Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid, Tokyo
The dimensions of this sky city are nothing short of staggering. If ever completed the Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid will stand 12 times higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt at 6,574ft tall with an area of 3 square miles at the base. The structure would consist of 8 layers stacked on top of each other which would have a total area of 34 square miles. Each layer will consist of smaller pyramids each roughly the size of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas with layers 1 through 4 devoted for mixed residential and commercial usage and layers 5 through 8 for leisure and social facilities. There will be accommodation for 750,000 people, or 1/16th of Tokyo’s 12 million strong population. Getting that many people around will be a challenge met by a zero carbon, personalised rapid transit system and a network of accelerated walkways and elevators that connect the city via 55 strategically located nodes. The exterior facade of the proposed hyperstructure will be sprayed with a photovoltaic coating to convert sunlight into electricity for a greener city. (more…)

1. If you can slip two fingers between your neck and the buttoned collar of a new dress shirt, the shirt will fit comfortably after laundering.
2. The shirt placket, the belt buckle, and the trouser fly should all line up.
3. Speaking of belt buckles, the point of your tie should never fall below it.
4. Rent no clothing.
5. Ninety-dollar shoes last half as long as $180 shoes, but $360 shoes will last you your whole life.
6. Three-hundred-sixty-dollar shoes will not last your whole life if you break their backs by refusing to use a shoehorn.
7. Three-hundred-sixty-dollar shoes without a shine can look like $90 shoes.
8. Women notice shoes. (more…)

Crystal Island: OK, we know, it is another Foster project. But this one is more equal than others for Crystal Island will be the largest building in the world when completed. Crystal Island’s vital statistics are, well, huge. The volcano-shaped superstructure will be 1,500 foot tall with 26,909,776 foot squared of floor space, that’s enough room to house 30,000 people. As you would expect from a Foster + Partners project, the self-contained city within a city has energy conservation and eco-friendly energy management at the very heart of the design. Crystal Island will generate low carbon energy from solar arrays and wind turbines located on the building with vast atriums to regulate the internal air temperature during the extremes of the Russian summer and winter. (more…)

Pantone’s color of the year is No. 18-3943… er, em, blue.

AT least one color authority, Pantone, has taken the plunge and announced its favorite color for 2008. To be sure, this news doesn’t seem as delectable as People’s Sexiest Man Alive or as snugly affirming as Time’s Person of the Year. You probably did not even know that chili pepper red was the color for 2007. (more…)