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Metro Lines
August 09, 2013Just as there is no skyscraper without a lift, there is no metropolis without a metro system. Thus the birth of the metro in London on 9 January 1863 marked the birth of the British metropolis as well. Today, metros with more than 10,000 km of operational length are carrying passengers in as many...
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Grand Tour
June 01, 2013In the late Renaissance, around 1650, the Grand Tour became not only a tradition but almost a compulsory requirement for educated upper-class Europeans in search of art, culture and the roots of Western civilization. Some 200 years later, a system of railways that provided better affordability and faster travel times...
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Global Style
April 01, 2013European architecture education was and still is based on Greek orders, a classical system of architecture comprising five types of columns: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite. As modernism came into being, European architects discovered what a narrow view of architecture history Western educators had had until then.
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EU Tube
February 01, 2013The first high speed train (HST) deployed in Europe was the railway between Florence and Rome in 1978. Since then, more than 6,600 km of HST tracks have gone into operation, and more than 11,000 km are currently planned for the European Union.
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World's Most Expensive Buildings
December 01, 2012Realizing the world’s most expensive building is a dubious achievement. Whereas most architectural schemes are appreciated for qualities such as space, shape, composition and/or materialization, the highest-priced building stands out solely for the size of the investment that went into a single project.
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Information Graphics
October 12, 2012Taschen published recently a exquisite book with a perfect cross section of the history of graphical data representation.Here in short what what Taschen writes about their book Seeing is understandingHow complex ideas can be communicated via graphics“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” —Albert...
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Lack Index
October 01, 2012The Big Mac Index, a global cost comparison of one McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger, was introduced by The Economist in 1986. The Lack Index is a European version of the concept, because what McDonald’s is to the US, Ikea is to Europe – and Ikea’s Lack table seems to be...
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Grid City
August 14, 2012The grid was present in every pre-modern culture in the world, including the ancient Indus Valley civilization (2600 Indus Valley civilization (2600 Aztec and Mayan settlements of the Americas (100 BC). Throughout its 5,000 years of known existence, the grid has known existence, the grid has lost none of its attractiveness.