Classic tracks

Although the novelty factor is undeniable, we are still finding TVNZ's belated screening of James May's Top Toys curiously compelling viewing, with a surprising amount of art parallels. In epidode one there were oversized KITSETS, then there were large meccano bridges. Another goodie is the recent episode where a classic motor racing track was revived to its former glory using vintage aerial photography and Scalextric slot cars. Sounds a bit like a Billy Apple project, albeit without the slot cars.

For Billy Apple's Bruce & Denny Show, seven classic tracks, raced by the legendary team of Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme during their 1967-1968 victorious sweep of the Can-Am series, were recreated. These were produced from period aerial photographs to determine the exact outline of the tracks as they were at the time, then all converted to the same scale and rotated to true north. Featured tracks are ELKHART LAKE (Wisconsin, now Road America), BRIDGEHAMPTON (New York, now a golf course), MOSPORT PARK (Ontario, now Mosport International Raceway), EDMONTON (Alberta), LAGUNA SECA (California, still active), RIVERSIDE (California, now a mall) and STARDUST (Las Vegas, now the suburb of Spring Valley but fondly remembered).

May's programme is underpinned by a similar sort of social archeology. In this episode he pays tribute to Brooklands, the first purpose-built motor racing circuit in the world but out of action since 1939. Although SECTIONS of the track remain, along with a museum, the most action around here takes place on the Mercedes Benz test track that resides in the MIDDLE of the old track. May sends his slotcars across housing and industrial estates, fences, a river, pond, through corporate offices and across a road in order to recreate the BROOKLANDS circuit. At 2.7 miles in length, Brooklands now holds the record for the world's longest slot car set.

Image: Billy Apple, Paying Tribute. The Race Tracks, 1967, screenprint on paper, 521 x 843mm, 2008. Courtesy the artist and Two Rooms.

Doctoring time

Fans of Dr Who spin-off Torchwood (we've just finished the second series on DVD) will immediately recognise THIS view of central Cardiff, which plays a prominent role in the series. Cardiff, so the story goes, is in the middle of a rift in space and time and the Torchwood hub, where they deal with rift anomalies, is based underneath the Millennium Plaza (pictured). One episode has them rescuing a warehouse-scale alien meatloaf (built by Barney (son of Wystan) Curnow). Jumping into STREETVIEW, you're practically on location, waiting for Captain Jack to pop up out of the pavement.

Speaking of enormous alien structures, we've just discovered THIS DOOZY just a little north in Birmingham, designed by Future Systems, who are also responsible for the Lord's Media Centre, found HERE.

Endless Summer

A strangely compelling travel piece not so long ago in the NZ Listener describes a blimp-hangar turned holiday resort in eastern Germany. Opened just in time for Christmas 2004 and clearly visible from ABOVE, Tropical Islands is easily as big as some neighbouring villages and has its own airstrip.

The website boasts the world's largest indoor rain forest, a complete tropical village, a Balinese lagoon and Germany's largest water slide. According to Wikipedia, it is one of the world's largest buildings by volume and the biggest hall without supporting pillars. Probably not what Buckminster Fuller had in mind for Spaceship Earth but camping is allowed (for a small fee).

Image: Tropical Islands under construction

Remap Berlin

"Remap Berlin spreads a thin geographical virus in Google Earth and deals with different levels of reality. The project introduces a series of b&w photographs shot in Twinity, a mirror world that reproduces a realistic 3D replica of Berlin. The photos shot in Twinity, are then geo-localized in Google maps, re-mapped from virtual to real and positioned in the exact point where they have been shot in the mirror world. Once uploaded in the photo sharing community Panoramio, the pictures are mixed up with other ones shot in the same geographical point from real life users. Many of these pictures have been selected by Google and can now be found as “Popular photos in Google Earth”: his became a little geographical virus, parts of our memories of the real world. The photographs are cityscapes, shot by Marco Manray roaming around the still empty streets of Berlin in the beta version."

Internet landscape photographer Marco Manray's Remap Berlin project is currently featured at Window.

Image: Leipziger Platz, found here and HERE

Stack

Last week Australian sound artist and writer Ros Bandt was in Auckland for a symposium on ElectroAcoustic music, held by The University of Auckland. Although we have had her book on Australian sound sculpture for a number of years, it was great to finally meet her.

