Harbin Ice Festival

Posted on July 15, 2012 by mark

The Harbin festival is one of the world’s four largest ice and snow festivals, along with Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival, Canada’s Quebec City Winter Carnival, and Norway’s Ski Festival.

Officially, the festival starts January 5th and lasts one month. However the exhibits often open earlier and stay longer, weather permitting. Ice sculpture decoration technology ranges from the modern (using lasers) to traditional (with ice lanterns). While there are ice sculptures throughout the city, there are two main exhibition areas: Enormous snow sculptures at Sun Island (a recreational area on the opposite side of the Songhua River from the city) and the separate “Ice and Snow World” that operates each night

21 Blackjack Watch by Christophe Claret

Posted on July 2, 2012 by mark

A real miniature casino, it matches grand complications with the world of gaming, in the process creating a new watchmaking paradigm: the interactive watch. In addition to transparency, relief, and the passage of time, here he adds the sensory effects of blackjack, roulette and dice. An unprecedented upmarket toy for aficionados, expressing a kind of watchmaking that has cast off its inhibitions.

Denver Art Museum

Posted on June 26, 2012 by mark

The newest edition to the Denver Art Museum is the Frederic C. Hamilton Building which holds the Modern and Contemporary Art collection along with the Architecture and Design and Oceanic Art collections. Designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, the unique building will also serve as the main entrance to the rest of the museum complex. This ambitious design doubled the size of the museum allowing for an even greater expansion of the art inside of the daring aesthetic exterior.

The complex geometrical design of the Frederic C. Hamilton building consists of 230,000 square feet of titanium shingles that cover the 20 sloping planes of the structure. The angles jut in all directions and the 2,740-ton structure contains more than 3,100 pieces of steel. One of the angles extends 100 feet over the road running below. Of all the 20 planes, not one is parallel or perpendicular to another.

Doodle 4 Google 2012

Posted on June 25, 2012 by mark

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where K-12 students are invited to use their artistic talents to think big and redesign Google’s homepage logo for millions to see. Google believes that dreaming about future possibilities leads to tomorrow’s leaders and inventors, so this year they invited U.S. kids to exercise their creative imaginations around the theme, “If I could travel in time, I’d visit…”

Doodle 4 Google 2011

Posted on June 25, 2012 by mark

Richard Mille RM 056 Tourbillon Chronograph

Posted on June 24, 2012 by mark

TOURBILLON SPLIT SECONDS COMPETITION CHRONOGRAPH RM 056 FELIPE MASSA SAPPHIRE

RM 056 Tourbillon Split Seconds Competition Chronograph Felipe Massa is a limited edition of five pieces. The case is made entirely of sapphire crystal, which required more than 1,000 hours to machine from solid blocks of crystal.

With all five production pieces already sold at a price of $1.65 million USD each, you won’t be getting your hands on Richard Mille’s RM056 anytime soon. However, one can look and dream. The beautiful split seconds chronograph tourbillon is encased entirely in sapphire, revealing the complete inner-workings of the watch and even glowing when placed directly in front of a source of light. As much a work of art as a timepiece, the RM056 continues to push Mille’s design aesthetic into a realm all its own.

The Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

Posted on June 13, 2012 by mark

The new Porsche museum stands on a conspicuous junction just outside Porsche Headquarters in Zuffenhausen. The display area covers 5600 square meters (60,250 square feet) featuring around 80 exhibits, many rare cars and a variety of historical models.

The museum was designed by the architects Delugan Meissl. The exhibition spaces were designed by HG Merz who was also involved in the building of the award winning Mercedes-Benz Museum.

Amazing 3D Murals

Posted on June 12, 2012 by mark

Audemars Piguet Millenary MC12 Tourbillon Chronograph

Posted on June 11, 2012 by mark

Complete with matching colors and the Maserati Trident, the Audemars Piguet Millenary MC12 Tourbillon Chronograph is a fine Swiss watch modeled after the Italian Maserati MC12 Corse.

Like most car-themed watches, it’s not readily apparent exactly what the two have to do with each other aside from the color scheme. With the open clockwork both front and rear, however, a closer investigation reveals that both are highly intricate, precision machines.

Dirty Car Art by Scott Wade

Posted on June 8, 2012 by mark

Scott Wade can’t resist a dirty rear car window. We suspect that Scott started off with clever sayings like “wash me”. Probably his first image was the ubiquitous smiley face.