Nestled in Fall River county near the Black Hills in South Dakota is Vivos xPoint, the world’s largest doomsday survival community comprised of individual bunkers for 575 families and a total population of 5,000. Simply put, the company converted an old army munitions depot used between 1942-1967 into this community of concrete bunkers that can endure a 500,000-pound internal blast. Residents get their fresh water from two wells, stored in reinforced concrete tanks. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Houston’s real estate market is scorching hot right now, and there’s one house that stands out from the rest. Why? It’s the unofficial “Darth Vader House”, or a 7,000-square-foot home inspired by the space opera, complete with four bedrooms, 4.5 baths and a four-car attached garage, all located an 18,000 square foot corner lot in University Place. This living space was completed in 1992 and listed by Wade Knight with Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty. Read more for a video, additional pictures and information.
Texas-based ICON has just unveiled their next project, called “House Zero”. It’s touted as the most incredible 3D-printed home yet since it was optimized and designed specifically to be created with their next-generation Vulcan printer. Spanning 2,000-square-feet, it features three-bedrooms, three-bathrooms and an additional one-bedroom, one-bathroom accessory dwelling unit (ADU). Read more for a video and additional information.
The 25-meter-long (82-foot-long) transparent Sky Pool that links two apartment blocks at the Embassy Gardens development at Nine Elms by EcoWorld Ballymore in London has just opened. It will allow residents and their guests to swim 35-meters (115-feet) in the air while taking in panoramic views of the city, including the US Embassy building. One thing to note is that the pool wasn’t built in Europe, but rather Colorado before being transported 5,000 miles to its final destination near the Thames. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Photo credit: Milad Eshtiyaghi
A family wanted a unique custom home built on Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada. So, they contacted Iran-based architect and interior designer Milad Eshtiyaghi for the job. What they came up with was the “Mountain House,” which appears to be straight from a science fiction film. The idea was to build around four extremely old trees on a cliff, with the space between them acting as a backyard of sorts. Read more for two videos, additional pictures and information.
Photo credit: Bart van Overbeeke
A Dutch couple, Elize Lutz and Harrie Dekkers, have moved into Europe’s first fully 3D-printed house in Europe, which is located in the Bosrijk neighborhood of Eindhoven, Netherlands. This boulder-shaped, detached single-story home spans 94 square meters of living space, consisting of a spacious living room and two bedrooms. It boasts extra thick insulation and a connection to the heat grid to keep it comfortable and energy efficient year-round. Read more for a video, additional pictures and information.
Photo credit: Ponte 516 Arouca
The 1,692-foot Arouca 516 Bridge has now opened to the public, with its metal walkway suspended from cables 574-feet above the Paiva River. Previously, the world’s longest suspension bridge for pedestrians title was held by the Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge that spans 1,621-feet, followed by Japan’s Kokonoe Yume Bridge, which measures 1,280-feet. Arouca 516 cost $2.8-million to build and admission costs between $12-$14 accompanied by a guide. Read more for two videos and additional information.
Saudi Arabia will invest up to $200-billion to build “The Line”, a futuristic 100-mile-long linear city with no cars or streets and zero net carbon emissions. These hyper-connected communities stretch from the mountains of northwest Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea, powered completely 100% clean energy, with residents transported by autonomous mobility solutions and ultra-high-speed transit. The city will consist of three layers: a surface layer for pedestrians and two subterranean layers for transport as well as infrastructure. Read more for two videos and additional information.
We could be just a decade or two away from an actual city on Mars, thanks to the team at “SONet” (Sustainable Offworld Network), which includes Dr. Gisela Detrell from the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart (Germany). They developed ‘Nüwa,’ a network of five cities that offers its residents easy access to resources and mobility on a long-term basis. It will be able to expand and grow without supplies or support from Earth, but rather resources from the Red Planet itself. Read more for a video, additional pictures and information.
The Monsanto House of the Future was an attraction at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland between 1957-1967, and it offered a walkthrough experience for visitors, mainly to demonstrate the versatility of modern plastics. There were many household appliances on the cutting edge of technology at that time, including microwave ovens, which eventually became commonplace. Within the first 6-weeks of it opening (June 12, 1957), the house saw over 435,000 visitors, and ultimately, over 20-million people before closing. Read more for a video and additional information.