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Abandoned temple Thailand
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Buildings
Exploring an Abandoned Mansion
No location provided. Appears to be the US or Canada.
We were on a road trip driving through the mountains, and when we looked over deep into the woods we saw a building over grown. we decided to go check it out, what we found made our jaws drop
this mansion’s jewel was its indoor pool
Upper deck
Family Room/Satan ritual Room
Indoor tennis court
The Panama City, Panama Skyscraper Boom of the 2000’s
For several years, Panama City’s skyline remained largely unchanged, with only four buildings exceeding 150 m (492 feet). Beginning in the early 2000s, the city experienced a large construction boom, with new buildings rising up all over the city.
F&F Tower
Here’s The Donald Again!
The JW Marriott Panama (formerly The Bahia Grand Panama, before that Trump International Hotel & Tower Panama, and before that Trump Ocean Club) is a 70 floors, 2,710,000 sq ft (252,000 m2), mixed-use waterfront hotel and condominium tower development in Panama City, Panama, in the area of Punta Pacifica. It opened in 2011 as the first international “named branded development” of The Trump Organization. At 70 stories, it is the tallest building in Panama and the tallest building in Central America.
Moscow Gets Disneyland Type Theme Park: Dream Island
Dream Island (Russian: Остров Мечты; Ostrov Mechty) is an amusement park in Moscow that opened 29 February 2020. It is the largest indoor theme park in Europe.
The park covers 300,000 square meters. The appearance is in the style of a fairytale castle similar to Disneyland. The park has 29 unique attractions with many rides, as well as pedestrian malls with fountains and cycle paths. The complex includes a landscaped park along with a concert hall, a cinema, a hotel, a children’s sailing school, restaurants and shops.
The value of investment is $1.5 billion. Construction of the park began in March 2016. Construction was halted in early 2017 for financial reasons but was re-financed and restarted by late 2017.
There are nine themed zones, including Hotel Transylvania licensed from Sony Pictures, the Smurfs, licensed from Belgian company IMPS, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Viacom, and Hello Kitty from Sanrio of Japan. Five characters were created by artists specifically for the park, such as Mowgli in the land of the dinosaurs, the world of Pinocchio and Papa Carlo, and the Castle of the Snow Queen.
There are promenades resembling the streets of world capitals and famous cities, including Rome, with the Colosseum in miniature; Barcelona with Gaudi’s buildings; and London. The park’s 72 acres are covered by Europe’s largest glass dome, to allow operation during Moscow’s winters.
Admission for a family of four on weekends is 11,000 rubles, or about US$163.
Two very Unique Hotels
The world’s first guitar-shaped hotel has officially opened for business. Standing 450 feet tall is the new face of the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida—a surprisingly striking piece of architecture considering (or because?) it resembles a giant instrument.
The curvaceous building is part of a $1.5 billion expansion on the existing entertainment complex that wrapped up construction this summer. Designed by Hard Rock International’s go-to architect, Steve Peck of the Las Vegas-based firm Klai Juba Wald Architecture, the unprecedented structure took nearly 10 years to design and build. The 36-story hotel is the type of architectural landmark fit for the Hard Rock brand; it even features a rockin’ light show across its reflective glass facade.
Created in conjunction with DeSimone Consulting Engineers, who led the engineering on the project, the tower blends into the dark sky at night. The design team worked with Boston lighting designer DCL and Montreal digital agency Float4 to integrate 16,800 V-sticks (strips of LED video fixtures) on the rim of the guitar and the six vertical strings that run down its middle. Each evening, the hotel becomes a temporary light installation with interactive choreography set to music from Float4 and LED experts SACO Technologies.
Hotel Inntel Zaandam, Netherlands
Zaan is known for its charming and iconic green cottages. They just aren’t usually stacked 11 stories high to make one gigantic hotel that many have deemed an architectural monstrosity.
Inspired by the small cottages of the region and Claude Monet’s painting of the blue house of Zaandam, architect Wilfried van Winden set about creating a hotel that was both futuristic and retro simultaneously. Complete with 160 rooms, Turkish baths, a bar, and a swimming pool, Winden’s masterpiece has all the regular amenities of a hotel. Yet its design manages to allude to the idea that there is no place like home.
Altogether, the exterior features nearly 70 cottage facades, each with a varied shade of green and different window layout. Topped off with a red-orange roof, the stacked-cottage Inntel Hotel is one of the first parts of a revitalization campaign in the city, aimed at restoring its buildings without losing the charm of the town’s trademark architecture.
