Coop Himmelb(l)au

Coop Himmelb(l)au’s BMW delivery center in Munich is, marvels Giovannini, “a huge building supported by a funneling column that looks like a tornado.

It rivals the Guggenheim in Bilbao in sheer spectacle and intelligence.”

Alnwick Castle

Alnwick Castle, home to Ralph and Jane Perry, the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, has played a role in such historical films as Becket (1964), Mary, Queen of Scots (1972) and Elizabeth (1998).

More recently, the castle was used as a setting for Hogwarts School in both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s StoneHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002).

The 11th-century, 6,000-acre English estate includes semicircular towers dating to the 18th century along the castle’s perimeter wall.

Anantara Golden Triangle

The Chiang Saen Retreat Captures the Mysterious Essence of the East.

For centuries Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle the intersection of the Mekong and Ruak rivers, where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar all converge—was famous chiefly as the center of the world’s opium trade, an amorphous narcotics bazaar spreading over three nations but subject to no law save that of supply and demand. Today, with drug laws strictly enforced, the region happily traffics in a variety of perfectly legal intoxicants: the sight of the early-morning sun breaking through a fogbank to warm a mountainside, for instance, or the sound of a far-off elephant’s roar heard during an evening walk, or the taste of a fiery red curry washed down with a cold beer.

In the northern most province of Chiang Rai sits Chiang Saen, the town overlooking the confluent rivers that define the Golden Triangle. Curious visitors have always travelled here to absorb the natural beauty and to engage with the local hill tribes, whose artworks and handicrafts are among Thailand’s most popular exports. Now they have yet another reason: the Anantara Resort & Spa, a unique destination that offers guests a new take on classic Thai traditions.

Donghia

Angelo Donghia’s original 5th Avenue sofa—designed in the 1970s for Ralph Lauren’s New York apartment—“reinvented seat construction,” says designer Jacques Saint Dizier. “An overscale cloud of a seat almost floats on the minimal base.”

Sofa by Shelton Mindel

The sofa depends on the appropriateness to a time and space. What may be ideal for one space may not work for another. The best sofa would be one that appears to be seamless in the space it occupies.

Framed in leather, the sofa pictured was custom-designed by Shelton Mindel.

Sheer Kitchen

“It’s an example of thinking outside the box,” designer Penny Drue Baird says of the modular kitchen developed by Drag Design for the Italian company Sheer. The split-sphere base includes a cook-top, a sink and an extendable steel dining table.

Now see this stuff………………….

This is taken from world's tallest building "Burj Dubai" @ 2,620 ft / 801m!!!

What do you think guys…………………?

Really amazing...............

Look at the edge (uppermost right corner) of the picture, you can almost see the turn of the earth.

The persons who are working on the upper most Girders can see the "ROTATION OF EARTH"
So terrifying…..

St. Basil’s Cathedral

“The vivid colors and onion domes continue to inspire me,” says William Stubbs.
The cathedral on Red Square, in Moscow, was originally built by Postnik Yakovlev for Ivan the Terrible in 1555-61.

John Portman

“Architecture is not a private affair; even a house must serve a whole family and its friends, and most buildings are used by everybody, people of all walks of life. If a building is to meet the needs of all the people, the architect must look for some common ground of understanding and experience.”



The open lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Louis Kahn

“Architecture is the reaching out for the truth.”



Considered Kahn’s finest residential project, the Korman House in Pennsylvania was recently restored.

Dining Rooms

On Nantucket, Massachusetts, a couple commissioned Botticelli & Pohl Architects and interior designer Elissa Cullman to create their seaside retreat. “The dining room,” says Cullman, “with its hand-painted scenic canvas by Chuck Fischer, is the most vibrant room in the house.”



“The space itself was inspirational,” designer Charles Allem says of a penthouse he remade for a Manhattan couple. Walnut doors, fitted with bronze hardware, open to the dining room. Hanging over the expansive walnut table is an 18-foot-long bespoke fixture. Fabricated using 105 sandblasted-glass cylinders of varying heights, it gives off “incredible shades that reflect all over the room,” Allem remarks.



Art, books and light fill author and historian Barbara Goldsmith’s Manhattan apartment, designed by Mica Ertegun, of MAC II. “Instead of jewelry,” says Goldsmith, “books have become my Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” For the dining room/library, Ertegun bought an Art Déco table at a Paris flea market; the chairs were designed by MAC II. At rear is Three Weeks, 1957, by Larry Rivers.



