The new TKTS booth in Times Square supports glass benches atop two-inch-thick windows
The largest load-bearing glass structure in the world, the new TKTS booth in Times Square, supports glass benches atop two-inch-thick windows. Sounds delicate, but it regularly holds 500 foot-stomping Jumbotron watchers. For reinforcement, engineers at Dewhurst Macfarlane used a plastic film called SentryGlas [...]

Theme rooms for the furry friendly

French workers tired of the rat race have been offered the chance to live like a hamster for the night instead. For only 99 euros a night (£88), people in Nantes can cage themselves in the specially-designed hotel.  (video after jump…)

The ZeroEdge Aquariums look cool, where the water pours over the edge and makes it look like there’s no sides to the pool. ZeroEdge Aquarium can be designed in any size or shape and can be positioned your home or office.

9h Capsule Hotel
Japan’s getting yet another capsule hotel, but this one aims to provide something unprecedented: Luxury. (Pics)
 

Waterpleinen
To launch its 14th anthology, Water, Alphabet City has organized a series of events this week in Toronto, two of which are the HYDROCity symposium and its accompanying exhibition at the University of Toronto. Another event is a lunchtime talk in which Jeroen Bodewits will discuss Waterpleinen, a project designed by Florian Boer and Marco [...]

Polymorphic mimicry in Heliconius cydno alithea in western Ecuador, where the white form mimics the white species Heliconius sapho and the yellow form mimics the yellow species Heliconius eleuchia.
Breaking up may actually not be hard to do, say scientists who’ve found a population of tropical butterflies that may be on its way to a split [...]

Fluid
Designed by Melbourne-based Peddle Thorpe Architects, Fluid is a whale-inspired pavilion that is sure to be a showstopper at the much-anticipated 2012 World Expo in Yeosu, South Korea. (Pics)

Abu Dhabi is probably tired of Dubai always stealing the thunder as the star of the United Arab Emirates, but that may change with the construction of a F1 spec race track and a Ferrari-based theme park set to open in 2010.
 

Do you like to block the world out completely when you’re working at your desk? Copenhagen-based design team GamFratesi has created a prototype for a sleek, dinosaur egg-like work environment that they call Rewrite. It reminds me of those cubicles they had at my grad school library, except they’re a lot nicer-looking.

The world’s smallest working model train set has been unveiled – measuring just 1/8th of an inch by 1/4 of an inch.
At 1-35200 scale to the real thing, the five-carriage train travels around an oval route including a ride through a tunnel.
Created by New Jersey model train enthusiast David Smith, the model was built using [...]

South Korea’s super skyscraper
A new super skyscraper has just been announced for South Korea and will tower over all other buildings in Asia when it is complete in 2014. From a global perspective, Lotte Super Tower 123, designed by Kohn Pederson Fox, falls just short of taking the title, and will be not the tallest [...]

Solta Island Resort
A rotating hotel is to form the centrepiece of a new resort near Split in Croatia. Designed by Richard Hywel Evans of Studio RHE, specialists in holiday resort design, the concept was proposed from a desire to provide sea views from each room.  (Pics)
 

Neal Bridge
The Neal Bridge is barely a bump in the road for motorists roaring down Route 100 south of this central Maine town. It’s a modest bit of the nation’s infrastructure — two lanes wide and 34 feet long, enough to span a small stream.  The bridge is newer than most, as suggested by [...]

Taichung Convention Center
Taiwan’s new Taichung Convention Center will be covered in solar-powered skin that naturally ventilates the structure reducing energy consumption. (Pics)
 

Featured Invention at the Colorado Inventor Showcase
Sculpture Brick is the newest veneer application process on the market today. Over the past 30 years this product has been developed into what is now patented versatile mortar enhancement process that simulates the appearance and texture of brick, but at up to half the cost. It can provide [...]

Stonehenge offers many mysteries

This Canadian brainstorm actually makes sense. The town proposing the Stonehenge replica is in a compatible global location. The folks at The Vancouver Sun tell us more.
“The town of Barriere is hatching a plan to place a concrete replica of England’s Stonehenge at the centre of a major park development.
Barriere’s version would [...]

Boston architects Howeler + Yoon and Los Angeles digital designers Squared Design Lab have designed a conceptual structure for Boston, where an unfinished building would be covered in modular pods growing algae for biofuel.  The pods would be continuously rearranged by robotic arms (powered by the micro-algae produced) to ensure the optimum growing conditions for [...]

Archaeologists have found new clues from the Mayan ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
“The people just walked away and left everything in place,” says archaeologist George Bey of [...]

Ultra cool bathtub with built in TV
Korean bath company Saturn knew it had made the right decision when it hired famous designer Karim Rashid to design its latest creation, the TV bathtub. Karim Rashid has done full justice to his task and the result is for all to see. This white, oval-shaped tub is made of LAR [...]

The site SpaceInvading brings us four architechtural wonders of today.  This one is the “Habitable Polyhedron” and it has a unique function.

The project, meant for a family house back yard in the suburbs, aimed at designing a small park or opened area where the young parents and their newborn child would enjoy a independent space [...]

Bozen, Denmark’s E-Move Charging Station is the work of that country’s entrepreneur, Valentin Runggaldier, and — while those renders make it look like a flight of fancy — it’s actually real and going through a series of tests. (Pics)

Looks like a great place to park your housing complex
The closer you come to the center of a city the more difficult it is to find unused space available for new construction, except perhaps at the cost of all-too-valuable public parks and other civic places. Building above and below bridges is thus of increasing interest [...]

Soaking in a bathtub is relaxing. Staring at the stars is also relaxing. So I guess it’s only natural to assume that combining the two is even more relaxing. Right?
The Nirvana Bathtub is basically an normal tub that’s been outfitted with 360 LED lights on the surface. Touch controls allow you to adjust the lights [...]

The Greener Home Competition
Fifty Longmont homeowners could get full-house makeovers.
But that wouldn’t mean new couches, matching drapes and fresh paint.
These makeovers would include installing solar panels, wind turbines and data-control centers to manage energy use and safety systems.
Englewood-based DaVinci Quest is putting together a global contest to invite teams to design environmentally friendly smart homes [...]

The Lego House
I can confidently wager that some of you have spent a fair amount of time building miniature cities with Legos at some point in your lives. I know I did. Not only cities, but spaceships and boats, and forts, and . . . well, you get the picture. But James May, a toy fanatic from [...]