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'German architect Jakob Tigges explores the outskirts of megalomania with his proposed a plan to construct a 1000-meter tall mountain at the site of the recently closed Tempelhof airport in Berlin, which was originally constructed by the Nazi’s as part of their megalomaniac Germania plan.
'If realized, The Berg would be the largest man-made icon. A tourist attraction unlike any city has ever served, providing Berliners and (more importantly) tourists with a convenient location to enjoy a range of activities including hiking, hang-gliding, rock climbing and even skiing, as the mountain would collect snow on its peak from September to March offering the perfect skiing climate in the otherwise slope-less city.
'The plans for The Berg seem to have spawned out of a severe case of ‘peak-envy’. On the Berg website, the 35 year old architect writes: “While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain … Hamburg, as stiff as flat, turns green with envy, rich and once proud Munich starts to feel ashamed of its distant Alp-panorama and planners of the Middle-East, experienced in taking the spell off any kind of architectural utopia immediately design authentic copies of the iconic Berlin-Mountain.”
'Whether the world is gullible or people truly want to see and experience The Berg, the project attracted a lot of local media, gathered a huge 5000+ following on Facebook and has some promising product endorsements already.
'Although an uninhabitable monolith of this magnitude might look appealing at first sight, funding for it might be another matter. Not to mention the environmental impact of the gigantic structure. The mountain is so big it would alter the weather surrounding it and attract a wide range of flora and fauna. Nonetheless Berliners are getting behind the project as another tourist-attracting (money-making) option for their fair city.
'“It’s provocative, but not constructive,” Tigges told Der Spiegel of his proposal. The architect sees his idea as more of a place-holder in the minds of Berliners, a mythical mountain to fire imaginations until an appropriately grand solution is found. In the meantime, Tigges says, he would prefer for Tempelhof to remain untouched as he considers it more interesting for a Sunday walk than your average park landscape.
'“Tourists would come to the site to take photographs of the mountain that isn’t there,” said Tigges, who noted that his euphoric mountain renderings serve as a direct critique of the city of Berlin. “The site is much too valuable to sacrifice for mediocre apartment buildings.”'-- nextnature.net
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'The Netherlands is famous for being an extremely flat country. But now a Dutch journalist has attracted attention with a proposal for constructing an artificial mountain in the country -- and some people are taking the idea seriously. Journalist Thijs Zonneveld became a household name in the Netherlands overnight with a short column that looked like something written to fill a slow summer news day. But his idea to build a 2,000-meter (6,560-foot) peak appears to have caught the public's imagination.
'The title of the small piece in which Zonneveld let off steam over the athletic and geographic handicaps of the Dutch could not have been clearer: "Mountain!" As a result of their country's natural disadvantages, Zonneveld argued, neither cyclists nor Alpine athletes would ever have the chance to win any medals. There are simply no mountains in Holland, he wrote. "The country is flat. Flat as a polder. Being flat is really useful for growing beets, raising cows and building straight roads, but it's a disaster when it comes to sports."
'In an appearance on "Knevel & Van den Brink," a popular TV talk show in the Netherlands, Zonneveld convinced seven skeptical people to seriously discuss the issue for 10 minutes. Initially describing it as a "bizarre idea," he went on to cite the advantages of the Alpine attraction. Zonneveld believes that it could be done for about €1 billion ($1.43 billion). Of course, he adds, raising this "costly mountain" would not be a job for the public sector, but for bold investors instead. He said that he planned to meet with experts and representatives of interested companies this week -- including, he said, six of the country's 10 largest engineering firms -- for a brainstorming session on the feasibility of the idea. Zonneveld insists that his Alpine challenge is surmountable -- for example, if the mountain was hollow.
'A hollow mountain would save an enormous amount of material. If it consisted of a mass of reinforced concrete, the colossus would weigh an estimated 5.2 trillion kilograms. If it were built out of stone, the mountain would be even heavier, and more expensive. But lighter doesn't necessarily mean cheaper. Blogger Erik van der Zee has already calculated that building the mountain out of ordinary Lego pieces would be unaffordable, if only because of the astronomical wages it would require. At a rate of one Lego piece per second and worker, the superstructure alone would consume about 729 billion man-years. Put differently, the entire human population could be employed around the clock for the next 104 years.
