Underwater Museum- Cancun, Mexico

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There is no fun or adventure in seeing sculptures inside a covered place. But it certainly turns out to be a adventure and thrilling experience when you have to dive in about 10- 20 feet to witness beautiful and amazing marine life with sculptures placed beneath.

Yes, we are talking about underwater museum. This is one of its first kind built in 2009 in shallow waters of Cancun National Park, Cancun, Mexico. This place was once destroyed by Hurricane storm. The British artist- Jason Decaires Taylor's known for his unique work has taken up this task to put sculptures in place beneath the water with the sol intention of conservation. So all the sculptures were made from ph neutral clay thus to help the growth of coral reef and marine life.

The total area occupied will be 420 sq meters. This Marine Park is also the most visited with more than 750,000 visitors per year, thereby placing a lot pressure on it's resources. Therefore the placing of sculptures will also relieve pressure on natural reefs by drawing visitors away.

Some Facts :

1. In 2009 - beneath the waters around Cancun, Isla Mujeres and Punta Nizuc- initial steps for a sculptural museum were taken.

2. The founders of the project were : Jaime Gonzalez Cano of The National Marine Park, Roberto Diaz of The Cancun Nautical Association and Jason deCaries Taylor.

3. The underwater museum now consists of more than 400 permanent sculptures. Each figure has it's own meaning.

As per the reports on : underwatersculpture.com -
The Museum will demonstrate the interaction between art and environment science. It will show how art can form a complex reef structure for marine life to colonize and grow on there own.

Image source : Google

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'Harry Potter' superfan builds incredible Hogwarts model with 400,000 LEGO pieces

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If ever there was a “Who’s the Bigger Harry Potter Fan?” contest, I am sure no one can even come close to Seattle-based builder, Alice Finch. The certifiable Potterhead spent 12 months building an incredible 400,000-piece, 170-square-foot Lego replica of Hogwarts Castle that puts your fan fiction to shame.

In addition to its massive size, the most impressive thing about the Lego castle is its depth of detail. Clearly Finch is a smart woman  who thought to include a Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with a closet for a boggart (à la Prisoner of Azkaban), and even the Grey Lady. She also helpfully uploaded a 79-photo Flickr album of the whole castle so fellow superfans can properly obsess. In addition to basically every character mentioned in the books and movies, the Great Hall and the Chamber of Secrets are among many of the rooms featured in the playable L-shaped set.

Finch explained she got inspired by Lego building with her young sons, and that they, along with her husband, helped her finish this massive project. She discussed how much time went into getting Hogwarts ready for students. The castle was finally finished in October last year for the annual Lego festival Brick-Con, where Finch went on to win “People’s Choice” and “Best in Show” last year.

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Niagara Falls Light Show

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From the beginning of November until the first week of January, the Niagara Falls Winter Festival of Lights takes place. During these two months a decorated six-kilometer route stretching from Dufferin Islands along the Niagara Parkway, an area known as the Niagara Parks, is illuminated by nearly three million lights and over 100 lighting displays, including fireworks over the falls.

Although the Niagara Falls is illuminated all round the year, the Winter Festival offers a special spectacle. In spring and summer, the colored lights shine for just three hours, but with less daylight in winter, curtains of color wash over the falls each night for up to seven hours.

Crowds gather along the sidewalk and railing on Niagara Parkway to see the show as colored mist rises from the falls in front of them. The display starts with patriotic themes - red, white and blue on the American Falls, red and white for the horseshoe-shaped Canadian Falls. The light beams emanate from a bank of 21 spotlights, each 30 inches in diameter, sitting atop a raised stone bunker across the road.

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Beautiful Houses made with Cargo containers!

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Time to get innovative with shipping containers.  Below is a list of few beautiful homes, that are amazingly cozy and well equipped as a modern day home: 

Shipping Container Guest House

Poteet Architects in San Antonio, Texas recently constructed this shipping container house for a local client to use as a tiny guest house in her artist community. The plan is to also use it as a summer house, an art house and for entertaining. The owner enjoys the shipping container house for its uncluttered, sunlit appeal and the wonderful blue color. 

Redondo Beach House, DeMaria Design, Manhattan Beach, Calif.

