the sky breaking tower encompassing residential, commercial, hotel, entertainment, and the world largest shopping mall. The planned Old Town with its intimate streets and architectural detail will create special ambience with the mystery of yesterdays Arabia. Old Town will feature every kind of restaurant from five-star dining to outdoor cafes overlooking parks and waterways.




I thought about expanding more on other awesome United Arab Emirates architecture, but I think I'll just post what I have.

10x10

I came across an interesting site called 10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris: www.tenbyten.org.



I thought I would try to describe it, but instead I'll just use his own description of the site:

10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life.

10x10 is ever-changing, ever-growing, quietly observing the ways in which we live. It records our wars and crises, our triumphs and tragedies, our mistakes and milestones. When we make history, or at least the headlines, 10x10 takes note and remembers.

Each hour is presented as a picture postcard window, composed of 100 different frames, each of which holds the image of a single moment in time. Clicking on a single frame allows us to peer a bit deeper into the story that lies behind the image. In this way, we can dart in and out of the news, understanding both the individual stories and the ways in which they relate to each other.

10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds.

With no human editors and no regulation, 10x10 is open and free, raw and fresh, and consequently a unique way of following world events. In 10x10, we respond instinctively to patterns in the grid, visual indicators of relevance. When we see a frequently repeated image, we know it’s important. When we see a picture of a movie star next to a picture of dead bodies, we understand the extremes that exist in our world. Scanning a grid of pictures can be more intuitive than reading headlines, for it lets the news come to life, and everything feels a bit less distant, a bit closer to heart, and maybe, if we're lucky, gives us pause to think.

It's interesting how our words define us.


We made the list.