'The biggest problem, Zonneveld believes, probably wouldn't even be the structural engineering challenges or the money, but rather the people who would have to be resettled to make space for the mountain. It's also clear that current tourist attractions, like the Urk lighthouse hill -- which towers a breathtaking 24 feet above sea level -- would lose a significant amount of appeal. But Zonneveld isn't going to give up his dream. "The mountain will come," he wrote in a column published on Friday. "Period."'-- Der Spiegel
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'Mountains in the Netherlands? The highest hill on the Dutch mainland is the Vaalserberg - with an absolute altitude of 322,7 m above sea level. So, what’s going on with skiing, hiking and mountain biking? One of the participants of the challenge is the Dutch engineering and consultancy firm DHV. They already started with the first steps: The project is called Bergen in Zee – because of its proximity to the seaside town of Bergen aan Zee and because the word “bergen” is the Dutch word for mountains. The artificial mountain will be constructed approximately 10 km near the seaside of Bergen aan Zee.
'But how to construct such a huge mountain? The diameter of Bergen in Zee will be slightly more than 12 km and the foot of the mountain will be on the continental shelf at a depth of between 10 and 20 m. The top of the mountain will rise 2000 m above sea level – for comparison, Austrian’s highest mountain Großglockner counts 3798 m above sea level. There will be natural ski pistes (at least 5 km long) and an ice rink around the top of the mountain.
'The construction process: Bergen in Zee will consist of several different layers: (1) The core could be made of sand. (2) The second layer will be made of waste. The absorption of any gassing through fermentation or other chemical processes in the waste will be used to pump water into the mountain. (3) The third shell will have a honeycomb structure. The structure will make it possible to store the gas and CO2 safely without inconveniencing anybody. (4) The top layer will consist of sand, with space for buildings, vegetation and a wooded area around 50 km².
'Sustainable thoughts: (1) The existence of the mountain will save millions of travel kilometres during the vacations. A first idea of sustainable developments in the tourism sector. (2) The production of energy: wind energy in the night and solar energy in the daytime. The production of energy will be constant and flexible. (3) The combination of the building materials (sand and water) opens up the prospect of a gigantic heat-cold storage that can provide all of the western part of the Netherlands with heat or cold.'-- Follow the Weasel
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'A residential compound in China has two 15-storey high artificial mountains built, and the property management office said the mountain was built for good Fengshui. Shangqing Jiayuan Residential Compound in Shanghai has two high artificial mountains built besides the buildings No.30 and No.31. The two artificial mountains are 50 meters high, reaching the 16th floor of the 28-storey high buildings.
'Compound residents said the mountains were built along with the buildings, which was finished in 2003. Residents said they don’t feel uncomfortable for having two giant artificial mountains in the compound as long as they don’t block the sunlight. A property office spokesman said since the mountains are part of the compound, they have to maintain the well-being of the mountains all the time. The spokesman said not long ago the Shanghai Mountain Climbing Association contacted them for a outdoor rock-climbing competition, but considering safety factors, they declined their plead.'-- whatsonxiamen.com
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'While Kaolinite has been mined in Hirschau, Bavaria, since 1833 it was in 1901 when Amberger Kaolinwerk began mining Kaolinite -- one of the most common minerals, a clay-like layered silicate, used in ceramics, medicine, coated paper, food additives, in toothpaste, and is the main ingredient in porcelain -- they found themselves with a problem. In the process of separating the Kaolinite from the dirt they ended up with a lot of left over quartz sand. So they started piling it up.
'By the early 1950s the pile had grown large enough that a skier wanting to practice in the summer, brought his poles to the mountain, dubbed Monte Kaolina, and began doing skiing down the enormous pile. By 1956 there was a ski club dedicated to skiing down the quartz sand mountain.
'Today, although the mountain has stopped growing -- it turns out quartz sand is good for a whole bunch of things -- it continues to host skiers, the Monte Kaolino Railway a 200 meter long cable car with boat shaped wagons, a "Dune Pool" including a 50 m - water slide, and 1,000 meter Alpine-Coaster that zooms riders down the giant slag heap. In addition to all this, Monte Kaolino is also home to the Sandboarding World Championships, in which many of the smae types of winter boarding competitions are held, but on sand. Speeds of up to 60 mph have been clocked.'-- atlas obscure
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'Francois Roche is currently leading a collective resisting to the developing project to rebuild Paris’ Zoo in Vincennes. In fact, this zoo, famous for its numerous artificial mountains is the object of a quasi-total reconstruction in an ambiguous semi-private contract lead by the omnipresent building company Bouygues (who also owns the main private TV channel in France and whose president Martin Bouygues is well known to be Nicolas Sarkozy’s buddy!). The following text explains more in detail what is at stake in this combat:
'Who’s got the authority to raze the ZOO? The erasing will start this August, behind the fence, hidden from the public, by the private client and construction company “Bouygues,” without any survey, any control, and any rights. The procedure comes from the concession that French administration transfers through a PPP(partenariat public-privé) protocol to “privatize” public area, to minimize the cost and negate any intelligence of production. The Bouygues Company is in charge with a concessionary contract to manage both the renovation and managing operation…all uses, economic and strategic, of the site.
