STAY is a stylish and spacious hotel placed on Copenhagen‘s Islands Brygge. STAY has a view overlooking the water and the city, and easy access to the vibrating boroughs that have lifted Copenhagen into the global big league. The hotel has timeless design and favorable prices and offers its guests the same freedom that the city’s inhabitants enjoy, such as the option of cooking your own food, own house rules, and a tranquil environment that lets you think.
If you take the elevator to the 7th floor and step on to STAY‘s impressive rooftop terrace, you’ll get a view of of all the treats of Copenhagen within the immediate area. On one side, you have the canal tour that goes through the harbour and under the bridges that connect the Islands Brygge neighbourhood to Vesterbro and central Copenhagen.
Down on the street there are appealing cafes and restaurants from the point where the road bends to the north and the countless new buildings mix with older architecture and former workman’s houses. If you want to save your strength while experiencing the city on foot, Islands Brygges Metro is less than a 10 minute walk away.
STAY offers 15 different apartments types where space and convenience are central elements, and the interior design philosophy is rooted in forward-thinking Scandinavian minimalism. Location: Copenhagen, Denmark.
Source: misha
The 1992 Summer Olympic Games had a dramatic effect on Barcelona, not least in their architectural legacy. With its spatial dynamism and curvilinear energy, the Montjuic Telecommunications Tower built to transmit television coverage of the Games – has since become an iconic symbol of the Catalan city. The tower is in the heart of the Olympic park Santiago Calatrava.
The soaring structure reaches 136 m into the sky. For some observers it represents a kneeling figure making an offering, for others, an athlete holding the Olympic torch aloft. The figure is rooted in the tower base, which is covered in broken glazed tiles. This mosaic technique, known as trencadis, is employed in homeage to the work of Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi is the most prolific architect in the history of Barcelona.
The smooth arc at the top of the tower hides transmitting dishes, and the positioning of the structure is such that it also functions as a giant sundial. Multifunctional and beautiful, this masterpiece is wonderful addition to the eclectic architecture of Barcelona.
Source: misha
Cafe de Unie has sometimes been dismissed as ”facade architecture” for its eye-catching design that more closely resembles a Piet Mondrian painting than a building. Red, blue, and yellow dominate a three-dimensional geometric graphic design meant to attract passerby into the cafe. It is typical of the De Stijl movement of which Mondrian, J.J.P. Oud, and Gerrit Rietveld were the main proponents.
The cafe was designed by Oud, who was inluenced by the esteemed architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage as well as his friendship with Van Doesburg, but developed a formal vocabulary of his own. The commission for Cafe de Unie came from the Rotterdam Housing Authority, for which Oud was Municipal Housing Architect between 1918 and 1933.
Cafe de Unie is now located on Mauritzweg, near Rotterdam Central Station. It was built to fill a site on buildings, and was only meant to be temporary. It survived fifteen years until it was bombed during World War II. In 1985 the cafe was reconstructed 500 m from its original site. Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Source: misha
A few years ago, Genoa was far more grit than glamour — a way station to more fabulous places like Cinque Terre and its industrial port was among the more forgettable spots along the Italian Riviera. However, a complete restoration of its seedy waterfront, combined with an influx of young, well-funded entrepreneurs, has made Genoa a city bustling with cosmopolitan wine bars and restaurants.
Head to the Piazza delle Erbe, which is a small square hidden amid the labyrinthine alleys that snake through the city’s medieval quarter and it is home to no fewer than a half-dozen bars, two restaurants, a pizzeria and a gallery. Anyone who thinks Genoa is still a grimy port town hasn’t set foot inside Mua. It is a place where Genoa’s beautiful people gather, with decor taken straight from some chic Italian design store: walls awash in gleaming white, high-backed brown leather chairs, tables propped up by thin stem-like legs.
Parts of Genoa’s old city still look like the Middle Ages. There are cobblestone alleyways, so narrow that you can stretch out your arms and touch buildings on either side of the street. Spend some time there and get lost and don’t miss the San Lorenzo Cathedral, which dates back to the ninth century, in the heart of the old city.
If you decide to go Delta and United are among the airlines that fly to Genoa from New York with a connecting flight usually in Europe. Genoa is small enough that you can walk pretty much anywhere in the city center. And when your feet get tired, it’s easy to hail a taxi.
Source: misha
This summer, almost in every emerging neighborhood in Leipzig, Germany the streets were buzzing of artists and students. Early 20th-century cinema turned intimate music hall, Mohna. Outside, on Wolfgang-Heinze-Strasse, three heavily pierced student-types in studded jackets were hurrying toward Conne Island, one of Leipzig’s better-known music venues. Therefore, Leipzig does call itself the City of Music.
This year is the 325th anniversary of Bach’s birth, and Leipzig is celebrating with concerts, festivals and the reopening of the newly designed Bach Museum. In the last two years, this city of about half a million residents — many of them students at the 600-year-old University of Leipzig — is where some of the most innovative house and techno music is being created.
The music scene there is as good as those in other, bigger cities like Cologne or Berlin, but everyone knows each other. It’s not commercial. It seems the music scene there is still very untouched by cynicism and speculation and people really just want to enjoy good live music.
But only in recent years has Leipzig become a desirable place to live and visit. A few decades ago, it was a city to be avoided: a polluted town known mostly for its book publishing industry and the trade fairs that have been held there since the Middle Ages. Now the surplus of abandoned factory buildings, which had produced mechanical parts for products like watches and cars, and textiles, is a boon, attracting creative entrepreneurs, artists and musicians who have reclaimed the old spaces. There’s an underground party or event in an abandoned factory or building every weekend. Getting there: Leipzig is just over an hour from Berlin by train. Tickets are about 43 euros, or $52 at $1.20 to the euro.
Source: misha