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.

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.

He has a new work on the corner of the London School of Economic’s (LSE) New Academic Building called ‘Square the Block’, a striking but subtle addition to the original building. It’s worth a look by all accounts.

When Wilson won this competition in 2007 his proposal was to place a corner where none existed. This huge five-storey structure is remarkably deceptive due to its construction from jesmonite, a lightweight moulded acrylic fibreglass, the attention to detail and matching of colouring, which is so precise that you could easily be convinced into thinking it’s the real thing.

More here

“Manchester’s regeneration has accelerated to place it as a frequently cited exemplar of British urban policy. Questions remain, however, as to whether the trickledown urbanism to which it is host represents a sustainable urban future, most especially in social terms.

To base an urban strategy, as Manchester has done, on the needs of the independently mobile is to abandon the young, the elderly and the poor to and impoverished existence.“

The two sides of modern day Manchester?
Shameless advertisement in front of the Beetham Tower 2005-06

Letterpool is a photography site dedicated to found type on the streets of Liverpool.

This amazing architecture is situated in Singapore at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University. It’s a 5 story facility with a grass covered roof.

Not a patch on Victoria building though…