After our chance encounter, she kindly left us with Stack, a CD of "original sonic explorations of a major new urban tower, an ephemeral acoustic space in the development of the City of Melbourne... Bandt brings to life the inner and outer sonic possibilities gleaned from the massive city stac, a 55-metre chimney designed to extract fumes from the new CityLink tunnel in the heart of Melbourne's underground." The resonant space recorded by Bandt was effectively lost when the tunnel was opened, silenced by traffic and the roar of extrator fans.

Many readers will recognise Stack's site as being alongside the infamous yellow peril, outside ACCA. From ABOVE, we can almost look right down the vent. STREET VIEW allows us to look back up at the exterior towering above us from the ground. And HERE you can drive right through the aforementioned tunnel. Nice!

Image: Ros Bandt records with the stack, photo by Arthur McDevitt.

Palaces of the Mind

We've passed by here before, but noticing Deborah Crowe's fabulous photo in this year's ever-so-controversial Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, we thought we should offer a few new views of Kibble Palace, Glasgow: HERE, HERE and HERE.

In the online catalogue Crowe says: "Little did I know (25 years ago) that the place I felt at home was the Australasian section of Glasgow Botanic Gardens. My recent practice involves an interest in creating imaginary worlds; revisiting places, buildings and moments that have informed and cultivated a preoccupation with architectural structures and perceptions of spatial experience."

Image: Deborah Crowe, Kibble Palace, small world II, C-type photographic print on aluminium

Guantanamo Allocation Center

[exhibition announcement]

"The 'existential function' of the act of creation leads to the affirmation and the creation of a territory, a group, a singularity, a meaning. But it is only possible to articulate the meaning of a situation in relation to an action undertaken to transform it. To situate oneself somewhere, to create a territory or new modes of subjectification and articulation, is both a political and an existential question. And this concerns social practices as much as artistic practices."

(Maurizio Lazzarato: Art and Work)

A Project in Public Private Partnership
Initiated by Christoph Faulhaber
Realised and Supported by Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg VENUE Hafencity Hamburg Shanghaiallee/Yokohamastr. 20457 Hamburg, Germany

Being one of the first municipalities throughout Europe, the state and city administration of Hamburg, Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, has accredited the public private partnership 'Guantanamo Allocation Center'.

The Guantanamo Allocation Center is an initiative dedicated to the question of relocating the remaining detainees still in custody at the soon to be closed US MILITARY BASE. GAC focuses on the global process of allocation and relocation, and aims to provide accommodations in Germany that offer a process of re-socialization by providing and furnishing a temporary, and eventual, final home.

The project was kicked off by the German artist Christoph Faulhaber and has already teamed up with further both private and public institutions and corporations. With its first installment GAC sets out to laying the foundation for final decisions in the global process of relocating the remaining inmates.

The first installment, considered as temporary accommodation, consists of mobile units each giving room to one inmate. Four wooden crates match one 40 ft. high cube shipping container. The temporary lodging will be accompanied by a program of activities encompassing various aspects, topics and personalities from within the legislation and political process.

In order to realize the final installment, GAC has opted for a vacant lot, part of which was formerly the MAUERSTREIFEN, the military zone within the Berlin Wall. The design of the yet undeveloped 'final home' is oriented towards contemporary designs in architecture and urban planning, taking into account the special needs of the inhabitants.

Furthermore, GAC engages on consultations with international decision makers to preparing ground for the resettling of further inmates.Since GAC relies entirely on civic and individual engagement, we would very much acknowledge support and funding from any direction.

For more information please consult:

Guantanamo Allocation Center
Mr. Christoph Faulhaber
http://www.gac-web.org/

Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg
Senator Ms. Karin von Welck
http://www.hamburg.de/

HafenCity Hamburg GmbH
Ms. Penzlien
http://www.hafencity.com/

Special Envoy to Closing Guantanamo
Ambassador Mr. Daniel Fried
http://www.state.gov/

artfinder Gallery
Mathias Güntner
http://www.artfinder.de/

Image: Street art by Banksy, found here on the Prison Photography blog

Motor City is crumbling

The industrial heart of Detroit has become a ghost town, according to a recent photo essay in Time Magazine (thanks SH). Images include the grand MICHIGAN CENTRAL STATION, derelict for more than 20 years; The FISHER BODY PLANT, producer of Buick and Cadillac bodies, abandoned in 1991 but still home to some floor sculpture; and what must be the grandest car park we've seen, the former MICHIGAN THEATRE within the MICHIGAN BUILDING, apparently built on the site Henry Ford built his first car.