Intriguing Residential Building in NYC
American Copper Buildings (originally known as 626 First Avenue) is a dual-tower residential skyscraper in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City (US). The building was developed by JDS Development and Largo and was designed by SHoP Architects.
Construction began on the site in mid-2014, and the copper cladding was first applied in mid-2015. As of late 2015, the towers were nearly topped-out, and installation of the bridge between the two towers began in January 2016. A website for the project appeared in April 2016, and the name of the towers was changed from 626 First Avenue to the American Copper Buildings. In December 2016, the project received a $500 million senior mortgage from American International Group along with a $160 million mezzanine loan from Apollo Global Management and SL Green Realty.
The two separate structures did not open at the same time for renters, with the first opening in April 2017 and the other set to open in late 2018. A cafe called Hole in the Wall opened in the building’s base in June 2019.
The exterior of the building is clad in copper. This metal cladding is similar to other SHoP-designed buildings, such as Barclay’s Center. As of April 2016, the copper exterior has begun to patina, and the structures will eventually change color entirely. The two towers are designed such that they appear to “dance” with each other. They are also connected by a bridge approximately 300 feet from the ground, which will be three levels in height. The taller tower will be 540 feet in height, and the shorter tower will be 470 feet tall.
| Height | |
|---|---|
| Roof | 540 feet (160 m) (West tower) 470 feet (140 m) (East tower) |
The bridge connecting the development’s two towers includes a pool and a lounge for residents. The building includes a squash court and a gym with views of the East River. Other amenities are concentrated on the top of the east tower, with the top of the west tower reserved for mechanical space.
Interesting place for a swimming pool.
Coober Pedy
Coober Pedy is a town in northern South Australia, 846 km (526 mi) north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. In the 2016 Census, there were 1,762 people in Coober Pedy (State Suburbs). Of these, 962 were male and 801 were female. There were 302 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people that made up 17.1% of the population. The town is sometimes referred to as the “opal capital of the world” because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. Coober Pedy is renowned for its below-ground residences, called “dugouts”, which are built in this fashion due to the scorching daytime heat. The name “Coober Pedy” comes from the local Aboriginal term kupa-piti, which means “boys’ waterhole”.
World’s Largest Treehouse Burns to the Ground
World’s Largest Treehouse, Built by Divine Inspiration
As Minister Horace Burgess tells the story, in 1993, the Minister was praying when God told him, “If you build a treehouse, I’ll see that you never run out of material.” Inspired by this vision, the quiet Minister set out to build the largest treehouse in the world.
Located just outside of Crossville, Tennessee, the 97-foot-tall tree house and church was supported by a still-living 80-foot-tall white oak tree with a 12-foot diameter base, and relies on six other oak trees for support.
For fourteen years, Minister Burgess has been adding to the tree house, spending $12,000 to build it. Over that time, the treehouse has grown to truly monumental proportions, and the Minister may have already achieved his goal of building the world’s largest treehouse. His treehouse was 90 feet tall, with five stories containing 80 rooms, and was complete with a church and a bell tower. The bell tower at the top of the treehouse was equipped with oxygen acetylene bottles that, repurposed as bells, chime daily.
In southern style, every story of the treehouse was surrounded by a porch deck. There were no “Private Property,” or “No Climbing” signs posted around, Burgess say the treehouse is God’s house and everyone is welcome. From the top of the treehouse the word “Jesus” could be seen spelled out in flora in a nearby field.
The structure stood vacant and dilapidated since it was closed in 2012 for fire safety violations. It became a frequent target of vandalism. On October 22, 2019 the structure completely burned to the ground. The fire department responded however by the time they arrived nothing was left of the structure. Authorities are investigating the cause of the fire.
This Russian takes Crazy to a whole new level
Charges for Russian after stunts atop Toronto skyscraper
An “urban explorer” has been charged after he was seen in an online video leaping and doing somersaults atop a downtown Toronto skyscraper.
In a video posted to YouTube, Russian stuntman Oleg Cricket can be seen leaping, sliding and rolling on the ledge of a skyscraper. In another shot, he appears to be jumping between beams, with the CN Tower as his backdrop. In one of the final shots, Cricket is shown doing a handstand on a ledge, high above city streets.
Police arrested Cricket on Nov. 12, 2016. He has been charged with breaking and entering and mischief, Toronto police say.
Cricket is well-known for his vertigo-inducing acrobatic feats atop skyscrapers in various cities. He records his stunts and puts them on YouTube and other social media channels, where his followers number in the hundreds of thousands.
Another man who was allegedly with Cricket is facing the same charges.
The Building, 8 Mercer St
The MarkoZen Blog 