Architect: Manfredi Nicoletti and Luca Nicoletti

This auditorium - one of the largest in the world - was awarded to Studio Nicoletti.Founded in the heart of the steppes only four years after the Independence of the Country, Astana is now a decade old new capital of Kazakhstan.

Founded in the heart of the steppes only four years after the Independence of the Country, Astana is now a decade old new capital of Kazakhstan. Astana's central nucleus occupies a rectangular area whose organizational axis is based upon a system of three piazzas. In the largest of these, dominated by the Presidential Palace, the State Auditorium faces the Senate House. The vastness of the location conjures up an impression of the immensity of the territory. Flying over the arid vastness of the steppes, we felt that what is really missing were flowers.We decided to build the "Flower of the Steppe".

Amidst this monumental void, the structures of the Auditorium rise like the petals of a flower animated through music. They create an envelope which encloses an internal piazza housing shops, balconies, restaurants, exhibition halls, two cinemas and the 3500 seats Auditorium entirely clad in wood inside and outside. Its shape is similar to a "Dombra" the typical Kazak instrument. Such internal multi-levelled piazza integrates with Astana's system of public squares, while providing a space protected from the harsh local climate: a temperature range from -40 to +40 and salty winds. The Auditorium interior space is also reflecting its suspended wood panelled ceiling like following a "whirling" motion, form a cavity above the orchestra to regulate acoustic absorption. To resist against the eroding effect of the salty winds coming from the steppe, the slanted surfaces of the outdoor sails are clad with glass panels reflecting the overchanging environment.

The Taiwan Center for Disease Control’s BioLab conceals a dangerous riddle within its outer skin. Usually only visible to the naked eye, the structure of the outer skin is laced with geometric patterns that represent the four symbols of the DNA sequence of the dangerous bacteria being studied within. If you’re not in awe of the structure itself, you may catch on to the message that Taiwan is trying to deliver: “Epidemic prevention is a war that we intend to win”.

The Biolab Squadron consists of labs sealed within two similar elements evoking Nautilus shells.The two shells, forming the Biolab Squadron, are a metaphoric example of the highest formal and technological sophistication of the most advanced laboratories conceived and the extremely harmful pathogenic viruses of our planet which are studied within themselves

The Biolab Squadron outer skin pattern is made of interlacing geometric incisions reproducing the four conventional symbols attributed to the DNA sequence of the bacteria being studied. The result is a surface perfectly homogenous and uniform in its overall material, but mysteriously engraved by symbols illegible by most people.

The project was jointly tendered by Manfredi Nicoletti and ARCO Architects & Designers receiving an honourable mention from the jury. The winning design was by Ricky Liu & Associates with CUHZA Inc.

Watch Made From Moon Dust ?

Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome has already shown the world that their creations need attention. The latest from the house is the “Moon Dust-DNA” collection, which includes watches made from moon dust, parts of the Apollo 11 rocket and bits of spacesuits.

"This gives value to the product and the brand. But the material must also be well known and it must be luxurious," Romain Jerome Chief Executive Yvan Arpa said in an interview at the group's headquarters. The watches, which start at $US15,000 and can cost as much as $US500,000, will be launched in Geneva on Wednesday and presented to customers at next year's Baselworld, the largest annual fair for the watch and jewelry industry.

The watches' dials, which feature tiny craters, will have dust in them from the moon rock that was taken from the first visit to the Earth's satellite.

Steel from the Apollo 11 space shuttle will be used for the case and the strap will be made up of fibers from a spacesuit worn during the ISS mission, Arpa said.

Treehouse Restaurant

Living in a luxury treehouse certainly brings out the child in you again. Now, the New Zealand Yellow Pages are building a restaurant that is 10 meters up on a redwood tree. A dinner at this tree-restaurant will be a totally fascinating experience. Presently under construction on a site north of Auckland, the design of the restaurant is taken care of by Pacific Environments Architects. A 60m tree-top walkway helps you reach the restaurant. The restaurant has ample space for 18 seating people and staff and it comes complete with a bar. Kitchen facilities and toilets are at the ground level.

