Woonq Blog

A MAN will appear before magistrates today after a Rolls Royce crashed into a Hampshire supermarket.

Six women suffered cuts, bruising and shock when the vehicle went through the window of the Tesco store in River Way, Andover, at about 4.30pm on Wednesday.

Shoppers ran for cover as the car smashed into shelves and tills and then tried to reverse out but got stuck, but nobody was seriously injured.

Unemployed Robert Malcolm Caton, 50, of Cusden Drive in Andover, will appear at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court on charges of criminal damage, recklessly endangering life, dangerous driving and failing to provide a specimen for analysis.

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This spiny little contraption has the unique ability to simultaneously control your TV and your chronic kidney, uterus or testicle-related ailments. This is truly a magical medical breakthrough product.

The Cool.con universal remote employs reflexology to stimulate pressure points on the hand that are said to correspond to various areas of the body to promote better overall health. So the next time your partner bitches at you for watching too much TV, just tell them that you are engaged in a very serious medical procedure. Those witchdoctors said you needed dialysis—but you know better.

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What will the city of the future look like? If MAD architects have anything to say about it, urban centres will no longer resemble the concrete jungles of the industrial revolution. MAD and their design friends have come together to create a conceptual model of the Huaxi city centre of Guiyang, China, that brings nature into every consideration when building with the most modern technologies of the 21st century.

Says MAD:

“The city is no longer determined by the leftover logic of the industrial revolution (speed, profit, efficiency) but instead follows the ‘fragile rules’ of nature.”

According to Dezeen architecture and design magazine, the urbanization of Chinese cities over the past 15 years has been marked by “high-density, high-speed and low-quality duplication” that renders urban spaces “meaningless, crowded and soulless.” The Huaxi project aims to reverse this trend, creating a new reality for urban centres that encourages a more seamless connection between humans and the surrounding natural world. With 200 to 400 new Chinese cities being built in the next 20 years, this sounds like a great idea!

Working with Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute, Studio 6, MAD developed a masterplan for Hauxi city. They invited ten other international young architectural firms to Huaxi for a three-day workshop to learn about the area’s natural and cultural features, then charged them with creating their own design for their assigned part of the plan.

“The city is no longer determined by the leftover logic of the industrial revolution (speed, profit, efficiency) but instead follows the ‘fragile rules’ of nature.”

According to Dezeen architecture and design magazine, the urbanization of Chinese cities over the past 15 years has been marked by “high-density, high-speed and low-quality duplication” that renders urban spaces “meaningless, crowded and soulless.” The Huaxi project aims to reverse this trend, creating a new reality for urban centres that encourages a more seamless connection between humans and the surrounding natural world. With 200 to 400 new Chinese cities being built in the next 20 years, this sounds like a great idea!

Working with Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute, Studio 6, MAD developed a masterplan for Hauxi city. They invited ten other international young architectural firms to Huaxi for a three-day workshop to learn about the area’s natural and cultural features, then charged them with creating their own design for their assigned part of the plan.

Design by MAD (China): 

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These Sky-Terra concept skyscrapers look like giant pieces of artwork shooting up from the ground, but they do more than just look pretty. The network of interconnected towers, one of the entries in the 2009 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, creates a new city layer in the sky made of parks, amphitheaters, fields, and other public spaces. Unlike traditional buildings that block city residents from ever seeing direct sunlight, the Sky-Terra towers allow people to get plenty of sun without dealing with the pollution below.

Designed by San Francisco architect Joanna Borek, the towers rise to 1,600 feet and expand into a flat plaza layer with ample green space, 4-foot-wide streets for electric cars and bikes, rainwater collection systems, and interconnected foot paths. An elevator is embedded in the core of each tower to bring people up to the skyscraper plaza.

There are a couple of problems with the skyscraper. The first is the lack of sunlight below–holes and spaces in the plaza’s fins supposedly let light onto street level, but it still seems like less sunlight would reach the ground than with traditional skyscrapers. Then there is the wind and weather factor when you’re up top. But the Sky-Terra buildings were designed for already-clogged cities like Tokyo, and for these cities, some green space, direct sunlight, and fresh air might be better than none at all.

The transportation system consists of interconnected foot paths, as well as 4 foot wide streets designated for bikes or small electric cars. The remaining is meant to be green space which will assist in reducing urban heat island effect. Rainwater collection will provide water for landscaping needs, and the towers’ building materials consist of modular parts that would be mass-produced to conserve resources and energy. The plaza levels are designed with holes and spaces between the fins that allow light to beam down. The idea seems all smart and huge but I cannot imagine being stuck in the air and living there! So for holidays we go to earth?

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