LA is a city of concrete. From Frank Lloyd Wright’s modernist mansions to Rudolph Schindler’s tilted houses, architects working there have embraced the material. A new map by Blue Crow Media shows some lesser-known structures are just as striking
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Colombia’s full-colour Blacks and Whites’ carnival – in pictures
More than 10,000 artists, craftspeople and revellers take part in the carnival, a fusion of different cultural celebrations. It takes place every year from 2 to 7 January in the city of Pasto and is on Unesco’s intangible heritage list
Continue reading...Too little, too late? The battle to save Tripoli’s futuristic fairground
Designed by Brazilian modernist Oscar Niemeyer, Lebanon’s international expo site has been abandoned since civil war broke out in the 1970s
“It could collapse at any time,” says the architect and activist Wassim Naghi. The facade of the unfinished, subterranean space museum in Tripoli, Lebanon, is visibly decaying and its steel reinforcements are rusted – but that may not be its biggest problem. “The ageing concrete’s carbonation is invisible,” explains Naghi when we meet in his office in the centre of the city. “We don’t know how bad it really is.”
Situated beneath an elevated concrete helipad, the museum was part of a planned permanent international fair designed by the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the early 1960s that was expected to accommodate more than 2 million visitors a year. The 100-hectare (250-acre) site’s 15 existing buildings also include a domed theatre, an atrium, an arch and collective housing. A 717-metre-long boomerang-shaped canopy was designed to house the permanent exhibition, alongside a separate, traditionally styled pavilion for exhibitions relating to Lebanon.
Continue reading...Jair Bolsonaro takes office as Brazil’s president – in pictures
The inauguration of the Brazilian president took place in Brasilia
Continue reading...The dark history of Santa’s city: how Rovaniemi rose from the ashes
After the Finnish city was razed to the ground by the German army in the second world war, architect Alvar Aalto rebuilt it to a reindeer-shaped street grid. Then Santa came to town …
As soon as you land at Rovaniemi airport in Lapland you see a reindeer. Not a real one, admittedly, but somebody in a Rudolf suit cheerily greeting passengers who have just arrived. A couple of miles from “Santa’s official airport” lies Santa Claus Village, an amusement park complete with elves, real reindeers, huskies, shops and restaurants that draws more than 600,000 visitors a year to this isolated spot at the edge of the Arctic Circle.
There are reindeer everywhere in Rovaniemi: humans dressed as them at the airport, real ones pulling sleighs at Santa Claus Village and statues of them throughout the city centre.
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