WORLD’S FIRST INTEGRATED GSM/WIMAX HANDSET

Scartel (brand Yota), Russian provider of Mobile WiMAX, and HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today announced the HTC MAX 4G, the world’s first integrated GSM/WiMAX handset. Supported by a broad range of services based on Yota’s Mobile WiMAX network, the HTC MAX 4G delivers a rich multimedia and high quality telephony experience in a sleek and powerful touch screen handset.

“Yota was established to provide a unique set of mobile communication services to millions of people in Russia and today we have launched the first device and services to realise its full potential,” said Denis Sverdlov, General Director of Yota’s parent company, Scartel LLC (brand Yota). “We really believe that these innovative services, high-speed Internet and stylish HTC MAX 4G will completely change the communications industry, just as the introduction of cellular communications did many years ago.”

The Yota Mobile WiMAX network offers high-speed wireless Internet access that opens a new realm of entertainment and communication possibilities. The basic Yota Home package will provide subscribers with instant access to online games, maps, messaging and file exchange applications while on the move. In addition, the high-capacity Mobile WiMAX network with traffic prioritisation algorithms, allows online films, video and TV programmes to be viewed on the large WVGA screen. Broadcasting 14 free channels at launch and 23 channels by the end of 2008, Yota TV introduces a powerful mobile television experience. The vibrant, 3.8 inch 800x480 screen of the HTC MAX 4G can display up to nine TV channels simultaneously, allowing quick and easy channel surfing and programme selection. Thanks to the device’s TV-out capability, users can also watch content on the big screen, putting the HTC MAX 4G at the very heart of the mobile entertainment experience.

For music-lovers, Yota Music offers an extensive online music catalogue of more than 50,000 titles, including a wide range of music from both international and independent music labels. Users can choose to either play the tracks direct from the online catalogue, or download them to the HTC MAX 4G’s 8GB of onboard flash memory.

Key HTC MAX 4G specifications:

• Processor: Qualcomm® ESM7206A™ 528 MHz
• Platform: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Memory: ROM: 256MB / RAM: 288MB / Flash: 8 GB
• Dimensions: 113.5mm X 63.1mm X 13.9mm
• Weight: 151 grams (with battery)
• Display: 3.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with 480 x 800 WVGA resolution
• Network:
• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:900/1800/1900 MHz
• Yota Mobile WiMAX 2,5-2.7 GHz
• Device Control: TouchFLO™ 3D
• GPS: Inbuilt GPS
• Connections:
• VoIP
• Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
• HTC ExtUSB™
• Main camera: High-resolution with autofocus
• Second: VGA-camera
• Additional:
• Motion G-sensor (automatically rotating picture)
• Proximity sensor (saving energy while talking due to the switching the display off)
• FM-radio
• Audio: Ring tone formats:
• AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV
• 40 polyphonic and standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
• Battery: Li-Pol, 1500 mAh
• GSM: up to 350 hours
• VoIP: up to 50 hours
• AC Adapter: Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
• DC output: 5V and 1A

Source : HTC

Roofus – The Next Generation Pet

Roofus Job is to collect and dump the snow via remote or autonomously. When there’s no snow to move, Roofus can be fitted out with a variety of attachments for more mundane tasks such as mowing and cleaning. It features two electric motors, caterpillar tracks, and sensors on each side of its body for navigation, tips the scales at a touch over 100kg it’s and can take 250kg per load.

Designer: Michal Glogowski

Bruce Munro’s Field of Light at the Eden Project

The following is from Bruce Munro:

Bruce Munro’s iconic Field of Light sculpture is now installed at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

The piece can now be seen on the sloping grass roof of the visitors centre, called the Link building, between the famous Rainforest and Mediterranean Biomes, and will remain there until Spring 2009. The sculpture first came to widespread public attention when a scaled-down version was exhibited in the Pirelli Garden at the V&A in 2004.

Bruce Munro and five assistants worked over three days to install Field of Light at the Eden Project. It is made of 6,000 acrylic stems, through which fibre optic cables run, each crowned with a clear glass sphere. There are 11 external projectors; the stems themselves hold no electric power at all. The installation covers an area of 60 x 20 meters, using 24, 000 meters of fibre optic cable. It’s best viewed after dark.

