According to US publications, an unknown buyer has paid over US$ 90 million for an unfinished penthouse apartment, setting a new mark for the priciest home in New York City. He bought the 1015 square meters penthouse on the 89th and 90th floors of One57, the building currently under construction at 157 West 57th Street. The building, which features a Park Hyatt below the condominium units, will offer striking views of the southern end of Central Park and will be among New York's tallest residential structures when it is completed next year. Since One57 opened for sales in December, about half of its 92 apartments have been sold. This purchase breaks the previous New York City record of US$ 88 million paid by a Russian billionaire to buy a Central Park West apartment for his daughter last year. As we reported earlier, it is 10-room penthouse with total area of 626 square meters. On a per-square foot basis, however, this is a much better deal. The latest sale went for about US$ 8 thousand a square foot (US$ 88 600 for 1 square meter), while the Central Park West pad went for more than US$ 13 thousand (US$ 140 000 for 1 square meter). Foreign buyers, including Brazilians, Chinese and Russians, have been on a buying spree in New York and Miami in recent months, developers and brokers say. Russian and Ukrainian buyers have shown a particular willingness to pay top dollar for so-called trophy properties. Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development Company, was quick to dispel any notion that the One57 penthouse was sold to a Russian, saying the buyer was not Russian, Ukrainian or from "any other part of the former Soviet Union." He described the buyer as a "very nice family" who plans to use the penthouse as a residence, and as "someone that people would recognize." One57 is a 90-story skyscraper currently under-construction in New York City. Upon completion in 2013, it will stand at 306 meters tall, making it one of the tallest buildings in the city. The mixed use tower is developed by the Extell Development Company and the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Atelier Christian de Portzamparc designed One57 with SLCE Architects. The building will have 135 residential units on top of a Park Hyatt Hotel with 210 rooms. Foundation work started in January 2010.

Engineers in California have unleashed high-intensity artificial earthquakes on a five-storey building packed with medical equipment. The mock hospital has been built on a giant "shake table" which can subject the building to movements similar to real earthquakes. The tests are designed to determine if hospitals built on rubber bearings could function after a quake. The use of these rubber bearings is common in earthquake-prone Japan. The $5m project also tested whether the bearings could protect other strategically important buildings, such as computer data centers, so they could operate without interruption after a large earthquake. It is the first time that the bearing system has been tested under a full-scale building on a shake table in the United States. "What the bearings do is uncouple the building from the motion of the ground during an earthquake, like putting the building on roller skates," said Tara Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego. She said that while most research concentrated on the structural integrity of buildings after an earthquake, very little examined how vital contents such as stairs, lifts and other parts of a building that allowed it to fulfill its function fared after a major seismic event. The building was equipped with a surgery and an intensive-care unit, computer servers and other electrical equipment, as well as stairs and a working lift. The 80ft (24m) structure was also clad in precast concrete and synthetic stucco, two materials which are commonly used in commercial construction projects, and a large water tower and a heating and air-conditioning system was installed on the roof. On the first day of testing in early April, the shake table subjected the building to identical motions to those recorded during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, and the 8.8-magnitude Chile earthquake in 2010. The engineers found that the rubber bearings (or "base isolators") successfully protected the building from most of the damaging lateral motion that it would experience during a real earthquake. It also left lifts, stairs, medical equipment and other machinery intact, although there was some minor cosmetic damage. "What we found is that the contents of the building carried on working after our 'earthquakes'," said Professor Hutchinson. "If the equipment had been life-support systems keeping real people alive, then the bearings would have saved their lives." Engineers have now removed the base isolators from beneath the building, and over the next three weeks Professor Hutchinson will repeat the simulated earthquakes so that a direct comparison can be made between the damage to the building's contents with and without them in place. Rubber base isolators have already been retrofitted under the Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco city halls.