Looking around, Henry seems to have his NAME written all over this town. THIS lot full of rusting iron frames is quite a sight. Heading west from the city you find the Ford plant, and nearby Zug Island and surrounds has some DRAMATIC AND INTRIGUING scenes. We wonder how life COMPARES across the river in Canada?

Image: Fisher Body Plant #21, Interior, including artwork by Scott Hocking. (Sean Hemmerle)

The All-Seeing Eye

"From the Panopticon to the Wunderkammer explores the deep chasm between ideas of ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’. One of the most damaging fantasies of modernity was the idea that there could be a universal view to encompass all people, phenomena and things within set categories. Many museums were founded on such convictions. This view is also made evident in the punitive institution of the Panopticon, the rationalist, Enlightenment prison in which one governor could see all the inmates in their cells from a single, fixed, authoritarian viewpoint. This approach is contrasted with the earlier, more fluid Cabinet of Curiosities, a prototype of the modern museum, which brought together disparate items from different origins as objects of delight and wonderment. In a reversal of history, this Biennale will be a contemporary Wunderkammer, allowing the audience direct experience and enjoyment of a wide range of art that is not categorised in any hierarchical way. [...]

"The Panopticon is a type of prison designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785. It features a circular array of inward-pointing cells – allowing one guard to observe all the inmates from a single point of view, without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched. The central goal of the Panopticon was control through both isolation and the possibility of constant surveillance."

Media announcement for the 2010 17th Biennale of Sydney

Now let's peer into some Panoptic structures:

Panóptico in BOGOTA, now the National Museum of Columbia

PRESIDIO MODELO in Cuba is also now a museum.

MT EDEN Prisons in Auckland, which apparently resembles...

DARTMOOR Prison, England, which was once put to sea by the Goon Show.

The ROUND HOUSE is the oldest building still standing in Western Australia, which is also home to Australia's Hardest Prison: CASUARINA.

STATEVILLE in Illinois is one of America's Hardest Prisons.

The notorious INSEIN PRISON in Burma was actually built by the British and was the largest in their empire before World War II.

While we're sneaking in and out of correctional facilities, here's ALCATRAZ ISLAND, GUANTANAMO (or Gitmo) and COCKATOO ISLAND, which, like Alcatraz, is now a tourist facility and next year will once more be a venue for the Biennale of Sydney.

This interactive map provides international statistics on prison population per capita.

Image: Inside one of the prison buildings at Presidio Modelo, Isla De la Juventud, Cuba.

Secret smile

Here's another one from a reader: Flying over Taipei, home to well manicured PARKS, GARDENS AND MEMORIALS, interesting INDUSTRIAL and RESIDENTIAL configurations, swimming POOLS, monumental TOWERS, car PARKS, and other things we enjoy, it seems there are a FEW places that need to be HIDDEN from view. (Thanks JR)

Image: The sinister smile of the secret 'clownface' organisation's HQ

Tunnel Vision

"[Ralph] Hotere was sitting beside the train driver, staring straight ahead as the train hurtled through the landscape then vanished into the blackness of the first tunnel. Then, just as suddenly, theywere catapulted back into blinding light. Then they hit another tunnel. As the artist described this journey he closed his hand when he mentioned the darkness of the tunnel then his fist sprang open when he mentioned daylight. [...] This sporadic immersion in darkness is what makes the visible world come alive, what makes it vivid and even profound; just as the stretch of daylight is necessary for the darkness of the tunnel to work its inverse magic."

Gregory O'Brien recalls Ralph Hotere sitting up front from Dunedin to Palmerston in After Bathing at Baxter's, 2002.

All this talk in the news of potential tunnels in Auckland reminded us of the extraordinary effect created when trying to navigate through Mt Victoria TUNNEL in Wellington using Street View, a curious phenomenon brought to our attention in the comments of Public Address. It's a bit like flying through the intro sequence of Dr Who.

Art From Space has long been interested in finding ways to unfold the 2-dimensional upper surface facade of the map; to somehow burrow within the information, breaking into the matrix, if you will. So our latest addiction is spelunking through the entrances and exits of the world's subterranean roads. Starting local, here are BOTH ENDS of the Lyttelton tunnel, including Peter Beaven's iconic toll BUILDING featured in Long Live the Modern.

