|
Spiral Island
Spiral Island was a floating artificial island built in Mexico by British artist Richart "Reishee" Sowa. It was destroyed by Hurricane Emily in 2005. A replacement, Joyxee Island, had been open for tours since 2008, but closed after it was damaged by storms and the local authority ordered its removal. Spiral Island was featured in newspapers and TV documentaries around the world, including in Japan and South Korea, as well as an episode of the ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' TV series, and on the MTV program ''Extreme Cribs'' in 2011. Spiral Island The first Spiral island was located in a lagoon near Puerto Aventuras, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico south of Cancún; Richart Sowa began constructing it in 1998. He filled nets with empty discarded plastic bottles to support a structure of plywood and bamboo, on which he poured sand and planted numerous plants, including mangroves. The island sported a two-story house, a solar oven, a self-composting toilet, and three beaches. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cancún
Cancún ( ), often Cancun in English (without the accent; or ) is a city in southeast Mexico on the northeast coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It is a significant tourist destination in Mexico and the seat of the municipality of Benito Juárez Municipality, Quintana Roo, Benito Juárez. The city is on the Caribbean Sea and is one of Mexico's easternmost points. Cancún is just north of Mexico's Caribbean coast resort area known as the Riviera Maya. Etymology and coat of arms According to early Spanish sources, the island of Cancún was originally known to its Maya peoples, Maya inhabitants as ( yua, niʔ suʔuk), meaning either 'Wiktionary:promontory, promontory' or 'point of grass'. The name ''Cancún'', ''Cancum'' or ''Cankun'' first appears on 18th-century maps. In older English-language documents, the city's name is sometimes spelled ''Cancoon'', an attempt to convey the sound of the name. ''Cancún'' is derived from the Mayan name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Land Art
Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an art movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with Great Britain and the United StatesArt in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & movements. Abrams, 2002. (U.S. edition of Styles, Schools and Movements, by Amy Dempsey) but that also includes examples from many countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded boundaries of art by the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used were often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites of the works were often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation was commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.http://www.land-arts.com Land art. Concerns of the art mov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Art
Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example monumental earthworks using earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns. Integrated social and ecological approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s. Over the past ten years environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions around the world as the social and cultural aspects of climate change come to the forefront. The term "environmental art" often encompasses "ecological" concerns but is not specific to them. It primarily celebrates an artist's connection with nature using natural materials. The concept is best understood in relationship to historic earth/Land art and the evolving field of ecological art. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Former Islands
A former is an object, such as a template, gauge or cutting die, which is used to form something such as a boat's hull. Typically, a former gives shape to a structure that may have complex curvature. A former may become an integral part of the finished structure, as in an aircraft fuselage, or it may be removable, being using in the construction process and then discarded or re-used. Aircraft formers Formers are used in the construction of aircraft fuselage, of which a typical fuselage has a series from the nose to the empennage, typically perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. The primary purpose of formers is to establish the shape of the fuselage and reduce the column length of stringers to prevent instability. Formers are typically attached to longerons, which support the skin of the aircraft. The "former-and-longeron" technique (also called stations and stringers) was adopted from boat construction, and was typical of light aircraft built until the ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Islands Of Mexico
Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality often carries with it the implication of being false, counterfeit, or deceptive. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his ''Rhetoric'': However, artificiality does not necessarily have a negative connotation, as it may also reflect the ability of humans to replicate forms or functions arising in nature, as with an artificial heart or artificial intelligence. Political scientist and artificial intelligence expert Herbert A. Simon observes that "some artificial things are imitations of things in nature, and the imitation may use either the same basic materials as those in the natural object or quite different materials.Herbert A. Simon, ''The Sciences of the Artificial'' (1996), p. 4. Simon distinguishes between the artificial and the synthe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isla Mujeres
