http://niceartlife.com Wed, 16 May 2012 19:24:47 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5230 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5230#comments Sat, 12 May 2012 21:49:00 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5230 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } National Geographic is one of the most interesting magazines there is about science, nature and earth. The photos featured in the magazine captivate my imagination. The editors of National Geographic pick every month a few choice shots to add to their amazing collection called Visions of Earth, showcasing some of the best nature images from around the earth made by both famous and relatively unknown photographers. There are currently seven years of Visions on Earth photographs available on the National Geographic website. In this post I offer you a selection of some interesting photos of this collection from the past seven years. They truly are a tribute to our globe, offering a shots from various places world wide on an ordinary day on this beautiful planet.   People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle. Thich Nhat Hanh]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5230 6 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5206 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5206#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 20:17:05 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5206 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } Vacs From The Sea is an 2010-2011 initiative of Electrolux to raise awareness of the huge amount of plastic waste in the oceans (the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) by deploying teams to collect some of it and turn it into a series of vacuums. Designers produced units that contain 70 percent recycled materials found in 5 oceans. The one-off designs will be used to promote ocean clean-up efforts. Plastic debris has been gathered in many different ways. For the concept vacuum cleaner called The Baltic Sea Edition, plastic was collected from three different sites in Poland, Sweden and Latvia. In Sweden, the collection site was Sandhamn, a small island in the Stockholm archipelago. Hans Stråberg, the President and CEO of Electrolux: ‘Our oceans are filled with plastic waste. Yet on land, there is a shortage of recycled plastic. The supply of sustainable raw material, such as recycled plastic, is crucial for making sustainable appliances, and assisting consumers in making their homes greener. I therefore hope people will join us in raising awareness about the threat plastic poses to marine habitats, and the urgent need for taking better care of the plastic that already exists.’ Maybe you’re wondering what this vac [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5206 0 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5164 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5164#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 08:38:07 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5164 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } Enjoying your holiday in absolute freedom is an important aspect we all like to reach, independent from hotels and full camping facilities.  In a previous article we wrote about a innovative new compact Volkswagen van that can be extended to a full camper. But the travel companion of this article, called ‘Opera’, is revolutionary too. The Opera has been designed by the Dutch firm Ysin in a country (The Netherlands) where mobile homes, campers and tents are very popular for holiday periods. With the Opera as travel companion, a whole new world opens up to you. A world in which you can enjoy the luxuries of a comfortable hotel against the backdrop of your favorite natural landscapes. A world in which you have the freedom to go, or stay, wherever you wish, while relishing the purity of the outdoors in style. The opera offers you the full comfort and luxury of a regular hotel suite wherever you like to go in nature and it is very compact too. The Opera is a mobile designer suite in a class of her own. Within minutes, she will show you her characteristic outlines, resting firmly on her legs in a level position. The [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5164 4 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5107 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5107#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:12:32 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5107 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } Valentin Blatz Brewing Company was an American beer producer from 1851 to 1959. It’s home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is now on the national register of historic places, a central part of Milwaukee’s brewing history. Built between 1851 and 1910, the massive masonry monolith had undergone a series of additions and alterations in the 1980s to accommodate for apartments and offices referred to on the street as “The Blatz” but had subsequently fallen into disrepair. Today, The Blatz has been fully refreshed by Johnsen Schmaling Architects, using some of the building’s own history (and product) in it’s Eco-conscious design. Working with a limited budget and within the strict parameters of the existing structure, the architects focused their efforts on a series of small interventions to re-imagine the building’s public sphere. The Blatz building’s lower level lounge features a series of doors constructed of 1,590 horizontally stacked empty beer bottles. Each of these doors is nine feet tall and just over nine feet wide, pivoting smoothly on a central axis. These bright amber doors open and close to partition off smaller, more intimate areas of the lounge– or open wide for a larger experience. The bottles themselves are true to Blatz Brewing, [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5107 3 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5085 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5085#comments Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:03:12 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5085 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } Marine