With a little help from Wikipedia, here is a quick tour of the world's road tunnels. With six lanes and a good collection of popular culture cameo parts, HERE is the Lincoln Tunnel, which runs under the Hudson river to connect New Jersey with Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Le Tunnel Sous la manche, or the CHANNEL TUNNEL, has the longest underwater section but no street view yet. Unfortunately there is also no street view or enough resolution to sight the architecture and sculpture that heralds your entry into the Mont Blanc Tunnel, providing a trans-alpine route between Italy and France. At 24.5km, the longest is Norway's Lærdal Tunnel, although there is very little MAP VIEWING yet but we look forward to seeing the sequence of caves added especially to keep drivers amused and alert. One of the longest in Asia is the Hsuehshan Tunnel, which runs from HERE to HERE and has its own FM radio station. Opened in 1897, London's Blackwall Tunnel displaced more than 600 houses, including an alleged former home of Sir Walter Raleigh, and has several sharp bends, apparently included either to keep horses from bolting when they re-encountered direct light, or to avoid tunneling through black death burial grounds. Starting from BLACKWALL (where the ROOFS are impressively landscaped) it brings you out near the MILLENNIUM Dome HERE.

Speaking of tunnelling to the millennium, we would reminisce for a bit about watching Irwin (The Swarm) Allen's The Time Tunnel but a lack of age would make that a fabrication. But we are rather fond of the literary wormhole (wordhole?) Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries have created between North and South Korea. The border town of Pal-Pan Dong is presumably just an artful figment , although it is hard to tell with so little of Korea (North and South) marked on google maps. They have info on the DMZ bus tour here (it takes a while) and here, or you can cruise the BORDER yourself, noting what are presumably military installations all the way along and looking for tunnels.

Within the DMZ you will find just two villages, Daeseong-dong on the South side HERE, and the allegedly uninhabited Kijong-dong in the North HERE, with lights turning on and off but nobody home, and sporting the world's tallest flagpole. As has been reported in the LA Times, google maps has done wonders for opening up North Korea to virtual tourism - bring on the duty free.

Image: The HOLLAND TUNNEL entrance, close cousin to the Lincoln, features on the cover of Yo La Tengo's 1997 album, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One.

Twin Towers

Much earlier this year, a time I distantly recall as being summer, google maps was more likely to be used for scoping out holiday road trips than workplace escapism. That may not have been the purpose of the reader who, knowing our predilection for the strange parallel worlds created by time-displaced maps when they are stitched together, forwarded THIS map link. (Thanks LM)

Whilst further exploring the adjacent area, we came across THIS striking view of the iconic Ratana Church, a now class form which has inspired artists including Don Binney (scroll down), Ans Westra, Robert Ellis, Derek Henderson, Natalie Robertson, and many others. One now features on the cover of Deidre Brown's new book Maori Architecture, already reviewed here and here, which seems a perfectly good opportunity to circulate a digital view.

Abandoned

With our running interest in hidden places, negative spaces, voids and other types of monumental emptiness, we couldn't resist this post on WebUrbanist, which we have managed to mostly translate into map locations (and more deserted cities here).

Hong Kong's once anarchic Kowloon Walled City was torn down not long after Jackie Chan used it as a set for Crime Story, including real footage of exploding buildings. Before demolition, Japanese explorers spent a week mapping the vacated site. It is NOW A PARK.

The RYUGYONG HOTEL casts a long shadow over Pyongyang, a towering memorial to failure.

Our favourite is the mysterious and futuristic UFO ghost city of SAN ZHI, Taiwan, which sadly disappeared only a few months ago.

Once the capital of Azerbaijan, AGDAM's crumbling mosques demonstrate that living at the crossroads can have a negative effect, which can leave you in the middle of contested territory just as it can also make you a centre for commerce. Then there are the built open spaces of the city of FATEHPUR SIKRI, Uttar Pradesh, India, which was the capital of the Mughal Empire but is said to have been abandoned since the 16th century when it ran out of water only decades after being built.

Unfortunately the map resolution is not great but here is the former splendor of BOKOR HILL STATION in Phnom Bokor, Cambodia.

