UNStudio has created a beautifully constructed archway that brightens up the retail sphere of Xintiandi Mall in China. Because it’s lined with mirrors, you can track your movements from beginning to end and watch your surroundings skip playfully across the different planes of the mall’s entrance. It’s like walking down the inside of a wormhole—except you stay safely grounded in both time and space.
Shanghai is, unfortunately, seeing record levels of smog lately, but there’s no sign of dull toxic haze in this neon display by artist Lu Xinjian. "City Light" is a glowing part of I Love Shanghai, an exhibition at the local Art Labor gallery; here, pop stylings and primary colors actually show the real-life urban grid—with a Google Earth by way of Keith Haring vibe.
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Choking pollution sweeps through China, new development could eradicate Mexico’s emerging wine industry, and Yahoo can tell you everything that’s wrong with where you live (congratulations, Memphis, you’re apparently a hellhole). All this and more is What’s Ruining Our Cities.
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China’s grim (and growing) air pollution problems cast some pretty dark shadows on the country’s urban hubs, which often look like they’ve been photographed using a "muddy water" filter. That makes these crisp and sunny pics of the Huaxin Business Center in Shanghai’s Xuhui District all the more surprising.
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The curvaceous forms of blobitecture may look like they’re malleable, but the swoops that define the modern style of lady Zaha, Future Systems, and ol’ Frank Gehry aren’t flexible at all. That’s not the case with the concept for the “Bubble Building” in Shanghai, an ambitious re-imagining of an existing structure that covers the windows in a series of nylon pockets that appear to breathe based on the amount of activity inside.
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A number of Apple Retail Stores around the world have amazing design and architecture. At home, New York’s infamous Fifth Avenue store is one of them, and so is the store in Shanghai, China. A glass cylinder leads customers down to the Apple Retail Store in Shanghai, the company has now been awarded a patent for this design. The patent is called Glass building panel and building made therefrom, and it describes the design of said glass cylinder. Metal joints are used to hold the big curved glass panels together, curving the panels to form the correct shape and to make them strong enough to bear their own weight and that of customers going back and forth certainly wouldn’t have been an easy task.
The Shanghai Apple Store was opened back in 2010 as part of Apple’s sales push in China. It was the second store to be opened in the country. The iconic cylinder is 40 feet high and contains the largest curved glass panels. The store has one of the largest Genius Bars and is also one of the largest stores that Apple has ever built. As of now there are three Apple Stores in Shanghai alone, a fourth one is expected to be opened in the near future.
Apple Awarded Patent For Shanghai Store’s Glass Cylinder Entrance original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Consider this the somewhat end of China’s 13-year old (loosely enforced) “ban” on videogames. A new policy issued by the country’s State Council amends the language of a prior bill from 2000 which “strictly limited” the manufacture and import of game consoles. Now, foreign companies that register within Shanghai’s free trade zone, the country’s first such pilot program designed to spur private investment, competition and economic growth, are free to sell gaming consoles and arcade machines throughout China. Restrictions on “unhealthy” content still remain, however, with only games whitelisted by the Ministry of Culture allowed for sale. But despite this official reversal, Chinese gamers have long enjoyed access to popular videogames and consoles, anyway. Systems from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, as well as knock-offs, have all been easily accessible on the black market. That’s not to mention Nintendo’s China-only iQue — a “safe” mini-N64 created with the country’s cultural guidelines in mind — which has been on sale through official market channels for some time.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: Chinese Government (Translated)
A few days ago, the South China Morning Post claimed that blocks put on websites like Twitter, Facebook and The New York Times were to be lifted in Shanghai’s new free-trade zone. And the justification made sense, too: relax restrictions to make visitors happy, and potentially cash in on accelerated foreign investment as a result. Plausible, sure, but according to state-run news outlet the People’s Daily, completely untrue. As it turns out, the Chinese powers that be allegedly have no intention of allowing web traffic in the free-trade zone to circumvent the Great Firewall, which means visiting Twitter addicts will still have to turn to Weibo for their social network / microblogging fix.
[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Update: People.com.cn (not the People’s Daily, as reported earlier) has since pulled its post. There’s no explanation as to why.
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Register
Source: TechWeb (Chinese)
Given how large a mobile market China has become, and its role in gadget manufacturing globally, we sometimes forget the government of this increasingly tech-aware country still dictates what corners of the web its peoples can see. Today, the South China Morning Post reports the state has decided to unblock several foreign internet sites “considered politically sensitive,” but only in the free-trade zone of Shanghai’s Pudong New Area. According to “government sources,” the move to open access to sites including Facebook, Twitter (both of which were cut off in 2009) and The New York Times (blocked last year) is so visitors can “live and work happily in the free-trade zone.” The greater goal is to make the area more attractive to foreign companies, beyond the favorable regulatory and tax environment, of course. Furthermore, the Chinese are allegedly beckoning overseas firms to come in and “provide internet services” for the new, 30 square kilometer zone. The Great Firewall may remain firmly up for the rest of the country and its billion-odd population, but one step at a time and all that.
[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Filed under: Internet
Via: Quartz
Source: South China Morning Post
We’re smack dab in the middle of a golden age when anything you could possibly want can be ordered online and delivered
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