This week, we check in with Dubai-based Brownbook magazine in celebration of the mix of “legends and underground heroes” included in their current music issue. In addition to a pull-out songbook featuring sheet music from classic Egyptian songstress Umm Kulthum, the informative issue…
Le photographe français M. Bap a fait une série de photographies en format RAW, d’un Dubaï en noir et blanc avec son architecture, sa ville, ses habitants mais aussi son désert, ses marchés et ses taxis. De très beaux contrastes dans une ville pleine de lumières à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
Le photographe allemand Jens Fersterra, dont nous avons déjà parlé, a fait la série « Dubaï Cityscape » en photographiant des immeubles, différentes architectures de la skyline et les lumières de la ville. Des routes qui serpentent, des effets de symétries sur l’eau du port et une ville de toutes les couleurs.
Voici de nombreuses vues impressionnantes prises depuis le ciel sur des lieux et des pays aux 4 coins du monde. New York, les pyramides d’Egypte et l’Arc de Triomphe à Paris sont assez reconnaissables mais il y a également des vues plus surprenantes comme ce cliché au milieu de l’Océan Indien. A découvrir dans la suite.
News: Google Street View has captured the inside of its first skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, allowing users to virtually explore the tallest building in the world.
Google Street View spent three days taking 360-degree images inside and outside the 163-storey tower so users can see from the lobby up to the world’s highest swimming pool on the 76th floor, the observation deck on the 124th floor and the spire 828 metres above the city – try it out here.
“This is the first time we are in this type of building, in an Arabic country, connecting indoor and outdoor,” says Street View program manager Pascal Malite in the making-of movie.
The team was able to roam inside the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill-designed building using trolleys and a device called Trekker, launched last year. The device fits all the equipment required to capture locations in one backpack, allowing operators to access spaces like the tower’s corridors and window-washing baskets on the 8oth floor.
View from “At the Top” observation deck on the 124th floor
“It allows you to go to all the places you want to go, like mountain trails, narrow passages, everywhere that no other device will fit,” says Malite. The technique has already been deployed to let Street View users explore the Grand Canyon and the Galapagos Islands are due to follow later this year.
“Google has been working on this indoor location-mapping technology that allows you to get high-fidelity, high-accuracy location inside,” he said. “And you have all of these kind of real-time technologies for knowing about what’s going on, where your friends are, so I think we’re getting closer to that idea that you can know what’s happening at any place on the world at any time. It’s not fully realised yet, but we’re getting there.”
Hanke spoke to Dezeen to mark the UK launch of Field Trip, Google’s location-based publishing app that features Dezeen content. Read the full interview here.
End of a corridor on the 153rd floor
In his latest Opinion column on how digital culture is changing urbanism, Sam Jacob discusses how Google Maps is redrawing the city through personalised maps according to the data it holds and “Google’s idea of what a city is and what it thinks you will do there.”
View from “At the Top” observation deck on the 124th floor
News: Burj Khalifa architect Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) has added another skyscraper to the Dubai skyline with the completion of the twisted Cayan Tower.
The 307-metre skyscraper, previously known as the Infinity Tower, contains 495 apartments within a towering helical form that rotates 90 degrees from base to peak. “The lower portion of the tower is oriented toward the exciting waterfront promenade of Dubai Marina, while the upper floors are rotated to face the Gulf,” explains SOM‘s design director Ross Wimer.
The twisted profile aims to reduce powerful wind forces on the tower by dispersing them around the exterior, while the perforated metal skin is designed to screen the interior from harsh desert sunlight.
“Cayan Tower adds to SOM’s significant impact on Dubai’s twenty-first century skyline,” comments SOM partner George Efstathiou. “It takes its place with our finest designs, including the nearby Rolex Tower and Burj Khalifa.”
SOM’s Cayan (formerly Infinity) Tower opens  The Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM)-designed Cayan (formerly Infinity) Tower in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was inaugurated by its developer, Saudi Arabia-based Cayan Investment & Development, earlier this week. The dramatically rising helix of the 75-storey building provides a distinctive landmark on the city’s skyline. The 1,010-feet (307-metres) tall reinforced concrete structure rotates a hexagonal floor plate around a circular core – with the top offset 90 degrees from the base. The shift maximises views for each of the 495 apartments.
Deep concrete exterior columns clad in a metal skin with perforated screens help shield the building’s interior from the intense desert sun. The tower’s innovative shape required equally innovative engineering. The corner and interior columns twist as they ascend, but most of the perimeter columns have an identical shape and tilted relationship to the floor plate. They are simply shifted, a bit more than a single degree, from floor to floor – resulting in a standardised construction method typical to most concrete structures. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are located in the core or within a zone between the central circulation corridor and the residential units, allowing straight vertical paths for these systems as the relationship between the apartments served varies between floors. The shape of the tower is not only aesthetically unique but it serves a structural function as well. Its twisted shape greatly reduces wind forces on the tower and “confuses the wind” in a way that wind forces cannot organise themselves.
Cayan Group President and Chairman Ahmed M Al Hatti notes Cayan Tower is the highest twisted tower in the entire world.
Grand amateur de voyages comme en témoignent ses séries Highlands et Waterscape, le photographe hongrois Akos Major revient cette fois-ci avec la superbe série « Eastward », réunissant des clichés magnifiques capturés à Dubaï, en Thaîlande et au Cambodge. Plus d’images dans la suite.
A hotel on stilts featuring a lower level submerged 10 metres below the sea’s surface is planned for Dubai.
The Water Discus hotel has been designed by Polish company Deep Ocean Technology (DOT), whose other ventures include designing underwater vehicles and equipment for seabed exploration.
The hotel will be made up of two main discs, one above the water and one below the surface, connected by five columns and a vertical shaft for the stairs and lift. Smaller circular volumes above the surface will contain additional facilities, with a helicopter landing pad mounted on one.
The lower disc will comprise 21 hotel rooms with underwater views, an underwater diving centre and a bar. Each of the surrounding discs will be able to detach from the main upper disc to be used as a buoyant life raft in case of emergency or flooding.
The diving centre will be accessed through an underwater airlock, leading divers straight into the ocean. There’ll also be a decompression chamber for training purposes, DOT explains, while guests will also be able to take a course in piloting an underwater vehicle.
The modular construction of the hotel will enable it to be expanded or even moved to a new location, according to DOT.
The Water Discus won’t be the world’s first underwater hotel – there is already one in the Maldives and another in Florida. However, it will be the world’s largest and the first to be built in Dubai.
Geoff Tompkinson travaille depuis plus de 30 ans comme photographe à travers le monde. Dans le cadre de son projet Round the World in Timelapse, ce dernier a réalisé et monté cette vidéo très réussie autour de la ville de Dubaï. Une création qui laisse entrevoir l’ambiance unique de cette ville à découvrir dans la suite.
Focus sur cette impressionnante vidéo de Skydiving à Dubai à l’occasion des Championnats du Monde de Parachutisme qui auront lieu pour la première fois aux Émirats Arabes. Une captation en caméra RED pour la promotion de l’évènement qui rassemblera 800 athlètes pour des épreuves comme le Freestyle Skydiving.
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