Isla Mujeres (, Spanish language, Spanish for "Women Island" (formally “Isla de Mujeres”) is an island where the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea meet, about off the Yucatán Peninsula coast in the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico. It is approximately long and wide. To the east is the Caribbean Sea with a strong Ocean surface wave, surf and rock (geology), rocky coast, and to the west the skyline of Cancún can be seen across the waters. In the 2010 census, the namesake town on the island had a population of 12,642 inhabitants. The town is the seat of Isla Mujeres (municipality), Isla Mujeres Municipality. Very little violent crime has been reported on the island over its history, leading the island to gain a reputation for its relaxed nature, with the safety of both residents and tourists being unusually high. The biggest danger to the residents of the island has historically been the threat of tropical storms and hurricanes, some of which have caused devastating damage, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Composting Toilet
A composting toilet is a type of dry toilet that treats human waste by a biological process called composting. This process leads to the decomposition of organic matter and turns human waste into compost-like material. Composting is carried out by microorganisms (mainly bacteria and fungi) under controlled aerobic conditions. Most composting toilets use no water for flushing and are therefore called "dry toilets". In many composting toilet designs, a carbon additive such as sawdust, coconut coir, or peat moss is added after each use. This practice creates air pockets in the human waste to promote aerobic decomposition. This also improves the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and reduces potential odor. Most composting toilet systems rely on mesophilic composting. Longer retention time in the composting chamber also facilitates pathogen die-off. The end product can also be moved to a secondary system – usually another composting step – to allow more time for mesophilic composting t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Oven
A solar cooker is a device which uses the energy of direct sunlight to heat, cook or pasteurize drink and other food materials. Many solar cookers currently in use are relatively inexpensive, low-tech devices, although some are as powerful or as expensive as traditional stoves, and advanced, large scale solar cookers can cook for hundreds of people. Because they use no fuel and cost nothing to operate, many nonprofit organizations are promoting their use worldwide in order to help reduce fuel costs and air pollution, and to help slow down deforestation and desertification. History In ancient times, the use of solar energy was believed to have existed in civilizations amidst the Greeks, Romans and the Chinese, though not for cooking. The first academic description of the principles of a solar cooker is by the Swiss geologist, meteorologist, physicist, mountaineer, and Alpine explorer Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, in 1767. The principle of cooking meals by sunlight was largely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mangrove
A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in several plant families. They occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics and even some temperate coastal areas, mainly between latitudes 30° N and 30° S, with the greatest mangrove area within 5° of the equator. Mangrove plant families first appeared during the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene epochs, and became widely distributed in part due to the plate tectonics, movement of tectonic plates. The oldest known fossils of Nypa fruticans, mangrove palm date to 75 million years ago. Mangroves are salt-tolerant trees, also called halophytes, and are adapted to live in harsh coastal conditions. They contain a complex salt filtration system and a complex root system to cope with saltwater immersion and wave action. They are ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bamboo
Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada. In bamboo, as in other grasses, the internodal regions of the stem are usually hollow and the vascular bundles in the cross-section are scattered throughout the stem instead of in a cylindrical arrangement. The dicotyledonous woody xylem is also absent. The absence of secondary growth wood causes the stems of monocots, including the palms and large bamboos, to be columnar rather than tapering. Bamboos include some of the fastest-growing plants in the world, due to a unique rhizome-dependent system. Certain species of bamboo can grow within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost an hour (equivalent to 1 mm every 90 seco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plywood
Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured boards which include medium-density fibreboard (MDF), oriented strand board (OSB) and particle board (chipboard). All plywoods bind resin and wood fibre sheets (cellulose cells are long, strong and thin) to form a composite material. This alternation of the grain is called ''cross-graining'' and has several important benefits: it reduces the tendency of wood to split when nailed at the edges; it reduces expansion and shrinkage, providing improved dimensional stability; and it makes the strength of the panel consistent across all directions. There is usually an odd number of plies, so that the sheet is balanced—this reduces warping. Because plywood is bonded with grains running against one another and with an odd number of composite part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.JPG "Click for more on -> Mangrove")
