This is an airport that I like, made for the Olympic in 2008, the gigantic terminal 3 designed by Foster + Parter was the latest expansion to the Beijing Capital Airport. Took only 5 years from design to completion with the budget of USD $3.5 billion, it is quite an impressive piece of architecture. The design concept of the terminal building is based on London Stansted and Hong Kong International, with a lot small details which related back into the chinese tradition culture such as the red column and roof. Every detail seem to be designed to let the terminal appears larger than it already is. It has a main concourse area for check-in and arrivals, and two more satellite terminal buildings, together it looks like the Hong Kong airport got cut up into 3 parts. Other things that you can commonly found in Foster's airport are all the service part of the building is hidden under the floor, which gives a stronger sense of space and increase the amount of light for the passengers. Had a few hours of delay there a while back, it's actually not a bad place to have a nap in, a lot more comfortable then Edinburgh airport.
I can't drive, I hate buses so I always take the train. Well to be honest trains in the UK aren't that great either... never seem to be on time when you need them and not really that fast either. In fact getting from dundee to london takes almost 7 hours, can't we just have something like the TGV? One of the few trains that actually work well that I can think of has to be the ICE in Germany. The new version of the ICE train they made designed by the german industrial designer Alexander Neumeister (also then man behind the 500 series Shinkansen for JR in Japan). He made quite a radial departure from ordinary train design, its one of the first time that I actually would say a train looks cool. Made by Siemens and now also exported to Spain, Russia and China. It goes up to 320kph, Frankfurt to Cologne in 1 hour, pretty damn fast. But best part is that if you sit in the front, the only thing separating you and the driver is a piece of glass. When running at high speed everything is controlled by computer. So me and my friend was just sitting there looking at the front while the driver is having a coffee chatting with some other passenger, this is as good as it get for a train driver i guess.
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| theforeigner.no |
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| net-over-blog.com |
This is a brand that I having pay attention for a while, used to be obsessed with it a few years back. Based in Japan, it had been making everyday product with the design philosophy that all their product is about quality and design not the brand. In English is it MUJI, in Japanese it is 無印良品 means something alone the line of quality without branding. Their first sore opened in Tokyo in the 80s and since then expanded to the rest of asia europe and america. Now known for the minimalist approach to product design. From my personal experience their product do live up to what they claim in the brand name. One of my favourite is one of their CD player that they made, designed by Naoto Fukasawa, where the spinning CD does not have a cover like a typical CD player, it simply sits on the surface of the machine. The on/off button is integrated with the power cable under the CD player, works like a switch from lamps. The form of it appears to be so simple but I remembered that I was so fascinated by how clever it is. It is now part of a MoMA permanent collection.
This is an airport that I like, made for the Olympic in 2008, the gigantic terminal 3 designed by Foster + Parter was the latest expansion to the Beijing Capital Airport. Took only 5 years from design to completion with the budget of USD $3.5 billion, it is quite an impressive piece of architecture. The design concept of the terminal building is based on London Stansted and Hong Kong International, with a lot small details which related back into the chinese tradition culture such as the red column and roof. Every detail seem to be designed to let the terminal appears larger than it already is. It has a main concourse area for check-in and arrivals, and two more satellite terminal buildings, together it looks like the Hong Kong airport got cut up into 3 parts. Other things that you can commonly found in Foster's airport are all the service part of the building is hidden under the floor, which gives a stronger sense of space and increase the amount of light for the passengers. Had a few hours of delay there a while back, it's actually not a bad place to have a nap in, a lot more comfortable then Edinburgh airport.