Combining raw, native materials with a modern sensibility, interior designer Mariette Himes Gomez and architect Jim Morter created a singular retreat in Wyoming for Anne and Allen Dick and their children. An English Arts and Crafts leather screen adds texture to the dining area. The chairs, with a Larsen tweed, were designed by Gomez.

White Interiors

In East Hampton, New York, architect and designer Russell Groves gave a modern beach house “a fresh outlook.” Groves designed the sofa, armchairs and the travertine-topped low table in the double-height living room, which he opened up with new fenestration and neutral hues.

Interior designer Jennifer Post maximized drama in a minimalist Tribeca penthouse by using strong contrasts, rich materials and abundant natural light. The family room—“the evening hub and entertainment area,” says Post—leads out to a walled private terrace. As with the other public rooms, comments the wife, “I was very adamant that we not have draperies because of the openness and the clean lines.”

Fashion designer Ralph Lauren and his wife, Ricky, bought a Jamaican villa on Round Hill, near Montego Bay, some 20 years ago. “It’s a place where you really love where you are,” he says. Marble floors were installed in the living room.



A Tribeca penthouse’s dramatic spaces and stylish, streamlined look evolved out of a couple’s collaboration with design firm Sills Huniford and architect Robert Kahn. Bead-board cabinetry adds “warmth and texture” to the kitchen, which is “clean and sleek,” observes James Huniford. The bleached table, originally a glossy black, was formerly the wife’s writing desk. “We reused beautiful or loved things the couple already owned.”



Light and elemental purity distinguish an apartment designed by architects Michael Gabellini and Kimberly Sheppard that virtually floats above the panoramic New York City skyline. The kitchen appliances and millwork contribute to the clarity and harmony of the apartment as a whole, in which light, form and material coexist within a minimal envelope,” says Gabellini.

Interior designer Mariette Himes Gomez and architect Oscar Shamamian together handled the conversion of two separate apartments into a single, unified whole for a Manhattan family. The resulting 5,000-square-foot duplex penthouse’s entrance hall has a circa 1820 cherrywood center table and a circa 1830 French mahogany fauteuil, both from Lee Calicchio. Chair fabric, Rogers & Goffigon.

Living Rooms

Designers Stephen Sills and James Huniford, of Sills Huniford, worked with architectural designer Robert Rich to expand a couple’s 18th-century saltbox in upstate New York into a weekend retreat. The designers retained the living room’s original wood floors and incorporated a soothing palette. “This house is not about moldings,” says Huniford. “It’s about light and comfort.”

Richard Meier

In designing the interior architecture and décor of an apartment in one of Richard Meier’s Glass Towers on Manhattan’s Hudson river, Peter L. Shelton and Lee F. Mindel carved out serene spaces while honoring the building’s modernist aesthetic. Midcentury furnishings, like the Poul Kjaerholm rattan chairs in the living area, set the tone.

For the Rachofsky House in Dallas, Meier created a space for both an individual to live as well as an international private collection of artwork. Meier made “art a part of the experience” in the house, with a focus on light and hard lines.

Living Rooms

From Classic to contemporary, a few of the most inviting and stylish living rooms :


A tranquil palette characterizes a Los Angeles living room designed by Mariette Himes Gomez.

Richard Meier & Partners’ recent expansion of the Friesen House in Los Angeles involved adding a story perched on a platform straddling the original 1953 structure. Besides acting as a backdrop for the fireplace in the master bedroom, the concrete shear wall adds lateral stability to the house and supports the second story construction.

Living Rooms

Interior designer Jennifer Post maximized drama in a minimalist Tribeca penthouse by using strong contrasts, rich materials and abundant natural light. The limestone fireplace and ebonized-white-oak cabinetry establish the palette that prevails in the living/dining room, as throughout.

Shelton, Mindel & Associates conceived and arranged a Manhattan loft for Claude Arpels. “The gestures of the design are in keeping with the original industrial vernacular of the building,” explains Lee F. Mindel. Near a Poul Kjaerholm armchair and sofa in the living room is a Charlotte Perriand wood bench. “Most of the furnishings we chose are by architects who understood the technology of their time. Their design philosophies are present in the furniture,” Peter L. Shelton says.

Interior designer John D. Lightbody

Interior designer John D. Lightbody describes the aesthetic as “a contemporary interpretation of classic Thai.” In the lobby, a massive carved wood candleholder is supported by three wood elephants. “They represent strength, wealth and longevity,” he says.

