This week on Dezeen, UNStudio won a competition to design a cultural centre featuring a rooftop cinema in Paris and OMA revealed plans for a six-sided glass courthouse in Lille.

Dutch firm UNStudio’s plans for a cinema and cultural centre in Paris will form part of BIG’s EuropaCity masterplan, a £2.74 billion tourism and leisure district built for the French capital.

Meanwhile, Rotterdam-based OMA revealed plans for a courthouse featuring sheer facades of coloured glass in Lille, referencing a historic star-shaped fortress located nearby.

Apple was in the headlines again as reports emerged of staff needing treatment from emergency services after walking into the glass walls at the new Foster + Partners-designed Apple Park campus.

Other walking-related news this week included Zaha Hadid Architects’ proposal to build on current plans to turn Oxford Street into a car-free zone, pedestrianising large parts of London.

Plans for the world’s tallest timber tower in Tokyo were revealed this week by Sumitomo Foresty. The 350-metre skyscraper will also become the highest building in Japan.

Back in the UK, dRMM’s Stirling Prize-winning Hastings Pier was put up for sale, only four months after earning the accolade.

In the US, Elon Musk’s Boring Company was given permission by the government to dig a transport tunnel for a Hyperloop link between Washington DC and New York City.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology published its annual list of technologies to look out for in the coming year, highlighting innovations such as smarter cities and “babel fish” earphones.

British designer Tom Dixon announced he would not be showing at this year’s Milan Design Week, choosing instead to launch new products on a 90-day world tour.

To celebrate Palm Springs’ Modernism Week, Dezeen took a look at some of the best mid-century residential architecture in the city, including John Lautner’s Hope Residence and Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann House.

Popular projects on Dezeen this week include gasholders converted into luxury flats in London’s King’s Cross, an open plan apartment in Barcelona featuring coral-pink arches and acrylic light sculptures created by Nendo in tribute to Isamu Noguchi.

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Having moved to Chicago recently, it’s become clear to me that I was never prepared for more than a few days’ snow. It had me wonder what on earth people do in the more northern areas of Canada and Greenland, etc. Rest assured, I’ve found exactly what they do, they get on the back of the Can-Am Apache with the badass Backcountry Track System. An upgrade on the already established 360 tracks, the Backcountry Track System takes care of the rough terrain, oh, and everything else one could ever encounter along the way.

Using two-inch lugs, a 13.5-inch front track, and 14-inch rear track, it offers the highest ground clearance of 20.3″ (51.6cm) keeping the vehicles and you out of the snow, maximum floatation, and outstanding deep snow performance. The contact patch alone is 23% larger, while it also has an aggressive track design with a 2″ (5 cm) lug height for maximum traction on the snow. This guy is a true force to be reckoned with and will get you beyond places that other tracks can’t. If only I had one for Chicago…

Designer: J.A. Bombardier of Can-Am

A skyscraper in Hawaii has become the latest to feature a vertigo-inducing swimming pool, allowing brave swimmers to look down through its transparent base.

The glass-bottomed pool extends out from the seventh floor of the Anaha complex in Honolulu, designed by Chicago-based studio Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) in collaboration with local firm Benjamin Woo Architects.

Cantilevered 75 feet (23 metres) above the ground, the pool is the latest in a string of similar designs to be proposed or completed around the world. One can be found at a residential tower in Houston and another extends from a hotel in the Italian Alps, while plans are in place to build pools with glass bottoms in London and Surat, India.

The rest of the 38-storey Anaha tower features green-blue glass cladding, chosen to mimic the colours of the nearby Pacific Ocean. It comprises a stack of volumes with curving walls, offset from one another to look like waves, reaching 400 feet (122 metres) tall .

“The composition is reminiscent of the play between the crests and troughs of a calm ocean wave,” said a statement about the project. “And like a wave, the reflection of light off the facade will constantly alter as the viewpoint and environmental conditions change.”

For those not brave enough for the pool, other amenities are spread over an acre of space indoors and out, including a restaurant serving local cuisine.

The building also boasts Hawaii’s largest living wall, which covers a surface 80 feet (24 metres) wide by 15 feet (4.6 metres) tall in the grand lobby and contains over 8,000 species of tropical plants.

A total of 318 residences are contained within the complex, with 244 studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom homes in the tower, along with 73 low-rise flats and townhouses.

It forms part of the wider Ward Village development of shops, restaurants, entertainment venues and public spaces in central Honolulu – the largest city on the Hawaiian island chain, located on the southern shore of Oahu.

Photography is by Nic Lehoux.

The post Glass-bottomed pool extends from Honolulu tower by SCB appeared first on Dezeen.

As a mid-winter beacon of hope for city commuters and outdoor enthusiasts, Ministry of Supply recently launched the Mercury Intelligent Heated Jacket. There are a few other battery-powered thermal jackets on the market, but Mercury’s machine learning capabilities make it kind of like wrapping yourself in a chic heated blanket that reads your mind. The jacket is able to analyze temperature, motion data and user preference to ultimately find your perfect heat settings, letting you live the ultimate cozy lifestyle.

Using the connected app, you can either set your jacket to begin heating before you leave your house or right when you step outside. Once outside, the jacket’s sensors gather both temperature data from the outdoors and your own internal temperature to keep its heat in sync with your body. Heart rate is also measured and accounted for, which means as you pick up your pace, the jacket will begin lowering its temperature. Translated to New York commuter language: When you’re all layered up running to catch the train in the winter, you’ll be less of a sweaty mess. After three or four times using the app, Mercury is able to start learning your temperature preferences so you don’t need to pull out your phone all of the time.

Mercury is lined with S.Cafe lining, which incorporates coffee grinds to help control odor, keeping the jacket feeling fresh. And for when it’s not feeling fresh, Mercury is machine washable without needing to take the whole thing apart. While much of Mercury’s design success stems from its unassuming silhouette created by previous Theory design director Jarlath Mellet, this strong material foundation acts as the bow that ties the sensors and fashion together in a complete package.

The sensors inside the jacket are surprisingly subtle, with just two taking up minimal space inside the lining near the pockets and one larger one in the back. They glow a slight red when heated, but are mostly masked by a ventilated section of the lining. Other than what you can see from the two sensors, the rest of the internal tech is hidden. The only tech that makes its way past the lining is the cable for the battery, which pokes out through one of the pockets. We were also pleased to see that the required battery pack is slimmer than expected and can double as a phone charger.

Overall this jacket is a step in  the right direction for smart clothing. I’m only nervous about two things: Even though Mercury is officially TSA approved, I’m hoping wearers will be able to get through the airport hassle-free. Although maybe I’m just paranoid—last time I flew, TSA was convinced I was wearing a money belt filled with cash because my sweatpants waistband was rolled twice over. 

The second is that you can summon Alexa to turn your jacket on and off, but I don’t trust Alexa enough to relinquish outfit control to her—she might figure out how to tighten the wires around you or something…

Anyways, Ministry of Supply doubled Mercury’s funding goal in less than one day, proving that a minimal heated jacket might be what the world needs right now.

Learn more about Mercury and secure one of your own here.

To know the work of Bob Greenberg—founder and chief executive of advertising and design agency R/GA—is to understand the full scope of his genius. A global roster of clients have benefitted from his vision since 1977. Greenberg is the latest (and 16th……

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