WHAT'S HAPPENING AT GREEN ACRES

 Symbiotic Wonders of the Aerial World

Plovers and Crocodiles

(Images via: WarrenPhotographic, EnjoyFrance, AboutAustralia)

It looks like something out of a storybook - and in fact it can be traced back to accounts told thousands of years ago - a crocodile opens its mouth, invites a bird in before … what?  ::Chomp:: it swallows the sap alive? Amazingly, the crocodile remains still while the plover picks meat from its mouth. This cleans the crocodile’s teeth and prevents infection while providing a somewhat scary meal for the hungry bird.

Woodpecker and Tree Ants

(Images via: WiseDude, KolkataBirds, Chandra and Wikimedia)

No one knows for certain how the arrangement works, but a certain species of woodpecker and tree ant are known to call temporary truces despite being mortal enemies most of the time. The southern rufous woodbecker and the black tree ant are normally predator and prey - but when the bird lays its eggs in the nest of the ants an agreement is made, a non-aggression pact of sorts, that protects the bird’s eggs from attacks by the nest and the ants’ nest from other birds while the chosen bird is nesting there.

Little Planets: Polar Panoramic Photographs

There are more ways than most people realize to map a flat image onto a sphere - though the results are invariably surreal and often incredible. These five phenomenal photographers take amazing panoramic images and wrap them to create fantastic floating planets from simple scenes. How small is your world?

Wonderfully Elegant Little Worlds by Gadl:

Alexandre Duret-Lutz - aka “Gadl” - started with the old point-and-shoot approach just a few years back but has since graduated to spherical panoramas and spirals. In a short time, he has gone from capturing ordaniary scens to carefully and selectively exagerating key elements in his complex spherical compositions, playing with tone, contrast, foreground and background. Gald also has a number of helpful links for people who want to create planets of their own.

Retrofuturbanism: Fantastic Cities of the Futureee

Masdar City - Zero Carbon, Zero Emissions, Zero Cars

(image via: Jetson Green)

Dubai, home of many of the world’s most interesting architectural projects, is going green with Masdar City. Zero carbon, zero emissions, zero cars… and if that’s not enough zeros for you, check out the price tag: $22,000,000,000!

X-SEED 4000 - Peak at the Future

(image via: Naturetm)

Sometimes designers get a little carried away, and this is one of those times. The X-Seed 4000… the “4000″ refers to its height of 4,000 meters (about 13,150 feet!), which would dwarf any other man-made structure while housing an estimated one million people. The base of this artificial Mount Fuji would be about 6 miles wide. Impressive yes, but around 35 of them would be needed to absorb the current population of Tokyo where the project is set to begin construction, er, some day.

(images via: Satrun3000 and Inhabitat)

Considering the estimated $300-900 billion dollars required to actually build the X-Seed 4000 and we won’t even get into the physical problems - such as temperature and pressure differentials between the uppermost floors and the base - we can safely assume that both the X-Seed 4000 and the 2-mile high Ultima Tower shown above are merely design studies intended to bring attention to their designers. In that respect, they have been towering successes.

Crystal Island, Moscow on the Awesome

(images via: Geekabout and Foster + Partners)

Crystal Island is another giga-project that, though granted planning approval, may never progress to the bricks & mortar stage. The plans themselves are quite formidable, calling for a total floor area four times that of the Pentagon, 900 apartments able to house up to 30,000 people, and a 500-student international school.

(images via: Elite Choice and Zcorp)

Situated on the Nagatino Peninsula just over a mile away from the Kremlin, Crystal Island will soar 1,500 feet into the sky and will offer incredible views of Moscow from observation platforms at the 980 foot level.