Closed in 1999 after a single accident, Opko Land in South Korea is still a mostly intact amusement park, although google has been very slow to add maps and detail to most of Korea so THIS is as close as we get. A shame because we like amusements parks and promise to seek out a few more, abandoned or operating, at a later date.

Image: The UFO house in Sanjhih, taken by cypherone

Bring Back Buck

As overthenet recently reminded us, this year is a significant one for the legacy of Buckminster Fuller, who popularised the geodesic dome and the term Spaceship Earth. A travelling retrospective exhibition resulted in a substantial feature in the November ArtForum, which also includes a piece on the Centre For Land Use Interpretation, an organisation we'll discuss on a later date.

Fuller's Axiometric contructions result in ideal architecture for admiring from the fifth facade. So, predictably perhaps, based on Wikipedia's list, here are some of Bucky's biggest extent domes:

NAGOYA DOME, Japan
TACOMA DOME, Washington, USA
SUPERIOR DOME, Michigan, USA
WALKUP SKYDOME, Arizona, USA
POLIEDRO DE CARACAS, Venezuela
The former SPRUCE GOOSE HANGAR, California, USA
EDEN PROJECT, Cornwall, UK

Interesting to see another 20th C. visionary, Howard Hughes, had his Goose parked in a dome. According to a recent NZ Listener article, Chris Booth has plans to tunnel a subterranean land art project beneath the Eden Project.

Image: The Buckminster soccer ball, official ball of the FIFA Word Cup from 1970 - 2006.

The Fifth Facade

Last weekend saw the death of Danish architect Jørn Utzon, famous for building (and not completing) the Sydney Opera House. Today, 95bFM's Sunday Breakfast played an interview with Utzon's biographer, Richard Weston. In particular, we couldn't help being impressed with Weston's description of Utzon's awareness of the Opera House's visibility from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and that the building needed a 'fifth facade' so it would also look good from above. Nice phrase, we thought, realising we'd found a great way to refer to many of the things that Art From Space is interested in: art, architecture and landscapes that carry content in their horizontal axis as much, if not more, than the vertical axis, which is traditionally the focus of most monumental structures that have the sort of scale to be visible by satellite.

As Weston noted, the Opera House's site is remarkable, jutting into a picturesque harbour amidst boats and alongside the BRIDGE, something that is immediately evident when zooming in by satellite, even from a GREAT ALTITUDE. Zooming further in, the elegantly tiled shells of the ROOF/WALLS, all precast in concrete from the same sphere, curve in a way that defies the simple distinction of vertical and horizontal, which has long been a favourite site here on Art From Space.

Image: Sydney Opera House under construction in 1968, found here.

Finding Nemo

If any regular readers still harbour doubts as to whether secret societies and individuals with enough resources have the power to influence the content on google maps, then THIS LINK is for you. A fantastic digital mosaic I've just chanced upon in the port of Amsterdam, just opposite Renzo Piano's fabulous ship-shaped NEMO museum. A large part of the abstracted area is occupied by historic ships in the Maritime Museum but presumably there is a particularly sensitive military presence here too?

Into the future...

"The International Date Line is an awkward nineteenth century device conceived to manage the complexities of modern time, travel and global geography - it is the boundary line between 'today' and 'tomorrow'. Drawn through what was conveniently thought of as an 'empty' ocean, it is a haphazard broken line marked by cartographers on geographical and nautical charts. It is an intangible phenomenon, unbound by international law. The theoretical line is around 180 degrees from GREENWICH, formulated in 1884 as an agreement between commercial steamships of the principal maritime countries of the time. Shifts have occurred for practical reasons over the years, the most recent in 1995 to cluster all 33 small atolls in the nation of KIRIBATI into the same time zone.

"As early as the thirteenth century, mention was made of lost days in the region by the Syrian geographer-historian Abu 'I-Fida. In 1519 Antonio Pigafetta, the Italian chronicler of the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan, mentioned a peculiar incident that occurred during the voyage whereby somewhere a whole day was apparently 'lost'. In Jules Verne's 'Around the World in 80 Days' 1873, Phileas Fogg learns that by moving eastwards he gains a day and thereby wins the prize. In Umberto Eco's 'The Island of the Day Before' 1994, the seventeenth century shipwrecked Italian protagonist reminiscences on his life and loves and becomes convinced that all his troubles will dissolve, if only he could cross the nearby Date Line."