The Redondo Beach House from prefab pioneer Peter DeMaria is made from eight shipping containers. This spacious pad, 20-foot ceilings and an outdoor lap pool in the laidback community of Redondo Beach has garnered a fair amount of mainstream press — including a spot on CNN — and won coveted architectural awards, making it the definitive shipping container trophy home.

 LOT-EK Container Home Kit (CHK)

Lot-ek’s scalable system comes fully equipped and ready to plop on-site with built-in electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and fully insulated AND furnished and is capable of being placed anywhere from 640-2560 square feet. The CHK system comes in two different series- Compact and Loft, and boasts 8×8 floor-to-ceiling windows, built-in closets, and wood floors.

Week house from shipping containers.

The real estate domain has been always a place where prices grew constantly. This exact reason pushed people to seek alternatives to their offer.  Jure Kotonik has an answer to that issue. He designed  a two story 300 square foot container house that brings massive benefits to their owners : very low end-price compared to traditional housing , it is assembled in a matter of days and most of all its easy to move.

Kalkin’s Shipping Container Homes.

This creation over here defies the anything you knew before in matter of houses. This beauty over here is made out of containers. New Jersey architect Adam Kalkin designed and build his own house from  recycled shipping containers. Among many reasons to do that there is  price( a used one costs under $ 1000 ) and durability.

Container City, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London

Container City is an innovative and extremely flexible system that opens avenues for affordable and stylish accommodation with trendy and colorful bit of architecture. Designed by Urban Space Management, the system is build by linking shipping containers together to provide high strength, prefabricated steel modules.

Port-A-Bach

Atelier workshop’s Port-a-Bach shipping container home is a small, energy efficient and environmentally friendly portable home you can spin into dwelling that folds up into a fully enclosed steel shell. Giving a new dimension to portability, this 20-foot container has been transformed into an entire studio apartment.

Greentainer

Designed by Exposure Architects, the Greentainer Project in Gandino, Italy is a perfect combination of amazing design sense and reusability of existing resources. This beautiful shipping container home incorporates floor to ceiling windows to provide ample amounts of light.

Containers of Hope, a $40,000 Home by Benjamin Garcia Saxe.

Benjamin Garcia Saxe has built  with $ 40,000  an interesting place to live in Costa Rica. This project concentrates more on a communion with nature than actually building. This house is very chic and modern but it only takes a small amount of materials and space to function.

Source: Greendiary.com , homedit.com

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Udderly Delicious Butter Sculptures by Jim Victor and Marie Pelton

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Artists always use their creative minds, think outside of the box and utilize common items in uncommon way to shape their imaginations. From matchsticks, small pins to huge rocks, we've seen our fair share of imaginative art using unconventional materials, but sculptor Jim Victor, along with his wife Marie Pelton, have become the masters in the artistic use of butter. The creative couple has been taking the creamy blocks out of the kitchen and into the studio for the past 11 years, producing some really wonderful butter sculptures.

The Conshohoken, Pennsylvania-based couple has created a number of impressive butter-based projects that has given them international acclaim for their wonderful craft. Rather than treating the unusual sculpting material as a component meant for cooking or meaningless hobbies, they take their art seriously, constructing three-dimensional structures that could have very well been carved out of marble. Each golden statue is meticulously sculpted, reflecting the smooth and coarse textures of real life.

In most every scene they include a cow. That could possibly be because the couple is paying homage.
Udderly Impressive ??

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Old Phone Booths transformed into beautiful Aquariums, Osaka, Japan

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With the advent of mobile phones and penetration of internet in our daily lives, the telephone booths are pretty much a thing of past now. Instead of letting them rot slowly on the city lanes, an artist collaborative called Kingyobu in Osaka has come up with an unique idea. They are converting the phone booths into giant goldfish aquariums, a fun and simple art installation for everyone to enjoy for free.

Japanese consider these bright orange fish somewhat of a good luck charm, so visitors crowd around the awesome tanks, clicking pictures, spending time and get their share of luck and happiness. 

Kingyobu loosely translates to “goldfish club” in English. The Japanese art group have been turning phone booths into goldfish aquariums throughout Osaka as part of the city’s Canvas Project art festival. 

Seems kinda crazy but its fun and what a creative way to recycle.!! Isn't it!! 

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