This is an incredible building and quite a milestone. The Heliotrope is the worlds first energy positive solar home.

The design allows for the building to rotate and follow the trajectory of the sun. The brainchild of Architect Ralph Disch, this provided the catalyst for the extraordinary Sonnenschiff Solar City in Freiburg. A whole city that produces 4 times the amount of energy it consumes.

Frank Gehry is best known for designing Bilbao’s Guggenhein Museum which finished top in a recent Vanity Fair peer poll of the most important buildings of the last 30 years. Here’s a collection of some of his slightly less celebrated projects.

We’re a massive fan of Thomas Heatherwick’s studio. I thought it would be a good time to see how their award winning design for the British Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai is performing. As a reminder, the theme of the Expo is “Better City, Better Life” and a key client objective was for the UK Pavilion to be one of the five most popular attractions.

If you haven’t seen it before, the Seed Cathedral is a 20-meter high building, constructed from 60,000 transparent 7.5-metre long optical strands, each of which has embedded within its tip a seed. The interior is silent and illuminated only by the daylight that has filtered past each seed through each optical hair.

I can’t get over how impossible it looks. Like a 3D render.

The Inside is just as outstanding.

According to the website, the project has been a hugh success and consistently ranked by visitors as one of the most popular pavilions with 50,000 people visiting each day. If you look closely you will see a faint Union Jack in the shape. Genius.

Construction of the 330m (105 story) tall Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, began in 1987. The hotel was designed to have 3,000 rooms, 7 revolving restaurants, casinos, nightclubs and lounges. The building should have been opened in 1989. If finished, it would have been the 7th largest building in the world. (It’s still the 2nd tallest hotel globally).

Development came to a grinding halt in 1992, due to funding issues, electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine. It had cost – up to that point – a whopping $750 million (or 2% of the country’s GDP).

It’s ambitious size casts an ominous shadow over the rest of the city. It’s brutalism reminds me of a ministry of truth, fitting for the dictatorship government that sanctioned the project.

This is the original artists impression. The building was supposed to be clad in blue.

Work is now underway to finish the project. Here you can see the cladding being added.

Reports from South Korea estimate that it will cost in excess of $2 billion to finish the hotel. That’s equivalent to a staggering 10% of North Korean GDP.

10%!

The ultimate white elephant…

Coffee shop in Halifax

An unfortunate bridge railing design when casting a shadow.

Thanks to Karen at forepoint for the nod.