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The Cupola
In the sky is a castle, built in free fall, brick-by-brick, where the sun rises and sets every ninety minutes. The castle derives its energy from sunlight and recycles its water. Sealed against a vacuum, its inhabitants float and glide through its passageways and gaze down at Earth through its expansive cupola. In an earlier…
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The Falls
1930s businessman Edgar Kaufmann Sr. and his family lived in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Kaufmann owned a rural retreat outside the city and wanted a weekend home there. He assumed his 67-year-old architect would design the home with a good view of the Bear Run waterfall. Instead, the architect designed the home on the waterfall. Frank Lloyd…
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The Burj
The tallest structure in the world since 2008, Burj Khalifa (or Khalifa Tower) is the fantasy skyscraper of my childhood. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), with Adrian Smith and Bill Baker as chief architect and engineer, the Burj is aesthetically and structurally magnificent. No single photo can do the Burj justice, but the…
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Wooster Physics at the University of Oregon
Last week I had a wonderful trip to the University of Oregon in Eugene to give a colloquium for the Department of Physics. This was my first visit to the university, and actually my first visit to Oregon at all! Wooster Physics and Oregon Physics are connected in a number of ways — Dr. Leary…
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Sunshine and Water
As promised, I have one more post from my recent research trip to Vienna, Austria. First, a confession which will act as a bit of a spoiler, I had never heard of supernumerary rainbows until Dr. Leary joined the College and used a picture of one he had seen in Poland on his web page.…
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If Apple Designed Buildings…
When Steve Jobs phoned Pritzker Prize architect Norman Foster in 2009 for help designing Apple’s new Cupertino California campus, he said “Don’t think of me as your client; think of me as one of your team”. The design that evolved from that collaboration features an unprecedented annular building over a mile in circumference enclosing an orchard and…
Thanks, Mark! I enjoy reading your posts as well.