There is more to Finland than northern lights and endless forests and lakes. You'll also find innovative architecture. Like art museum Amos Rex, part of which was built underground. Located in the center of Helsinki, it is part of the iconic Lasipalat. Because this "glass palace," which has served as a cultural and media building since 1998, proved unsuitable to house a large exhibition space and is also a listed building, and thus it was impossible to build a new building behind it, JKMM Architects chose to excavate the ground under the adjacent square and create the 2,200 square meters of exhibition space there. The plaza is now adorned by domes of various sizes, culminating in windows for much-needed daylight. These periscopic skylights also give the public space new qualities: people clamber on them to their hearts' content. Studio Drift, among others, has already given an exhibition in the Amos Rex.
It is the most beautiful cave in the world. But not accessible. In Naica Crystal Cave in Mexico's Chihuahua Desert, you will find the largest crystals. Discovered in 2000, the cave is at a depth of 290 meters and contains crystals 11 meters long with a diameter of 2 meters and a weight of about 55 tons. Conditions there are very human-unfriendly, with an average temperature of 48.8 degrees and humidity of more than 80 percent. Without special suits and equipment, you are dead within minutes. Hence, the Cave of the Crystals (Cueva de los Cristales), as it has since been christened, remains inaccessible. Although there are plans...
The Irish do call Giant's Causeway, a rock formation on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland consisting of some 40,000 basalt columns, the Eighth Wonder of the World. According to tradition, Irish giant Finn McCool built a path through the sea ("causeway") to Scotland to fight with his counterpart Benandonner. When he got there and saw that his rival was even bigger than himself, he quickly fled back to Ireland. With the Scottish giant on his heels...McCool instructed his wife to disguise him as a baby. When Benandonner saw the woman with the infant in her arms, he was shocked at the size of the child. How big and strong did the father have to be? He in turn fled back to Scotland, destroying the path along the way. Only the beginning in Northern Ireland and the end in Scotland (Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa) still exist. Nice story, of course, but by now we know better: the perfect hexagonal columns were created by volcanic pressure some sixty million years ago. We think we understand the world, but it never ceases to amaze us.
© 2024 MASTERS EXPO. All rights reserved.
