NASA Crawler

NASA's Crawler-Transporters are the largest tracked vehicles in existence. Although the crawlers pack over 5,000 horsepower, their top speed is less than two kilometers per hour when fully loaded. Eleven people are needed to drive a single crawler. Diesel fuel mileage is about 350 liters per kilometer. The crawler's function is to move NASA's space shuttles, complete with launch platforms, from the Assembly Building to the Launch Pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. Two of these massive machines have operated since the Apollo era and have now crawled over 4,000 kilometers, all the while keeping their contents perfectly upright.

Shibam Hadhramaut

An impressive and brave highrise conglomerate in the desert Shibam is often called "the oldest skyscraper city in the world" or "the Manhattan of the desert", and is one of the oldest and best examples of urban planning based on the principle of vertical construction. The city has the tallest mud buildings in the world, with some of them over 30 meters high, thus being early high-rise apartment buildings. In order to protect the buildings from rain and erosion, the façades are thickly coated and must be routinely maintained. This building technique was implemented in order to protect residents from Bedouin attacks.

Kolmanskop

Highlights: Desert that has reclaimed houses. Kolmanskop is a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz. Once a small but very rich mining village, it is now a popular tourist destination run by the joint firm NamDeb (Namibia-De Beers). In 1908 the worker Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while working in this area and showed it to his supervisor, the German railway inspector August Stauch. After realizing that this area was rich in diamonds, lots of German miners settled in this area and soon after the German government declared a large area as a "Sperrgebiet", starting to exploit the diamond field. Driven by the enormous wealth of the first diamond miners, the residents built the village in the architectural style of a German town, with amenities and institutions including a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first tram in Africa. It had a railway link to Lüderitz. The town declined after World War I when the diamond-field slowly exhausted and was ultimately abandoned in 1954. The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists now walk through houses knee-deep in sand. Kolmanskop is popular with photographers for its settings of the desert sands' reclaiming this once-thriving town. Due to its location within the restricted area (Sperrgebiet) of the Namib desert, tourists need a permit to enter the town.

Villa Escudero Restaurant

Waterfalls are some of the most majestic and mysterious sites in the world, but getting close can not only be difficult, but also dangerous. The Villa Escudero Resort of San Pablo City in the Philippines offers a one of a kind experience for guests to get up close and personal with a roaring waterfall while enjoying their lunch. Their waterfall restaurant sits at the foot of the Labasin Falls where guests can enjoy local cuisine at handmade bamboo tables while clear spring water runs over theirfeet. The falls are so people friendly, guests can even lie against the rushing water covered wall for quick massage or post-lunch rinse off.

Göreme Police Station

The police station was carved probably centuries ago, and it might have been an ancient roman tomb, since most of the carved hoodoos (Fairy chimneys) in Cappadocia are in fact ancient tombs, later converted into houses.­ The eroded rock formations of Cappadocia look like sandstone, but it is actually volcanic tuff, a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash that originated from ancient volcanic eruptions in the region.­ The hard stone caps on the pinnacles protected them while rains eroded the surrounding softer rock around, leaving the pointy bits behind. The natural shape gives the building a nice watch tower as well. There are an abundance of great architecture like this in this region so make some research before you go.

Balancing Barn

The Balancing Barn is situated on a beautiful site by a small lake in the quintessentially English countryside. The building takes the form of a barn, updated with shiny metal cladding. The Balancing Barn aims to make people re-evaluate the countryside as well as make contemporary architecture accessible. In addition to this, it is both a restfull and exciting holiday home, boldly designed to provoke a gut response to architecture and nature over a short stay.