critters are fascinating to say the least, and this is clearly the case with the white spotted jellyfish, recently spotted at the Steinhart Aquarium of the California Academy of Sciences. The Australian jellyfish, as it is alternatively called, also responds to the pompous scientific name of Phyllorhiza punctate. They’re native to the Western Pacific Ocean, but can also be spotted in North America, where they’re considered an invasive species, coming in in flocks and herds, to scavenge and attack the habitat of other animals. Dangerous in their own right, there is still something heart-wrenching about their fluid shapes, dancing in the waters of captivity at the California Academy of Sciences. The Steinhart Aquarium is a hidden gem of sorts—the kind of place you casually and accidentally read about once, only to wish you could visit one day. It is home to no fewer than 38,000 animals the world over, some 900 distinct species and many endangered or otherwise rare critters. It’s the place where you can see African penguins, sharks, stingrays, piranhas and explore the beauty and diversity of the marine environment, in safe, scientific, state-of-the-art technology conditions. The aquarium frequently features lectures open to the great public, which [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5085 3 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5065 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5065#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:41:06 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5065 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } American artist Andrew Myers uses screws to create amazing, detailed, 3D-portraits of people. Myers spends two to six months and up to ten thousand screws for each piece. He takes a sheet of plywood, makes a sketch of a portrait in pencil, and then begins to place the screws at different depths turning a flat image into a volume masterpiece. Easier said than done. Biography:  Since his early childhood, Andrew Myers has been artistically influenced by European life and culture.  Born in Braunschweig, Germany and raised in Ciudad Real, Spain his exposure to modern continental living and classical architecture prompted the universal and classical themes, yet modern design found in his artwork. At the age of 20, Myers applied to the Art Institute of Southern California (now known as the Laguna College of Art and Design); with no previous art training, he was accepted based upon the natural talent his application portfolio evidenced. The young artist developed his skills through advanced figurative sculpture and accelerated painting curriculum.  While these two and a half years of creative training provided Myers with the basic working knowledge of the artistic field, it was his drive, passion, and leap of faith into work as [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5065 3 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5020 http://niceartlife.com/?p=5020#comments Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:42:23 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=5020 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } Many architects are applying their innovations and creativity when they need to design a library or book store. In previous articles we’ve seen some great examples like The Da Vila Bookstore in Brazil, the Grand Splendid El Ateneo Bookstore in Buenos Aires Argentina and the Camouflage wood stick library in China. The following bookstore is no exception to the list of breathtaking bookstores and libraries when it comes to innovative design. One of the book shops of the popular Dutch bookstore chain Selexyz can be found right inside of a 13th century Dominican church in the center of the Dutch city of Maastricht – The Netherlands. The project known as Selexyz Dominicanen Maastricht, designed in 2006 and 2007 by architecture firm Merkx & Girod, exemplifies a brilliant union between the opposing aesthetics. The space maintains the church’s architectural structure and definitive design attributes while inviting the contemporary styling of a modern bookstore. Fortunately this historic and beautiful building has been saved because it’s previous destination was the unfortunate road to destruction. The shift in destiny succeeded and now this pearl in the heart of Maastricht shines again. Many would say that other destiny for churches isn’t possible, but preserving such [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=5020 3 http://niceartlife.com/?p=4985 http://niceartlife.com/?p=4985#comments Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:21:16 +0000 NiceArtLife http://niceartlife.com/?p=4985 #leftcontainerBox { float:left; position: fixed; top: 60%; left: 70px; } #leftcontainerBox .buttons { float:left; clear:both; margin:4px 4px 4px 4px; padding-bottom:2px; } #bottomcontainerBox { width: 50%; padding-top: 1px; } #bottomcontainerBox .buttons { float: left; margin: 4px 4px 4px 4px; } Artist Simon Beck must really love the cold weather! Along the frozen lakes of Savoie, France, he spends days plodding through the snow in raquettes (snowshoes), creating these sensational patterns of snow art. Working for 5-9 hours a day, each final piece is typically the size of three soccer fields! The geometric forms range in mathematical patterns and shapes that create stunning, sometimes 3D, designs when viewed from higher levels. Each final piece is typically the size of three soccer fields, if not more. His main focus is on mathematical geometric forms which usually create a stunning 3D like effect when viewed from high altitudes. As you might have guessed, the survival of his work solely depends on the weather. Beck tries to redesigns the patterns as new snow falls. Sometime luck does not go his way and he is often unable to finish a piece. But that doesn’t get him down, the main reason of his art is exercise: The main reason for making them was because I can no longer run properly due to problems with my feet, so plodding about on level snow is the least painful way of getting exercise. Gradually, the reason has become photographing them, and I am [...]]]> http://niceartlife.com/?feed=rss2&p=4985 1