An international team of architects and designers has created this stunning center-piece for London's 2012 summer Olympics village. Dubbed The Cloud, three 400ft towers would be joined by giant plastic spheres that serve as both observation decks and projection screens.
The giant bubbles would be structural, decorative, and be used to project weather info, spectator numbers, and race results. They'd be constructed from of a type of plastic called Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), the same stuff used to build the Beijing Aquatic Centre.
The Cloud has been shortlisted in the competition set-up by London's Mayor, and has been called "a sculptural spectacle, and a celebration of technology" by the senior curator of
architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The designers intend to build The Cloud using micro-donations from millions of people. One of the architects, who's from MIT, told the BBC: "We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached."
I hope they get all the cash they need, because that design is straight out of my Sci Fi dreams. [The Cloud via BBC] Thanks Tom!