Marco Aldaco

“I try to collaborate with nature to create vivacious designs,” says Marco Aldaco, the prominent Mexican architect whose buildings are celebrated for their soulfulness and sculptural drama.

“I work with the eternal materials—brick, cement, wood, stone, stucco, marble. I have not found any better materials—none more practical, none cheaper—than the traditional ones.”

Amarvilas- Agra

In 1631, when Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of India’s Shah Jahan, died in childbirth, her grief stricken husband erected what may be the most beautiful building in the world, the Taj Mahal, as a mausoleum and memorial for her. Crafted from shimmering white marble that changes aspect at differing hours of the day, domed, minareted, the Taj has inspired the awe of generations of travelers, writers and artists and is the reason for most visits to Agra, if not to India itself.

A structure like this one throws down a nearly unmeetable challenge to any architect contemplating building in its shadow. But when the Oberoi Group, which owns and operates luxury hotels in Asia, Australia and Africa, asked the Bombay-based architect Prabhat Patki, along with the Malaysian firm Lim, Teo + Wilkes Design Works, to build a new hotel on a site about six hundred yards from the Taj, the challenge proved irresistible.

Patki’s brief was to create a haven for guests that would embody the exotic grandeur of the monuments they have come to Agra to see and at the same time enfold them in luxury and serenity. All this while respecting complex zoning and design regulations imposed by Amarvilas’s unmatchable location.

“We had to be very careful in our design style,” says Patki, whose previous work for Oberoi included the opulent Rajvilas hotel just outside Jaipur. “Putting a contemporary building so close to the Taj would have had severe heritage re-percussions, but traditional Indian style would have competed with it, so we opted for a variant of traditional design—Asian in content, but with Indian accents.”

The size and siting were also issues: Regulations forbid building higher than the domes of the Taj, so in order to achieve the desired room count, he designed setbacks that allowed for guest room terraces on three levels, and he staggered interior corridors, creating octagonal lobbies to break up their length. And since the master plan called for each of the 112 guest rooms and suites to have a view of the Taj Mahal, says Patki, “we had to stretch the whole hotel lengthwise along the plot.” But he avoided monolithic monotony by placing rooms in two wings, accented by Ottoman-style bays and setting the building behind a colonnaded forecourt paved with traditional glass tiles and enlivened by frescoes painted with ground-semiprecious-stone pigments and gold leaf, in the Mughal style.

The result looks like a palace in a Mughal miniature, and guests could be forgiven if they felt they’d found themselves in an Indian fairy tale. Passing into the forecourt of the ceremonial entrance pavilion, they encounter fountains, filigreed stone bridges and tall pillars topped by torches; the lobby has a geometrically painted dome, a tiled floor and huge arched windows that frame a breathtaking vista of the Taj. Flanking the windows are a teak-paneled bar dominated by an antique map of the Taj Mahal and an elegant French-influenced tea lounge. Even the restaurants—the all-day Bellevue, with its hip Asian-Mediterranean fusion cuisine, and the more formal Esphahan, which serves signature Indian dishes—seem to tell a story about themselves and the people in them.

Throughout Amarvilas, the traditional crafts and materials that are a hallmark of the Oberoi style lighten the grandeur of chandeliers and opulent furnishings. Creamy sandstone walls are frescoed or finished with a lime plaster; teak paneling, hand-knotted silk rugs and block-printed draperies soften the contours; the swimming pool is recessed into a terraced garden; guest rooms and suites are furnished with custom-built pieces and handwoven fabrics.

Modern technology underlies Amarvilas’s spa. Traditionally crafted iron gates, latticed windows and inlaid-stone floors are complemented by mosaic-lined whirlpool tubs, sauna and steam rooms and therapy suites, where Ayurvedic and anti-stress massages and skin treatments are available.

After a day of such pampering, guests should be ready for a full dose of sight-seeing. In-room guides to Agra’s monuments are only the beginning: The hotel will provide golf carts for the journey to the Taj, anits fleet of vintage automobiles is available for transport to any of the other attractions in the area. These include the Red Fort, the lacy stonework of Itmad-ud-Daulah’s tomb and—beyond Agra—the wildlife and bird sanctuaries at Bharatpur and the Chambal ravines, as well as the deserted city of Fatehpur Sikri.

But always visitors return to Amarvilas and to its view of the place Rudyard Kipling called “the Ivory Gate through which all good dreams come.” The Taj Mahal, he wrote, “seemed the embodiment of all things pure, all things holy.–.–.–.–That was the mystery of the building.” And that is the gift Amarvilas gives its guests.