Woonq Blog

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching — not sure what to get that ex-special someone?

Open the card up, and it continues: “Someone else.”

Another card from the site starts out cheerily: “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Inside, it adds, “Even though we both know it’s over.”

For most people, Valentine’s Day is still about chocolates, hearts, teddy bears and romantic sentiments. But a growing number of the recently or steadfastly single are getting in on the holiday as well, spawning anti-Valentine’s Day cards, T-shirts and parties.

Anti-Valentine’s Day cards have been popular among smaller distributors and Web-based e-card producers for several years. Now the trend is starting to attract more mainstream attention.

Industry powerhouse American Greetings Corp. this year added 10 anti-Valentine’s Day cards to the roster of 2,500 cards it produces for the holiday. While it may be just a tiny portion of the company’s holiday effort, “that’s huge for a new product in our industry,” said American Greetings spokeswoman Megan Ferington.

Ferington said the Cleveland-based company decided to add anti-Valentine’s Day cards after noticing last year that more people were holding singles parties or girls’ nights out on what is traditionally a night for couples.

“Singles just want to be part of the holiday,” she said. “There really was an undercurrent of people wanting to celebrate.”

One card from American Greetings’ collection opens with: “They had shared a moment.”

Inside, it reads: “A lifetime commitment was completely out of the question. Happy Anti-Valentine’s Day (for the woman who knows what she doesn’t want.)”

In addition to the more overtly anti-holiday cards, Ferington said American Greetings also has boosted its lineup of Valentine’s Day cards that are meant to be sent to friends rather than soul mates.

Hallmark Cards for years has offered both humorous and heartfelt Valentine’s Day cards to send from one female friend to another, said spokeswoman Rachel Bolton. Recently, however, she said the popularity of such cards has grown, thanks in part to such cultural influences as the TV show “Sex and the City.”

“One of the huge trends is cards for singles,” Bolton said.

It’s not surprising that people who make their living selling greeting cards would reach out for a wider audience than just those who are happily coupled up (or in grade school). After all, Valentine’s Day is one of the most important holidays of the year for the industry.

The Greeting Card Association expects Americans to buy 190 million Valentine’s Day cards this year. That figure shoots up to 1 billion once you include cards, generally sold in packages of 25 or more, exchanged among schoolchildren, the trade group says.

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This road smashing into a building and emerging out on the other side is the most “normal” highway in this album of Japanese infrastructures collected by Dark Roasted Blend.

Absolutely nuts. Although other structures around the world can rival these, the concentration in Japanese cities is simple astounding. Head to DRB for the entire series. And in case you are interested, here’s how it looks from inside a car.

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In our rush to renovate our dream house with the craziest and most creative that modern design can conjure up, we’re liable to forget how we enter and leave it. If you are thinking that modern door design is a matter of open-and-shut conventional thinking, these 14 examples should put you in the right frame of mind.

If ever a door was perfect for university student halls of residence, this is it. Once shut, the Ping Pong Door’s middle section swings down into perhaps the most neighborly door you’ll ever own (if your neighbor likes ping pong, that is). Expect this concept to expand to encompass every tabletop game under the sun – air hockey next, please.

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Would it surprise you to learn that a number of houses around the world, from New York to Amsterdam and Brazil to Britain have various claims to being the skinniest house in the world? Some are the skinniest by frontage measurements, others by widest or narrowest space, though they would all (it would seem) require extremely creative urban furniture.

Helenita, the woman pictured in the images above, designed this incredibly narrow house in Madre de Deus, Brazil. Though only 9 feet wide have this house. The structural physics of this building were surely a challenge, though the designer and resident is clearly proud of her creation.

This London, England house (left above) is just 5 feet at its narrowest, and 10 feet at its widest, and was sold for nearly a million dollars. Likewise extreme expensive, 72 1/2 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, USA (right above), which has been everything from a cobbler’s shop to a candy factory, dates back to 1873. However, the actual narrowest house in the United States is located in Long Beach, California.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands To anyone who has visited Amsterdam it should come as no shock that all four of the above candidates are located along the city’s canals. Notorious already for it’s tightly-packed and skinny structures, these buildings push even the limits of Amsterdam. The bottom image is of a house located along the Singel canal that just barely manages to fit a front on the street, though the house expands as it recedes from the street.

Great Cumbrae, Scotland is home to the Guinnes Book of Records title holder for the skinniest house frontage in the world, at just 47 inches at its narrowest. The so-called Wedge house, once it was discovered to hold the record, sold to a family from Essex as a vacation home for an undisclosed sum of money.

And The Slimmest Houses On Earth Are Made In Japan:

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Turning Torso is a high-rise building in Malmö, consisting of nine cubes twisting towards the waterfront. Turning Torso houses top-quality apartments, offices and conference rooms and, at the time of completion (27 August 2005), is the second tallest residential tower in Europe after the 264m-high Triumph-Palace in Moscow andthe tallest building in Scandinavia.

TOWER DESIGN

The Torso has been selected by the City of Malmö Government as a landmark for the new development, though it also meets the requirement for dense habitation. Local authorities organised an exhibition to choose a high-rise building for this purpose and invited the local housing cooperative, HSB, to participate.

“Only well-known architects were supposed to participate in the exhibition,” explains HSB project director Ingvar Nohlin, “and that’s why Santiago Calatrava was approached. He had participated in the Oresund Link competition but was not selected.“

In fact, this 190m (623ft) tower is based on a sculpture by the Zurich-based architect. Sharing the name of its much larger brother, Turning Torso depicts a human body contorting around its spine in an upward movement. Calatrava included a photograph of the work as part of his Oresund submission, where it was spotted by HSB’s former managing director, Johnny Orback, who convinced Calatrava to design a building based on this concept.

ENVIRONMENT AND SAFETY

Sweden has perhaps the most far-reaching environmental legislation in Europe, along with a comprehensive welfare system, so it is no surprise that central services are a high priority. Indeed, Western Harbour is being promoted as a global leader in urban sustainability. For heating, Torso connects to power utility Sydkraft’s system, which uses 100% locally renewable energy. This is obtained from a variety of sources, including solar power, wind, bedrock and water.

Torso plays its part, with organic waste from the building ground down in kitchen waste disposal units, then transported though separate pipes for decomposition and biogas production at Malmö’s waste incinerator and heat plant. In addition, Torso residents will be given training in such systems via a local TV system.

As for safety, all security systems have independent reserve power supplies, including lifts, sprinklers and emergency lighting. There is also a double water supply system, again with its own power supply.

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