Stonehenge’s New Visitor Center Looks Positively Neolithic

Stonehenge's New Visitor Center Looks Positively Neolithic

The decrepit old visitor center at Stonehenge has been too small and too old for decades. In fact, it’s been described with typical Brit candor as "disgraceful" and an "embarrassment" to England. Finally, this month, a new, $44 million visitors’ center has opened—here’s a look inside.

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Food Blueprint Placemats: For Foodie Engineers

How does one go about with making the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich? What about the perfect sundae or a banana split? These are presumably some of the most commonly consumed snacks and treats in the country, so most people really don’t need any directions on how to make them.

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In case you find someone who doesn’t though, then you absolutely have to get them a set or two of these Food Blueprint Placemats. They keep the table clean and provide detailed diagrams and various views of these foods that will make putting them together a breeze.

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They’re  sold in sets of four and are priced at $20(USD) by Awkward Engineer.

[via Incredible Things]

How Many Windows Are There in Manhattan?

How Many Windows Are There in Manhattan?

The shimmering wall of windows that makes up Manhattan is breathtaking, and seems almost infinite. But Michael Pollak—the wizard behind The New York Times‘ "F.Y.I" series, which plumbs deep and weird questions about New York—got down to brass tacks this week, estimating how many windows are on the island.

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This Glass Room Lets You Float Over of One of the Alps’ Highest Peaks

This Glass Room Lets You Float Over of One of the Alps' Highest Peaks

The Aiguille du Midi, or Needle of the South, has been home to the terrifying highest vertical ascent cable car in the world for three decades. But this month, it’s stepping up its scaring-the-wits-out-of-tourists game—with a glass box that hangs over the yawning void next to the peak.

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Most Beautiful Items: December 13 – 20, 2013

Most Beautiful Items: December 13 - 20, 2013

It’s nearly Christmas so everything is beautiful, from the lights decking every inch of your neighborhood to the fact that you’re about to get a little vacation. But we also had plenty of things to show you this week, from our favorite Instagram accounts to a tunnel to the sky in a Manhattan train station, and so much more. Here are our favorite, eye-popping posts from this week:

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In 1881, longtime Harper’s cartoonist Thomas Nast created this satirical sketch of what New York wou

In 1881, longtime Harper’s cartoonist Thomas Nast created this satirical sketch of what New York would look like by the turn of the century—lampooning new building technologies like the elevator and elevator break. By lambasting the race to build ever-higher, Nastforesaw the future of Lower Manhattan. [PTAK Science Books; Paleofuture]

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Design The Ultimate Sustainable “Forever Home” For One, Win $500!

Build a sustainable home for one, win $500!Open Tech Forever and the Denver, Colorado branch of Architecture for
Humanity are waiting for you to design an environmentally sustainable
and modular home that one or two people would be thrilled to spend the
rest of their lives in. After all, they can’t build it until you design
it!

The Billion-Dollar Megaprojects That Will Transform NYC By 2030

The Billion-Dollar Megaprojects That Will Transform NYC By 2030

As Michael Bloomberg’s reign comes to a close, our mayor/billionaire underwriter is talking up his next move, which involves teaching other cities to be more like New York. But behind the scenes, he’s also scrambling to push through dozens of building projects that will define his legacy.

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Not all is as it seems in this tower, planned for Stockholm: The floors and columns are all made fro

Not all is as it seems in this tower, planned for Stockholm: The floors and columns are all made from wood, rather than steel and concrete. In fact, the timber tower will be the tallest wood building ever built when it’s finished in 2023. Why the wait? The architects, Berg | C.F. Møller, will spend the next few years testing the technology for safety and structural soundness. [Gizmodo; Bustler]

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The Coming Singularity, When All Suburbs Look The Same

The Coming Singularity, When All Suburbs Look The Same

Photographer Martin Adolfsson’s book Suburbia Gone Wild, published earlier this year, documents the weird and expanding mirage of seemingly endless copies and duplicate environments called suburbia, like some poorly diagnosed spatial syndrome taking over the landscapes of the world from Mexico to Egypt, Thailand to India, to here in the United States.

The Coming Singularity, When All Suburbs Look The Same

The rooms are like dispersed pods from an unacknowledged global hotel chain, different only in their tiniest details. Is that image, above, from a house in Los Angeles, on the outskirts of Raleigh, or—as it happens—a suburb in Cairo, Egypt? Is this next photograph from Florida, Thailand, or—in reality—Moscow, Russia? How on earth can you tell?

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