Posts about Architecture

Madeline Pickens spends her life saving America's Mustangs. Here with her horse "Paint".

Saving America’s Mustangs

27.04.2024

Madeleine Pickens is a businesswoman, animal welfare activist and philanthropist of European descent. When, in 2008, the Bureau of Land Management declared that the United States government considered euthanasia and/or the sale of more than 30,000 Wild Mustangs to slaughterhouses overseas, Madeleine resolved to establish a sanctuary for endangered native horses. A year later, Madelene testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands in support of H.R. 1018, the Restoring Our American Mustangs (ROAM) Act. After acquiring the sanctuary in North Eastern Nevada, she saved over 600 Mustangs from slaughter and endeavours to rescue and preserve the Wild Mustang have been an ongoing process. Also, until this day, the sanctuary’s survival relies on Madeleine’s charity foundation „Saving Americas Mustangs“, through which the funding for the Mustang Monument Eco-Resort and Preserve could be raised. A series of recurring obstacles had to be overcome before the resort could be run according to plan.

Saving America’s Mustangs is a not-for-profit organization accepting donations (tax-deductible).

Read article

Paris: The stage of a glamorous Montmartre Show.

Paris. Montmartre – a sphere in its own right

12.04.2024

The Making of a Bohemian Microcosm

Montmartre evolved following a massive urban reconstruction and relocation scheme initiated by a great man of the 19th century: Napoleon III. Together with his ambitious town planning prefect Baron Haussmann, he aimed at creating a mundane Paris of dazzling allure and wanted it to become „the most beautiful city of Europe“ – not without granting spacious plots of land in prime locations to Haussmann, his many friends and financial supporters. By rigorously stomping unsightly areas into the ground and by replacing humble housing by posh manorial edifices and narrow crooked alleyways by grandiose and airy boulevards and squares, Paris’s face was substantially lifted and embellished – albeit at the expense of the less privileged population, who became early victims of gentrification.

Read article

Dear Prague!

14.02.2024

Don’t be shy to admit it: you are well aware of your striking looks! Uphill, downhill, along the Moldova with Smetana’s music resonating in one’s mind: walking your streets stands for a rewarding high-performance exercise for the senses – and for a bit of a challenge to the feet, too, I must say. To explore you from the core means treading historic grounds paved with cobble-stones hewn to all shapes and sizes. Yet, if the horses could cope with tricky surfaces on hooves back then, so can I in sensible footwear today. But, where to look first in this maze of wonder: left, right, up, down or around?

Read article

Lego Bricks Public Domain

Danish Bricks build corporate Teams

9.01.2024

One cannot wait to grow up and finish school. One graduates from an obscenely expensive university with a brain full of sophisticated knowledge and embarks on professional life with the greatest of expectations. And what could happen next? One ends up laying Lego bricks in order to develop strategies or to find a solution to a stalemate situation! Sounds a bit far-fetched? Well, it isn’t, really. Helping to clear corporate obstacles out of the way playfully is what the methodology thought up by the Danish toy-brick company is all about.

Read article

ICEHOTEL

Made of Ice: A truly unique Hotel

1.01.2024

Isn’t „unique“ a fantastic word to work with? Considering that it defines this one singular, outstanding idea, object or place, hardly a description could be more adequate. The ICEHOTEL in northern Sweden does not claim to be the one and only specimen of its kind. What renders it solitary is that it is redesigned and skillfully recreated every winter afresh – from scratch. 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, embedded in an untouched environment dotted with thousands of pristine lakes and crossed by wild rivers, lies Jukkasjärvi. Every year, the remote village witnesses a fascinating spectacle repeating itself.

Read article