'The first action of this company will be to erase everything (except the main mountain), to transform the ZOO with drastically low budget through a cheap and chips concept with an hypothetical phantasm of rationalization and expertise, led on by citizens’ “taste” and willingness for a ‘clean vision of nature’…what a fucked up nightmare of normalcy! Imagine the same with “le parc des Buttes Chaumont” from the XIXth or “les fabriques” and Grotto from “Hameau de la Reine” or “Desert de Retz” in XVIIIth century.'-- The Funambulist
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Jerudong Park, Singapore
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Expedition Everest ride, Disneyworld
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Mountain Museum, Nepal
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Artificial indoor mountain range, Dubai (plan)
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The London Zoo, 1913
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Wonderland Theme Park, Vaughn, Canada
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Architect Ju-Hyun Kim's proposal to build a mountain on NYC's Lower East Side
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Bearfire Ski Resort, Texas (plan)
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Macau's Fisherman Wharf, China
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Chinese billionaire's rooftop mountain, Beijing
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Cadillac Mountain Range, Disney's California Adventure, Anaheim
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Shigatse, Tibet
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Proposed hospital disguised as a mountain, Adelaide, Australia
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Okada, Japan
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Manmade salt mountains, Germany
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Lace Hill, a mixed-use development, Armenia (plan)
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'The Alps' ride, Willow Grove Park, Philadelphia
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Earth Quest Adventures Theme Park, New Carney, Texas (in progress)
*
p.s. Hey. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hey. Lots of up in my up, thanks for asking. How about you? I'd put Resnais in group posts before, but he'd never had a solo Day, which is ... I can't explain it. Weird. I do like Ulver, increasingly. The Blake album is terrific. Obviously, I quite like the new orchestral thing. And their recent collab. with Sunn0)))) is really nice, naturally. Yes, a new GBV LP is imminent. Guy's unbelievable: Pollard. Mm, I find my music here and there. The Wire is a huge resource, yeah. It's the only magazine that I read cover to cover, down to the minutiae, and I almost always check out everything covered there that sounds even remotely interesting. Other websites. Friends' tips, etc. I'm really happy with the Focus Creeps videos, yeah. They might be my favorite adaptations of my stuff yet. Still haven't heard the new Xiu Xiu. Thanks for reminding me. I'll try to get that today. Always great to talk to you, and the bon-est of days to you, man! ** Torn porter, Hi. I go to Antarctica on Tuesday. No, wait, I go to Buenos Aires then to Patagonia then to Antarctica beginning Tuesday. The ship to the big A leaves Ushuaia, Argentina on Feb. 25. Why? Well, it has been my dear friend Zac's life dream to go there, and our trip was my birthday present to him, and now it's happening. I'm interested go, obviously, although I never imagined doing it. So the 'why' is because it's for Zac and because it's crazy thing to do so why not? Oh, I love Rohmer a lot. I did a post on him a while back. Here: Eric Rohmer Day. Faves? Hm, maybe 'Claire's Knee', 'Pauline at the Beach', 'Conte d'hive', and I really love 'Perceval le Gallois', which is probably his strangest film. But he's pretty much always great in my opinion. Re; the Focus Creeps films, they wrote to me asking if I'd be into them adapting some stories for Dazed & Confused's 'Visionaries' project, and they seemed really cool, so I met with one of the two guys, and I liked him and his ideas a lot, so I said, 'Awesome, do it, thanks.' Simple as that, I guess. Peace to you. ** David Ehrenstein, That's a great characterization of the Gielgud aspect of 'Providence' And your drinking game thing is funny and cool. PSH really was a fantastic actor. I'm just avoiding the related blah blah about his heroin use as much as I can. Yeah, I actually interviewed/conversed with Ed White about that Paris book for the new or next issue of Interview Magazine. ** Steevee, Hi. Both of those Ulver records are really good, I