Terraced slopes used for drainage and farming



Machu Picchu, located in the Cuzco area of Peru, is arguably the world’s most impressive pre-Columbian site. The citadel, situated 2,430m (7,970ft) above sea level, is widely thought to have been built as an exclusive estate for Inca emperors.

Construction started in around 1450 and was inhabited until 1572 as a result of the Spanish Conquest. Fortunately, the Spanish never found and ruined the citadel as they did with many other Inca sites. Instead, Machu Picchu was mysteriously abandoned, possibly because its inhabitants died from smallpox brought in by the conquistadors.

The site was first brought to international attention in 1911 when historian Hiram Bingham announced the discovery of the citadel to foreigners. It remains disputed whether he was the first westerner to find the site, for evidence of Machu Picchu has appeared on maps since 1874 when it was discovered by German businessman, Augusto Berns.

The quality of Inca stonemasonry is evident throughout the site

A small tourist town called Aguas Calientes (literally ‘warm waters’ in Spanish) is situated at the base of the mountain. Tourists then take busses to the top – the entrance to the citadel. The only way to enter the town is via train (4 hours) or on foot (about 3 days) through the Inca Trail. Both are an 80km (50 miles) journey that start in Cuzco, the Inca civilisation’s capital, and end at the entrance to Machu Picchu.

Entry is limited to Machu Picchu. No more than 3,000 people may enter the site on a single day and no more than 500 people can take the 2 hour hike to Huayna Picchu. The temple of the moon is situated there, high above Machu Picchu, and boasts magnificent views of the whole complex.

There is a strict no-fly zone above the area and helicopter flights in the area are completely forbidden. Like the quota on visitors, this is to protect the fragile stone walls of the site.

Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Niemeyer at age 103

Yesterday marked the death of Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, who died on 5 December 2012 at the age of 104, 10 days before his 105^th birthday. For that reason, it is fitting to pay tribute on this hugely influential architect on today’s post.

Niemeyer’s portfolio included the UN Headquarters in New York City; the parliamentary buildings in Brazil’s capital, Brasília; several museums around the world in Italy, Brazil, Spain and Venezuela; and artistic libraries across Brazil.

He designed his work in a very modern style, not in any way confined by straight lines or fixed shapes. Indeed, many of his buildings are characterised by round tops, façades and walls. He described his work brilliantly in a much-quoted memoir:

I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves. The curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein.

In 1956, Niemeyer agreed to team up with city planner, Juscelino Kubitschek, to design a new capital city for Brazil that was more functional and centrally-located than the then-capital of Rio de Janeiro. Viewed from above, the street plan resembles a bird/airplane. The city also features the National Congress, Brazil’s main administrative building, University of Brasília, Ministry of Justice, Presidential Palace and South America’s largest library. All the mentioned buildings were designed almost single-handedly by Oscar Niemeyer.

Church of Brasilia

Niemeyer remained active until his death, designing his last buildings in 2011 and 2012.

Interior of church

Niteroi Contemporary Museum of Art in Curitiba, Brazilo

Brasilia from the air

Guaíra Falls



Nature's greatest waterfall ever

 Most recently, I posted about the Itaipu Dam, the world’s most powerful dam located on the Brazil-Paraguay border. In my post, I omitted a fact that’s both fascinating and sad, for during the construction of the dam, the Guaíra Falls, the most voluminous falls ever, were in 1982 dynamited and forever destroyed.

The falls consisted of a collection of 18 cataracts in 7 groups. All-in-all, these seven falls flowed at 13.3 billion litres (3.5 billion gallons) per second, 6 times greater than Niagara’s flow rate.

Just before the submergence by the Itaipu reservoir, several tourists went to visit the falls for the last time. Tragically, a footbridge that offered visitors a particularly spectacular vista of the falls collapsed and killed 80 people.

Very little information is available about the Guaira Falls owing to the lack of foreign tourism in Brazil at the time (especially before construction on Itaipu began in 1970), but it is very possible that these falls were also the world’s widest, a category now claimed by Foz do Iguaçu. Interestingly, the latter is located around 30km (18.6 miles) from the Itaipu Dam. This means that that corner of Brazil used to be home to the world’s most voluminous falls, the widest and also the second-widest waterfall ever.

Just for interest’s sake, the second and third most voluminous falls ever were also submerged for the construction of dams. These are the Celilo and Kettle Falls respectively, both in Columbia, USA.

The Brazilian poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote a moving poem about the falls which made up the entire front page of a local newspaper. An excerpt of the poem – in English - is below:

Here seven visions, seven liquid sculptures
vanished through the computerized calculations
of a country ceasing to be human
in order to become a chilly corporation, nothing more.
A movement becomes a dam.

With difficulty, I found the whole poem below. It is written in Portuguese, which I don’t understand. Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/) the poem for an interesting and basic understanding of it though.

