mathoda.com

Kazakhstan is planning to build a tent large enough to cover a small indoor city.

Click here for night and day pictures of the project: http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Projects/1438/Default.aspx

As the BBC reports,

Kazakhstan has unveiled a new architectural project for its capital Astana - a giant transparent tent that will contain an indoor city. The 150m-high (500ft) dome, designed by UK architect Norman Foster, will be built in just over a year. The tent is being made from special material that absorbs sunlight to create the effect of summer inside.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6165267.stm

This reminds me of the famous poem “Khubla Khan, or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment.” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which begins,

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

The rest of the poem can be read here: http://etext.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Kubla_Khan.html

You can throw this tent in the air, and by the time it lands it has set itself up. What a great design: http://decathlontent.com/

One of the types of innovation that I find very intriguing is when people transform devices or objects that the consumer already feels it knows and understands.

Take, for example, the bicycle: http://news.com.com/2300-11392_3-6053074-1.html?tag=ne.gall.pg