Dubai to Build World’s Largest Arch Bridge

Dubai is set to spend $817-million on building the world’s largest arch bride, at 617-feet tall and 1-mile in length. Expect it to be in service by 2012.

Dubai is the Tetsuo of cities, expanding so fast it’s on the verge of creating of its own universe. And architecture that looks like it’s from the 22nd century only adds to the sheer grandeur of its growth—this bridge, envisioned by NY architecture firm Fxfowle, will be the largest and tallest arch bridge in the world, at one mile long and 670 feet tall.

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Shell-shaped Nautilus House is gorgeous inside and out

Who cares what the neighbors think? Let’s build a house that looks like a snail shell! That’s just what a Mexico City couple did, with the help of the astonishing imagination of those wild and wooly architects at Senosiain Arquitectos.

It’s more of a sculpture than a dwelling. Taking cues from a Nautilus shell, the house is put together using ferrocement construction, a technique involving a frame of steel-reinforced chicken wire with a special two-inch-thick composite of concrete spread over it, resulting in a structure that’s earthquake-proof and maintenance-free.

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Ice Jewellery

Katharina Ludwig puts the emphasis on water’s value by incorporating it into her jewellery concept. The value of body warmth is also underlined, the energy that melts the ice. Some of the pieces, like the earrings and ring, have tiny cup-like forms built in, to catch the remaining drops of water, but others allow the ice to melt directly onto the wearer. Every time the jewellery melts, it must be recreated to be worn (or born) again.

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New Record: World’s Largest Wind Turbine (7+ Megawatts)

The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. A quick US calculation would be 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.

The turbine being installed in Emden, Germany by Enercon . They will be testing several types of storage systems in combination with the multi-megawatt wind turbines.

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