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Shimao Wonderland Intercontinental: The lavish £345million five-star CAVE hotel being built in an abandoned Chinese quarry

Posted date: 10:13 AM / comment : 0 , ,


-Two of the hotel's 19 storeys will be built underwater and will feature an aquarium with glass walls -The other 17 storeys will be built inside a cave at the base of the Tianmenshan Mountain-The British design firm behind the plans claim the roof of the £345-million hotel will sit just 15 metres above ground.

Construction has begun on a luxury five-star hotel being built INSIDE a 100-metre deep, water-filled abandoned quarry in China at the base of the Tianmenshan Mountain.
The £345million cave hotel in the Songjiang District has been designed by British-based firm Atkins and will have 380 rooms over 19 storeys - two of which will be underwater. 
The rest of the InterContinental Shimao hotel will be built into the mountainous landscape and guests will be able to do watersports on the lake and use the nearby cliffs for rock-climbing and bungee jumping. 
It is expected to take around three years to build and guests could be staying in the resort by 2015 - with rooms likely to cost around £200 a night.
An artist's view of what the finished cave hotel will look like. The 5-star underground resort is being built inside a 100-foot deep, water-filled abandoned quarry in China at the base of the Tianmenshan Mountain in the Songjiang District
The two underwater floors will have an aquarium with glass walls that look out onto an underwater restaurant and guest rooms.
A swimming pool and a sports centre will also be built inside the hotel as well as several restaurants, a banqueting hall and conference rooms for business meetings.

Although the guest rooms will vary in size, they are expected to start from around £200 a night.
Atkins has designed the structure to blend in with the landscape using an eco-friendly green roof planted with various trees.

Li Xuyang, a senior manager for Shimao Group told Shortlist: 'Two stories will be built underwater, 17 will be within the cave and two more will be above ground.
'The roof of the hotel will only be 15 m above the cave.
'The idea was to take advantage of this unique land form and to create a garden growing in the air. 
People could view the hundred-meter high waterfall from their room window.
'The hotel is part of the larger project to build Shimao Shanghai Wonderland, a large-scale theme park.'
Construction vehicles begin work on converting the abandoned quarry into the five-star underground hotel. Li Xuyang, a senior manager for Shimao Group said the hotel is part of the larger project to build Shimao Shanghai Wonderland, a large-scale theme park

Thomas Edison's Quirky Invention: the Concrete House

Posted date: 7:17 PM / comment : 0 , , ,

In 1887, Edison embarked on a project that would later prove to be a huge fiasco. He proposed an idea of extracting iron from low-grade ore and was immediately ridiculed by an editorial who called the idea "Edison's Folly." The stubborn Edison immediately invested his own money and built a huge plant and a town around it, only to find years later that it would be far cheaper to mine iron ores!
So, left with all of the heavy machineries from the failed ore project, Edison decided to get into the cement business. He noticed that one could mold concrete into a wide variety of shapes and thought that he could build a house by pouring concrete into a single, giant mold! And not only the house: "everything from bathtubs, windowsills, staircases, and picture frames to electrical conduits and reinforcing rods would be molded right in." (Source: American Heritage)
Edison and a model of his concrete house. 
Edison, who grew up poor, thought that he could solve New York's housing problem and clear out the slums by mass producing affordable working man's houses. But first, he needed a model: Edison hired a high-profile architecture firm to create a two-story, two-family house "in the style of Francis I." At Edison's request (he didn't want to be known as "the father of ugly houses"), the model came with a large front porch and intricate exterior moldings.
This, of course, turned out to be impractical - so Edison downscaled his plan and casted his first concrete house on Hixon Street in South Orange, New Jersey, in 1911 (it was later demolished to make way for a supermarket and a parking lot).
Edison's cement houses. Photo: Edison National Historic Site - US National Park Service
In 1917, with Edison's blessing, pocket-watch magnate (apparently there was such a person) Charles Ingersoll constructed 11 concrete houses and offered them at $1,200 each - roughly one third of the usual price - but not a single house was sold!
Some historians and Edison biographers blame the publicity and Edison’s grandiose predictions for the demise of his most altruistic endeavor. No one wanted to live in a house that had been described as “the salvation of the slum dweller.” People were too proud to be stigmatized as having been “rescued from squalor and poverty.”
But there may have been a more important reason for the Edison monoliths’ failure to catch on. The architect Ernest Flagg, writing in Collier’s Weekly seven years later, noted that “Mr. Edison was not an architect— it was not cheapness that wanted so much as relief from ugliness, and Mr. Edison’s early models entirely did not achieve that relief.” From looking at them, it is hard to disagree.
Wait, what about those concrete furniture and piano we talked about? Well, in 1911 Edison boasted that concrete furniture could be made just as attractive as wood but cheaper and more durable. He went on to use air-impregnated "foam" concrete to make a piano, bathtub, and cabinets for his phonographs. Like his concrete houses, however, the Edison concrete furniture just never caught on. (If you have a picture of Edison's concrete piano, please let me know!)
Edison's concrete phonograph cabinets. 
Photo: Edison National Historic Site - US National Park Service
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