A tiny hotel room made especially for travelers is now available in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Russian architects Arch Group have made it possible for travelers to have a safe and comfortable spot to sleep in while waiting for their next flight.
The unit – which can be rented anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours – has two beds, LED reading lamps, and sockets for charging your gadgets. Travelers also have enough space to place their hand-carried bags inside the pod. The sleepbox has a 2.5-3m height and a base of 2.5×1.6m base, and is made from metal, galss-reinforced palstic, or MDF (wood).
The architects also consider railroad stations, public and shopping centers, exhibition centers, and accommodation facilities as ideal locations for installing the Sleepbox.
In Japan, there’s a residence that’s fit for your pet cats. Called the House of Taishido or Cat House, this home occupies 30 square meters and is three storeys high. It’s located in an urban district west of Tokyo. According to the Tokyo-based architecture firm Key Operation Inc., the home was not initially designed as a house for cats, but certain features were added later on in the design of the home, making the abode friendly for feline pets.
Another architecture firm, Fauna Plus DeSIGN, is known for designing custom homes for cats. It has designed a cat house that accommodates 16 cats at a time. Features of the house include a see-through cat tunnel that stretches around the room, small holes in the walls that serve as portals to the other rooms, a multistage cube of shelves with cat beds, a floor-to-ceiling scratching post which is covered in hemp rope, and a special staircase that serve as cat beds.
When you read that title, you were probably thinking of stargazing in some exotic destination (or while wearing exotic fashion, we won’t judge). Well, it’s close enough to the subject of this article, as this stargazing spot will lead you to an expedition in Prata Sannita in Italy. The sleepy small town, 180 kilometers away from Rome, features an interesting stargazing spot for those who like observing celestial objects: a hotel bed overhanging the side of a building.
You read that right. For a certain amount of tourist cash, you can try out the Million Donkey Hotel’s special room. In the said room, you can roll out the bed onto an overhang enclosed with steel grates. You can take in the view of the sloping medieval town and of course, stargaze. Did we mention that the hotel’s theme is positively medieval? Also, needless to say, this is not for the fainthearted or the acrophobic.
Buildings, bridges, houses, stadiums and other structures are designed and painstakingly built by architects and engineers. These buildings – especially those that will be occupied by offices and families – need to be structurally sound to ensure that they are safe to work or live in. There are cases, however, when architects and engineers who plan and construct these buildings make miscalculations and mistakes that could potentially end up in a disaster.
Here are 5 well-known architectural failures:
Lotus Riverside in Shanghai, China
The residential apartment complex consisted of 11 buildings, each of them 13 storeys high. During construction, one of the buildings toppled over, barely missing another apartment building which could also topple over and hit another building, creating a domino effect.
The cause of the collapse was an ongoing excavation under the building to create an undergroud garage. The earth they removed underneath were being dumped near the creek which in turn caused the river bank to collapse. As water seeped intot the ground, the building’s foundation turned into mud.
Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Tacoma, WA
This suspension bridge connected the Kitsap Peninsula with the port city of Tacoma, Washington. When it opened in July 1940, it was considered as the third-longest suspension bridge in the world. However, in November of the same year, the bridge collapsed (it was even caught on video).
The bridge collapsed because the bridge deck wasn’t in place due to inadequate girders. It swayed violently whenever strong winds blew. Construction workers and the people who eventually used the bridge noticed that it swayed when winds were too strong. The bridge finally collapsed when a 40 mile-per-hour wind blew. Watch the video below:
Playground at Pier One in Brooklyn Bridge Park
Three play structures in the park which children climb on were built out of steel – and this was precisely the problem designers overlooked. Since the playground was outdoors, the structures were exposed to the sun the entire day, making the steel too hot. Parents who take their children to playgrounds first touch the surfaces of swings and other seats in order to check its temperatures. The steel structures at Pier One recorded a temperature of more than 127 degrees at one time. One parent even said one could fry an egg on the surfaces of the structure.
The said steel structures were removed and replaced with other equipment.
Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT
This particular building is hailed for its unique structure and logic-defying angles. The Ray and Maria Stata Center was designed by award-winning architect Frank Gehry. Opened in 2004, it houses several MIT labs and departments. Three years after it opened, MIT filed a lawsuit against the architect, claiming that the center’s design had too many flaws. Among the issues were cracks in the walls, molds growing on the brick exterior and even icicle daggers forming on the roof.
According to the construction company that built the center, they had warned Gehry about the problems in the design, but were told to stick with it. Instead of using suitable material, they had to use other materials to be able to follow the original design as demanded by the architect.
John Hancock Tower
This 60-storey skyscraper in Boston is well-known for its design and unfortunately, for its problems. The John Hancock Tower’s most pressing problem back then was its windows: they started falling out and crashing to the pavement below. This was because the windows were not fitted with glass that would stand repeated thermal stresses. All its 10,000 windows had to be replaced at the cost of $5 million.
The tower had another problem: it swayed too much, even giving occupants on the upper floors motion sickness. This was eventually addressed by the ingenuity of Cambridge engineer William Le Messurier.
