Infinity is way up there...

If there's something like the ultimate infinity pool, I'm pretty sure it's located at the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore. The hotel in itself is already quite bizarre: it's the most expensive hotel in the world at about 5,2 billion pounds (which is about double of the former record-breaking hotel, the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi).



The Marina Bay Sands has 2,560 rooms, costing from $500 a night upwards. That's quite impressive. Then, it has a casino, a museum, a theatre, a convention centre and indoor canals. Even more so impressive.
But the most impressive part of the hotel is, in my eyes, the so-called skypool, spanning the top of the three towers of the hotel, at the 55th floor. The pool itself is about three times as long as an olympic size pool, and seems to end in the air. That's because the water flows over the edge into a catchment, situated a bit lower. It's pretty spectacular to be able to swim on the 55th floor, with the skyline of Singapore in the back, and not to have a (visible) edge between you and the surrounding.

The complex is designed by Moshe Safdie, and I found it via the Daily Mail website.

people or no people, that's the question...

Recently, I saw some images of the completed "La Llotja" project by Mecanoo. I'm not going into details about what I think about this project, because it triggered a whole different subject: I recalled seeing renderings that looked pretty similar to the final result not that long ago. But something was different. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, until I checked the renderings again. Then, the difference became quite clear...


Look at this image (the render), and look at the image above (the photograph), and think about the role people play in the images. It's not just about this example by Mecanoo, but it happens in virtually every project lately: the renderings are filled to the brim with smiling, happy people, whilst the final photographs are completely devoid of any people. It makes me think what the reasoning behind this logic would be.

Is it because the target audience is different? A rendering is aimed at a laymens' audience, whom architects try to sell an "atmosphere". But for the final photos, the target audience are the architectural magazines, for whom people are mere annoying clutter. Or is there something else at play? I'd be curious to know the reasoning behind this selective (re)presentation of people in architectural imagery...

What if you cannot get it up...

I never planned to write a blog entry about the credit crunch. All the talking about the financial crisis is, in my opinion, merely solidifying it: the fact that people think about other people talking about what could happen to other people might cause them to take more heed and to think that there's more going on than actually is.
Think about the stock exchange, for example: the prices of stocks and bonds aren't a reflection of the actual value of an enterprise: it's a projection of what people think the value of the enterprise is. Even more so, since stock prices are derived from the actions of large groups of people, the act to buy or sell on the stock market has to do with the considerations about what other people might think about the value of the business.

I don't mean to come across condesending, since I believe that there is actually real trouble in quite some places and economies. And the people that are losing their jobs, that's very real, too. But part of the crisis is making eachother believe the crisis is a crisis - which creates an ever bigger crisis...

This made me stray quite a bit from the post I wanted to make. I simply wanted to say: because of the financial crisis, some building projects have been put on a (semi)permanent pause. In some cases it's actually for the better, in some cases it's for the worse.

Oobject.com did something cool: they made a list of the 15 biggest high-rise buildings that have been put on hold, worldwide. Like 56 Leonard Street (New York), by Herzog & DeMeuron, a project I'd been curious to see develop further - it could have been an interesting new kind of structure (see above).
On the other hand: I'd almost say "Hats off to the credit crunch" - since it was able to stop an insanity like the Dubai Towers (in Dubai, of course), from happening...

New York, New York

Apple is so omnipresent as a brand nowadays, that all other businesses that operate in the same kinds of field appear to be lost. No matter how good the product is, you are not going to beat the coolness-factor of the Ipod, Iphone, Macbook Air or any of the products that Apple produces.

So Sony did a smart thing to promote their Walkman cum MP3-player: they hired the international advertisement firm Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney to come up with a slick advertisment, which can strategically work to put Sony Walkman right up there with the Ipod. And I think this relatively simple advertisment works like a charm: it's a subtle and beautiful way to sell the "feel" of the Sony Walkman, instead of the "product" of the Sony Walkman...