Rhana Devenport, Date Line: Between Today and Tomorrow, in Date Line catalogue, 2007.

Why did the line cross the road...? Here is the PRIME MERIDIAN ARCH on the road to Barcelona, Spain.

Image: Looking like a cross between a Bill Culbert and a Gordon Matta Clark installation, this is the Greenwich observatory with its viewing aperture open for business.

Watch this space

Collaborating with artists, writers, curators and institutions, the Remotewords project has been marking rooftops with text since December 2007. Beginning with "Start" at their HOME BASE in Cologne, they have since added three sites: FUHRWERKSWAAGE KUNSTRAUM, Cologne, the spectacularly located KUNST:RAUM SYLTQUELLE, Rantum, and they have just activated a new site on the roof of the EDITH RUSS SITE FOR MEDIA ART, Oldenburg (pictured).

At time of writing, all four are "offline" as they have yet to appear on google. As Remotewords says, "The project REMOTEWORDS is based on the idea of disseminating statements in various languages via Google Earth and other available virtual globes. The messages are applied to the roof of the respective institution with paint. The aim of this action is, via satellite system, to publicize the message after a time lag..."

"Google Earth goes to a great deal of trouble to update continually; because of the landmass and the amount of data, however, the time lag can last up to several years. Some recently completed edifices still appear on Google Earth as architectural shells, while buildings long since razed still seem to exist from the air. Google assures us that the image data are, on average, between one and three years old (Source: Google Earth website). The virtual globe systems suggest a present time that in reality is made up of time segments. This fact can, however, be put to artistic use. When news once appears on the virtual globe, it remains on the net for a long time whether it has, in the meantime, been uninstalled or 'censured' in real space."

Space bunny

While in London last week, I was able to see the excellent Psycho Buildings exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The exhibition makes good use of the Hayward's sculpture courts, one highlight being Gelitin's installation that allows you to admire the London view whilst paddling about in a boat on a flooded upper courtyard lake. Surely it would be a sight to admire from the adjacent Royal Festival Hall's fourth level Blue Bar, but it is unlikely to become a surreal fixture on London's GOOGLE MAP, unless the city happens to be re-surveyed while the exhibition is on.

One project of Gelitin's that has made it onto the google map is a giant (knitted) rabbit (sounds familiar), which will be spending 20 years ON A MOUNTAIN TOP in Italy. (thanks YSH)

There is also a free little show at the Hayward which features community crocheted coral reefs. Unfortunately their website offers little in the way of images or information. The Hayward's website, buried amidst SBC stuff, also contradicts (so does Wikipedia) the Psycho Buildings blurb that boasts of how the gallery was designed between 1960-62 by a radical group of young architects, three of whom later joined Archigram, famous for unrealised projects such as a Plug-in City and a Wearable House called the Suitsaloon.

Image: The giant green Star Wars rabbit

Eight easy pieces for tourists

Art from Space is going on honeymoon for the next few weeks and will be back in August. We'll be visiting some of these places while we're away and will be introducing some new Art From Space contributors on our return. Until then, in no particular order, here's some virtual travelling for you:

Looking like a Martian landscape, ULURU, often referred to as Ayers Rock.

Not sure why but the STATUE OF LIBERTY was one of my first pieces of google travel several years ago.

I like a good shadow on google maps to provide an interesting perspective on primarily vertical structures that wouldn't otherwise be too interesting from above. The Thames almost looks like concrete and provides a great surface for sharp shadows, including this great anamorphic rendering of the LONDON EYE.

Responsible for putting the Spanish industrial town of Bilbao squarely on the traveller's map, here's Frank Gehry's GUGGENHEIM.

Originally built as a temporary structure for a world expo, perhaps explaining its daring style, the EIFFEL TOWER was originally hated by Parisians but is still going strong.

Given the usual marginalisation of contemporary art as an activity, I've always been puzzled by is the immense popularity of TATE MODERN, which is one of London's top tourist attractions. How often do the people visiting the Tate engage in the arts when they're at home, and why would they spend the hard-earned holiday time doing something that ordinarily doesn't interest them? Same goes for the LOUVRE, which is the first structure I've found so far that lets you see through a window.

On the Zambezi River on the border between Zambie and Zimbabwe, here is the VICTORIA FALLS, considered the largest waterfall not because of height or width but because it has the largest sheet of falling water.