think. Yeah, I agree with you about their adventurousness within and increasingly outside the genre. Very interesting, very admirable. ** _Black_Acrylic, Totally, about the Herndon video, right? Her new album is very good. I don't think I know 'Dance Mania', at least by that moniker. Maybe I know tracks. That Kerridge sounds really good. I'll go find it. Thanks! I think you're right about that renaissance. And I like a lot of what those guys are doing. ** Chris Cochrane, Chris! Howdy, my man! I'm really good, really busy with projects and stressed/excited about the big upcoming trip. Japan was incredible. You really have to go there sometime somehow. Tuesday Zac and I head off to Argentina on our way to Antarctica. Ugh, mid-life crises are the worst. Luckily, they're pretty temporal. I bet that when an issue or two creating yours is/are solved, it'll retreat. I am literally in pain at missing that Dancenoise and Scotty Heron show. I even thought about flying to NYC just to see it, but that was way too impractical. But, oh, to see Dancenoise's extreme genius in action again, sigh. You're so lucky. Sending you the very, very best too, my friend. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. I hadn't listened in Foetus in ages, but I tried the new one on a whim, and it's really pretty terrific. I almost think his stuff sounds better now than it did back when. On Feb 18, Zac and I will be ... hm, in the Chilean part of Patagonia. I saw your email. Thanks! And you'll from me pronto. ** Misanthrope, Thanks for filling me in about your mom. Keep on her to be really clear and upfront. I'm sure she's scared shitless to be upfront, which is totally understandable, but, obviously, she really, really has to. Good start with the CT scan result. Not so great about her talking the doc into doing that delay. Sheesh, indeed. ** Sypha, Yep, Foetus is actually still quite active. That new album, which is quite good, is all over the place stylistically. A couple of catchy things, like the track I picked, and, of course, a lot of his sometimes interestingly bombastic things. Wow, of course I remember about that Tibet/Current 93 anthology. That's great news! Congratulations! That's awesome, James! I don't know the work of most of the writers that in the book. Do you? Any of them particularly worth chasing down? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Ha, that's funny, 'cos I was thinking, 'Hey, I actually managed to squeeze a few rock songs into the noisy stuff' this time.' That Blevin Blectum album is a real grower. I'm getting to really like her solo stuff. No, I didn't know there was a Ricky Jay doc. I'd definitely like to see that. Did you ever see that theater piece he was touring for a long time (and maybe still be) called, shit, 'Ricky Jay and his (?) Assistants'. It was pretty terrific. Those 'Freakwave' samples look really good. The psychedelic aspect is the initial lure for me. And since psychedelia can make anything inside it seem compelling, that should backpedal any sci-fi trimmings that might have otherwise put me off. I'm going to be over in that area near St. Michel where all the big graphic novel stores are today, and I'll see if they have it so I can take a more thorough look. Thanks, B. ** Kyler, Hi. That huge cast of 'LaI' sounds interesting, hard to work with, an exciting possibility. Yeah, pretty sweet and an amazing feeling: the first book. Bask in it, my friend. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff! I'm good, thanks. Yeah, a big trip to Antarctica and Patagonia starting early next week. My friend and soon to be traveling companion Zac dreams of working at a station down there too. I haven't read 'Big Dead Place', no. I'll search. Haven't seen 'True Detective' either. Never heard if it before. TV, and especially American TV, is my total weakness. Cool you like the Compound Eye. Yeah, it's nice. That new collection of Stefan Jaworzyn's early stuff, from which that track I included came, is really quite good. That's weird/interesting: I was just listening to Ashtray Navigations two days ago, and I had pretty much the same feeling you did vis-à-vis the earlier and newer stuff. Dude, you definitely have excellent taste in music. I've learned a lot from you. Great to see you, Jeff. Take care, and don't disappear for a second longer than you feel you must, okay? ** Jonathan, Hi. Aw, thanks a bunch about the gig, man. Yeah, I've kind of gotten really into Blevin Blectrum. Don't drop the expensive art unless it deserves the damage and unless its insurance policy relieves you of any culpability. I.e., have a great one too! ** End. Artificial Mountain Day is exactly what it seems to be, and I hope my fancy in its regards accesses yours. See you tomorrow.