A floating church has moored in East London. The work of locally-based architecture studio Denizen Works, this innovative project brings together architecture and boat building, religious, community spaces and practice, and contemporary design. The project was spearheaded by the Diocese of London for the St Columba East London community, and has been created in close collaboration with Turks Shipyard and…
Maybe not exactly what you were hoping for . . . The chaos of COVID-19 was sure to forge new ways of working, but here’s one you probably wouldn’t think of: a work-from-home theme park. Last week Yomiuriland, a Tokyo amusement park, began offering a “workcation” package that allows people who work from a laptop to do so by a…
Step into synaesthesia’s visual soundscape, built with the music of John Coltrane. The Israeli animator and artist Michal Levy is among the roughly 3 per cent of people who experience synaesthesia – a neurological condition in which people have a recurring sensory overlap, such as ‘tasting’ words or envisioning letters and numbers each with their own inherent colour. Levy possesses…
There is something evocatively beautiful about an old, rusted car. In your mind’s eye, you can see the majesty they once were. And perhaps in some cases, with a few patches to cover where holes now gape, they could return to their original glory. For others, the dilapidation becomes part of the tableau, tall weeds defying usual patterns by growing…
Cabin fever: tickets for meal onboard Singapore parked plane sell out. Diners paid up to £360 to eat onboard in latest sign of public appetite for aircraft experience. Diners have rushed to pay up to £360 per head to eat a meal on a stationary plane, in the latest sign of public appetite to recreate the onboard experience without travelling.…
Drone Awards is the most important worldwide competition about aerial photography and video. It’ a project of Siena Awards, dedicated to a different photographic genre deliberately separated from being compared to traditional photography. The competition is opened to the aerial photography and videos whose platforms also include fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, balloons, blimps and dirigibles, rockets, kites, and…
A trend has popped up for those missing travel amid the coronavirus pandemic—flights to nowhere—and one AFAR editor has some feelings about it. “Why would anyone want to do that?” That was my first thought when I heard that flights to nowhere were popping up in different locations around the world. A flight to nowhere is exactly what it sounds…
Absinthe is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from botanicals, including the flowers and leaves of Artemisia absinthium, together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. In Paris, during the 1920’s, it became the favourite beverage of choice for artists, musicians, debutantes and gadabouts. Famously strong, it was…
An American working in Thailand, Wesley Barnes, was arrested at his job and jailed over a defamation lawsuit filed by the owner of the Sea View Resort & Spa, Kah Change in response to a negative TripAdvisor review. The man posted a one star review in July and two months later he was picked up by Thai police. It was…
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (Wuppertal Suspension Railway) is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany. Its original name is Einschienige Hängebahn System Eugen Langen. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world and is a unique system in Germany. Designed by Eugen Langen and offered first to the cities of Berlin, Breslau and Munich who all turned it down,[2] the installation with elevated stations was built in Barmen, Elberfeld and Vohwinkel between 1897 and 1903; the…
By this point in 2020, I’m sure we’re all ready to just blast off this planet — or at least I am. Not to mention, after recent news broke that potential life has been detected on Venus, I wouldn’t mind poking around up there. I guess the main dilemma is that I wouldn’t really have anywhere to stay. Fortunately, travel booking…
Did you know that all the loose change left behind at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints actually gets collected and deposited into a special fund that will benefit “critical aviation security programs?” What’s more: we’re not talking about a few hundred dollars—but nearly a million, at least according to new information released by the TSA itself. According to the agency,…
A new cruise ship set to launch in February 2021 will feature the world’s first ever roller coaster at sea. The Mardi Gras ship from Carnival Cruise Line comes equipped with an area called the Ultimate Playground – which features the unique roller coaster BOLT. What makes the roller coaster even more unusual, other than it being sat on the…
Virgin Galactic is still aiming to send tourists to space, but the space tourism company is also looking at how to whiz people across our planet as quickly as possible. Virgin Galactic has premiered a new jet design for high speed air travel: a streamlined, Concorde-esque delta-wing aircraft with capacity for nine to 19 people cruising at an altitude of over 60,000…
On 10 June 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in Nazi-occupied France was destroyed when 642 of its inhabitants, including non-combatant women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built nearby after the war, but President Charles de Gaulle ordered the original maintained as a permanent memorial and museum. But, there is so much more of France to explore. Our Destination guide gives you everything you…
Car-sharing services in Japan, apparently, are witnessing an increasingly common trend: Many of their customers return rental cars with zero miles driven. Mind you, the cars are used during the rental period—they just don’t go anywhere. “I rented a car to eat a boxed meal because I could not find anywhere else to eat lunch.” Read more courtesy of AutomobileMagazine.com Japan is…
When checked baggage gets lost and can’t be reunited with its owner – or someone just doesn’t pick up their luggage – airlines sell the bags after 90 days to the Unclaimed Baggage Center which has built a monopoly in the niche business of selling used items out of luggage. The store is in Scottsboro, Alabama. They buy bags sight…
A psychedelic experience can be deeply rewarding, but also carries real risks. Here’s how to avoid a bad trip. Humans have consumed substances with consciousness-altering properties for millennia. Traditional societies used them in healing rituals, initiation ceremonies and to make contact with the gods and the dead, among other practices. Today they are known as psychedelics, and include the naturally…
Is this just fantasy? Philosophers and physicists say we might be living in a computer simulation, but how can we tell? And does it matter? Our species is not going to last forever. One way or another, humanity will vanish from the Universe, but before it does, it might summon together sufficient computing power to emulate human experience, in all…
In the mountains of Central Italy, there’s a medieval village that’s been at the bottom of a lake since the 1940s. And next year, it seems like it’s finally going to come back to the light. The village of Fabbriche di Careggine dates back to the 13th century and used to be inhabited by ironworkers. It became a “ghost village”…