Chicago City officials recently unveiled the proposed concepts for the long-delayed Bloomingdale Trail, a proposed park and multiuse path of nearly three miles that would be built atop a dormant elevated railroad line on the city's Northwest Side. It also would help connect other parks throughout the area, reported the Chicago Tribune. As reported The inhabitat, the Bloomingdale rail line once served as an important transport corridor, but was then abandoned in the early 1990s. Since the late '90s, the idea has been floating around to convert the elevated rail line into a public park. The Bloomingdale Trail and Park has been in the works for many years now, but significant progress has recently been made. Designed by ARUP, with the help of Ross Barney Architects and Michael van Valkenburgh Associates, the elevated trail and park will be 4.3 kilometers long and will feature bike and pedestrian paths. The gently curving and undulating trail will allow bikers to go up to 32 kmph, and there will be separate paths available for pedestrians. What is not used by paths will be available for public art, lighting, play areas, seating, and vegetation. The landscaping will encourage new wildlife to converge in the city and will contribute to an improved environmental quality. The path would be at least 3 meters wide, with 0.6 meters of clearance on each side for a total of 4.2 meters. About 1.9 kilometers of the trial would have a separate pedestrian path that would run parallel to the multiuse path. Visitors would reach the trail, now raised about 4.6 meters above street level, from eight access points. The design team is proposing 8 access points along the path spaced at about 800 meters apart. In the beginning, the rail line was built to keep people off of it, but now the line will encourage access via sloping parks. The multiphase project is expected to cost about US$ 70 million, when it's all said and done, but the first phase should cost about US$ 46 million. To date the city has collected US$ 37 million in federal anti-congestion and air-quality funding and US$ 7 million more was just donated through private funding. The design team is still working out the details, especially with regards to privacy for neighbors of the park and safety issues, but they hope to begin construction in 2013 with parts of the park open by 2014. For Bloomingdale Trail project as a starting point served the famous suspension park High Line in New York. This band of flowers, trees, shrubs, viewing platforms and walkways were built on the basis of the long abandoned "suspension" railroad. On April 10, 2006, Mayor Bloomberg presided over a ceremony that marked the beginning of construction. The park was designed by the James Corner's New York-based landscape architecture firm Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with planting design from Piet Oudolf of the Netherlands and engineering design by Buro Happold. The park was so attractive, that in 2010 was decided to increase its length by half. In 2011 this idea was brought to life. On March 12, was unveiled the initial design concepts for the rail yards section of the High Line. Friends of the High Line released the initial design plans for the third and final section of the High Line at the Hudson Rail Yards. The renderings from architects James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro are available on the High Line's website (and our photo gallery!), and they show the final section of the elevated park incorporating familiar elements, as well as several brand new features. The design will be closely integrated to the massive Hudson Yards development. The newly revealed renderings show the architects' initial visions for the final section of the High Line, but the details are not finalized The third section's total cost will be about US$ 90 million (which comes from donors, not the city's pockets), and it will be open to the public by spring 2014.

The New Jersey mansion that was the setting for Whitney Houston's well publicized drug problems and her tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown is being sold with an asking price of US$ 1.75 million, reported The International Business Times. The property at 22 North Gate Road in Mendham Township, N.J., was first listed for US$ 2.5 million in 2009, but lingered in the post-recession market. The 1170 square meters mansion has five bedrooms, five bathrooms and a rounded facade, on five acres of land. It appeared in 2005 in the short-lived Bravo reality series "Being Bobby Brown" featuring the then-married couple. According to another publication Dailymail, the home itself is designed with an open plan layout in mind, with the dining room providing space for 12 people. The kitchen features white units and red tiling with a breakfast bar in the middle of the room, while the sumptuous bathroom boasts glass brick walls and a round bathtub. The living room features a skylight and floor to ceiling windows with an exposed brick wall, while the bedroom features an open plan layout with a bed on a raised platform in the centre. Outstanding features include curved window-walls, domed skylights, a gracefully flowing floor plan, and walk-out lower entertainment level allowing for contiguous enjoyment of superb tiered terraces and lawn.

As a measure to save energy, the new Molecular Engineering and Sciences building at the University of Washington melts in the heat of day, reported The Tecca. The outer structure of the futuristic building is, of course, structurally sound. But to save energy in cooling costs, scientists have developed a special all-natural phase-changing gel that they've encapsulated inside the walls of the building. As the temperature rises, the gel in the walls will melt, helping to keep the building cool. The brilliance of the vegetable-oil-based gel is that it takes advantage of a basic thermodynamic principle: As a substance changes phases from solid to a liquid, it absorbs energy without changing in temperature. During the day when temperatures are high, the gel in the building's walls will melt, absorbing energy without changing in temperature. At night, the gel in the building's wall will solidify due to the colder air, readying the walls to absorb more energy the next day. The net result: Less air conditioning will be needed, reducing the building's energy needs. The phase changing material is just one of many innovative cooling techniques currently being tried by scientists to reduce energy usage. And though these gels are not widely used today, researchers believe that over the next decade, phase change material manufacturing will grow into a multi-million dollar industry.