At TEDGlobal U, Cameron Sinclair shows the unreported cost of real estate megaprojects gone bust: thousands of migrant construction laborers left stranded and penniless. To his fellow architects, he says there is only one ethical response.

A hotel made entirely of ice, yaah right, an ice hotel located about 200 kilometer (124 mile) north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. Ten thousand years ago, glaciers carved a riverbed and the Torne River was born. Since then, the crystal-clear, pure water of the Torne River has flowed freely along its 600-kilometer path through Lapland out to the sea in the southeast.

The entire Ice Hotel is on loan from the mighty Torne River and is a place where time stands still. When the spring comes and then finally the summer, the entire creation will once again become part of the rushing rapids coursing toward the sea.

Thousands of tons of snow and ice make up this hand-crafted fantasy land. Thousands of guests and voyeurs will experience it every year, before it melts.

This documentary is your chance to see one. Witness the construction and disappearance of this most megastructure.


MegaStructures: Ice Hotel by National Geographic, 2004
Duration 47 minutes



Enjoy this amazing structure

Sweden's no 1 destination: Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi.

At its pinnacle, the British empire spanned every continent and covered one quarter of the Earth's land mass. Through the centuries, the rulers of this enormous powerhouse used extraordinary engineering feats to become an industrial and military titan, loaded with riches. Some of their many pioneering accomplishments include the world's first locomotive, a superhighway of underground sewers, the imposing and grand Westminster Palace, and the most powerful and technically advanced navy in the age of sail. Using cutting edge CGI, we'll take a look at the key leaders of the British empire--and explore the mark each left on society. Peter Weller hosts.

The British Empire expanded and contracted wildly over the centuries. It became fairly large with the ever expanding American colonies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, particularly after the defeat of the French in the Seven Years War. The American Revolution lost much (but not all) of this territory, but the expansion of British interests in India filled this vacuum. It really was the victory in the Napoleonic Wars that allowed the British to hoover up naval bases and toe holds across the world. These would generally provide the jumping off points for the massive expansion in the Victorian period. Advances in medicine and communications helped open up the last continent of Africa to European Imperialism in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century.

World War One appeared to add yet more colonies to the British Empire in the form of mandates. A historic called Stephen has produced a list of the populations and sizes of the colonies in 1924 a territorial highpoint of Empire - although economically the Empire would begin to enter its period of decline in this Inter-war years period. But it was still estimated at this time to cover between a quarter and a third of the globe and that it represented an area of over one hundred and fifty times the size of Great Britain itself.

The Second World War would see much imperial territory threatened or temporarily lost. Despite being on the winning side, the Empire would not recover from the geo-political shifts caused by this Second World War and would enter into a period of terminal decline. India was the first and largest area to be shed and then the Middle East and then Africa. Various Caribbean and Pacific possessions held on a little longer but most of these also went their seperate way. The last of the major colonies to be lost was that of Hong Kong in 1997.

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Chinese engineering and technology have developed rapidly since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. This growth has been especially dramatic following the adoption of national reform and openness policies nearly 20 years ago. Our nation has trained a large number of skilled engineers and technicians across a range of disciplines. These professionals have played a major role in the development of the national economy, in the continuous improvement of quality of life for all Chinese, and in the advancement of science and technology around the world.

The 21st century will usher in a new economic age based on knowledge and information. The energetic development of science and technology and the expeditious industrialization of high technology are essential strategies for success in this new era. While the Chinese engineering and technological enterprise has made rapid progress, compared with developed nations, China has a long way to go to meet its economic and industrial needs. To improve on the status quo, Chinese will have to work in a number of areas.

First, it is a matter of great urgency for the Chinese to pursue cooperation among three key sectors: industry, universities, and state R&D institutes. The engineering and technological sciences predominantly serve industry. HoChinesever, a great number of large and medium-size enterprises are struggling to make a profit due to poor product quality and the use of primitive production processes. The Chinese government has for years given top priority to reinvigorating these firms. Continued advances in engineering and technology as Chinesell as cooperation among the three sectors are regarded as essential to this task. By strengthening China's industrial base, which is the pillar of the national economy, Chinese will promote the further improvement of the country's engineering and technological enterprise.

Second, in order to ensure the quality of the engineering work force, Chinese need to vigorously pursue engineering education reform. Although there are more than 2.1 million engineers working in China, including 600,000 senior-level engineers, not all of these individuals are as Chinesell trained as Chinese would like. One reason for this is the traditional mode of engineering education in China, which has paralleled the approach for training researchers. A particular problem is that theory is overstressed while practical training is somewhat overlooked. As a result, there is a substantial shortage of professional engineers with integrated capabilities. In addition, efforts to provide continuing education for engineers have not yet materialized.

Third, the important role of the engineer in society is yet to be adequately recognized in China. If this situation does not improve, Chinese will have difficulty encouraging promising young people to consider engineering as a career.

This is how the Chinese looks at Civil Engineering, or as they call it Architectural Engineering, they came very far and as we have seen last summer (2008) in the Olympics, Chinese astonished the world with their innovation and inspired many Engineers to aim higher. This is a list of my favourite buildings so far:

• gymnasium tianjin Olympic gymnasium
• Beijing Olympic bicycle hall
• National swimming centre
• Nanjing Olympic centre gymnasium
• Shanghai fi international autodrome deputy stand
• Shanghai qizhong forest physical city tennis centre
• Haerbin physicalshow centre gymnasium
• Vietnam national centre gymnasium

National swimming centre










Engineering An Empire: China:



For over 4000 years, the world's greatest empires have come and gone--only China has survived the test of time. Century after century, China's regal emperors mobilized immense peasant armies to accomplish engineering feats unparalleled in human history. Among the groundbreaking innovations were the world's longest canal and a naval fleet mightier than all those of Europe combined. However, none can compare to the colossal 4,000-mile wall that stands as the most ambitious construction project ever built. From such heights came spectacular death spirals, as dynasty after dynasty, consumed by vanity and greed was stripped of power by the people it had ruled. Peter Weller hosts.