“I think Field of Light looks fantastic at the Eden Project” said Munro “ I’m always slightly nervous before we’ve installed a piece, in case somehow it doesn’t work in the location. But I’m really happy at how it’s worked out.”

Munro was inspired to make Field of Light during a trip through the Australian red desert 15 years ago. Driving along the Stewart Highway he would stop every night at roadside campsites, which are often in stark contrast to the barren desert that surrounds them: sprinkler-fed oases of green, each one displaying a larger than life sculpture of surreal design and proportions- perhaps a giant banana, pineapple or Merino sheep.

Munro was transfixed by the way the red desert was barren until it rained and then, as if from nowhere, dormant seeds would burst into bloom. He made a series of sketches in the notebook carried in his pocket since art college days, and the idea refused to dislodge from his mind.

Field of Light, like a giant surreal camp-side banana, is an alien installation in the midst of nature. And like dry desert seeds lying in wait for the rain, the sculpture’s fibre optic stems lie dormant until darkness falls, and then under a blazing blanket of stars they flower with gentle rhythms of light. ‘Field of Light’ is about the desert as much as the roadside campsites- and like much of Munro’s work is characterised by an almost mystical passion for nature teamed with a robust sense of humour.

The Eden Project welcomes over a million visitors a year, using exhibits, events, workshops and educational programmes to help people learn how to look after nature in a time of radical change.

The Eden Project mounts regular exhibitions by internationally renowned artists. Field of Light will be in place through the Winter Season when Eden transforms into a winter wonderland- with a Christmas market and ice-skating, curling, roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, hot chocolate and choirs.

In the Pipeline from Bruce Munro A prototype of Bruce Munro’s newest installation, a massive illuminated maze synchronised with choral music called Water Towers, will be exhibited at Rook Lane Arts in Frome in March 2009. Plans are afoot for a full scale Water Tower to be shown at the Sustainable Institute in South Africa. The towers are made from recycled materials lit by innovative hydrogen-cell technology, which power seven-watt LEDs and fibre optics. Munro is building this piece with the help of local communities and schools and hopes it will bring a smile to visitor’s faces.

Windows Azure

Windows Azure, a new operating system that resides completely on the Internet. The Azure™ Services Platform is designed to help developers quickly and easily create, deploy, manage, and distribute web services and applications on the Internet. This will help developers create custom applications that run entirely on the Internet, accessible from web browsers on PCs, laptops, netbooks, smartphones and cell phones. Microsoft hopes that businesses will use Azure on Microsoft's servers to do all their computing.

Use Windows Azure to:

* Add Web service capabilities to existing packaged applications.
* Build, modify, and distribute applications to the Web with minimal on-premises resources.
* Perform services (large-volume storage, batch processing, intense or large-volume computations, etc.) off premises.
* Create, test, debug, and distribute Web services quickly and inexpensively.
* Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources.
* Reduce the effort and costs of IT management.

Fishes are DJ here?

Yeah that’s True!!!Check The Video For Yourself!!!

This sound-installation, winner of the Rumos Arte Cibernetica Prize (Itau Cultural Institute - Sao Paulo), promotes an interference of four carp fish in a glass tank, over the sound output of mp3 players (iPod's and others) of the visitors. The animals' movements and the proximity among them work as a parameter for modifying and juxtaposing the audience's music tracks in real time. With this idea, new sound landscapes are created, not only from the interaction among the fish, but also from unveiling the intimate music archives, which are "submersed" underneath the mp3 player devices.

The visitor can connect his audio device to the interface, and chose a song of his preference. It is also possible for the user to record the track in the system in order to let the song be modified during the next visitor's interactions. The visitor will as well listen to the previous visitors' songs, as the system juxtaposes the previous visitors' tracks with the current visitor's song. Accordingly, the piece will be always meshing up two different songs.

The two tracks are submitted to different modification processes, both building a real time continuity between the swimming of the carp fish and the levels of distortion, which can vary from an intense reverberation to a simulation of the hearing underwater.