Adeus a Sete Quedas Sete quedas por mim passaram, e todas sete se esvaíram. Cessa o estrondo das cachoeiras, e com ele a memória dos índios, pulverizada, já não desperta o mínimo arrepio. Aos mortos espanhóis, aos mortos bandeirantes, aos apagados fogos de Ciudad Real de Guaira vão juntar-se os sete fantasmas das águas assassinadas por mão do homem, dono do planeta. Aqui outrora retumbaram vozes da natureza imaginosa, fértil em teatrais encenações de sonhos aos homens ofertadas sem contrato. Uma beleza-em-si, fantástico desenho corporizado em cachões e bulcões de aéreo contorno mostrava-se, despia-se, doava-se em livre coito à humana vista extasiada. Toda a arquitetura, toda a engenharia de remotos egípcios e assírios em vão ousaria criar tal monumento. E desfaz-se por ingrata intervenção de tecnocratas. Aqui sete visões, sete esculturas de líquido perfil dissolvem-se entre cálculos computadorizados de um país que vai deixando de ser humano para tornar-se empresa gélida, mais nada. Faz-se do movimento uma represa, da agitação faz-se um silêncio empresarial, de hidrelétrico projeto. Vamos oferecer todo o conforto que luz e força tarifadas geram à custa de outro bem que não tem preço nem resgate, empobrecendo a vida na feroz ilusão de enriquecê-la. Sete boiadas de água, sete touros brancos, de bilhões de touros brancos integrados, afundam-se em lagoa, e no vazio que forma alguma ocupará, que resta senão da natureza a dor sem gesto, a calada censura e a maldição que o tempo irá trazendo? Vinde povos estranhos, vinde irmãos brasileiros de todos os semblantes, vinde ver e guardar não mais a obra de arte natural hoje cartão-postal a cores, melancólico, mas seu espectro ainda rorejante de irisadas pérolas de espuma e raiva, passando, circunvoando, entre pontes pênseis destruídas e o inútil pranto das coisas, sem acordar nenhum remorso, nenhuma culpa ardente e confessada. (“Assumimos a responsabilidade! Estamos construindo o Brasil grande!”) E patati patati patatá... Sete quedas por nós passaram, e não soubemos, ah, não soubemos amá-las, e todas sete foram mortas, e todas sete somem no ar, sete fantasmas, sete crimes dos vivos golpeando a vida que nunca mais renascerá.

Itaipu Dam

The spillways (closed) are on the left while the generator components are on the right

The Itaipu Dam, situated on the Brazil-Paraguay border, is the world’s largest hydroelectric dam in terms of present annual energy generation. It is situated on the Paraná River, which is the 8^th longest river in the world and the 9^th most voluminous.

At the time of completion, it was the most expensive structure ever constructed and still remains the most expensive ‘thing’ on Earth, costing very roughly $30 billion in today’s money. Only the International Space Station surpasses this, costing around $100 billion.

A generator undergoes expansion in 2007

The dam’s capacity (14,000MW) is second to that of the Three Gorges Dam in China (22,500MW). Despite this, one must remember that the dam was completed in 1984 after 14 years of construction in Brazil which was under military rule at the time. It remains a truly incredible engineering achievement.

Enough concrete was used to pave a two-lane highway from Lisbon to Moscow, a distance of 4,580km (2,850 miles). Above this, the steel and iron used would allow the construction of 380 Eiffel towers.

The Itaipu Dam provides power for 90% of Paraguay (Paraguay has a population of 6,568,000 people) and 19% of Brazil (Brazil’s population is 197,000,000). This means the dam provides power to approximately 43,276,000 people. This is roughly enough for the whole population of Spain and more than enough for all of Canada’s population.

All-in-all, the dam’s spillways (used to prevent the reservoir from spilling over like a bathtub) can discharge water at 62,200 cubic metres per second. This is almost 26 times greater than Niagara Falls’ average annual flow rate (2,400 m³/s.

Aerial view of the world's most powerful hydroelectric dam

Burj Khalifa

The Burj Khalifa (formerly known as the Burj Dubai) is currently the tallest building in the world. Situated in Dubai and reaching an impressive 828m (2,716.5ft), it has 160 stories, far more than any other structure. The second-tallest building is the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel in Saudi Arabia with 120 floors and reaching 601m (1,971ft).



Interior of the most expensive suite - the Armani Dubai Suite



The Burj Khalifa is a multi-purpose building, complete with retail, residential, hotel and office areas. The hotel boasts rooms wholly designed by Giorgio Armani. Unsurprisingly, staying there is rather expensive. One can expect to pay around $1,100 for 2 people, 2 nights for the cheapest room and in excess of $4,600 for the most expensive suites.

The building features an observation deck on the 124^th floor – the highest of its kind in the world. Sky lobbies are also in place for the building’s permanent residents on floors 43 and 76. These feature swimming pools directly connected to outside balconies, allowing residents to literally swim in and out of the building.

Builders had to pump concrete 601m (1,971.8ft) from the base to the top of the tower. This remains the highest concrete pumping ever, smashing Taipei 101’s record of 470m (1,542ft).

Dubai Fountain at the base of the huge structure

The massive air conditioning system is powerful enough to melt 13,000 tonnes of ice in one day. That said, the building’s water usage is 960,000l (250,000 gallons) of water each day, transported through 100km (62 miles) of piping.

The elevators are double-decked and can carry 10-14 people in each cabin. They have the longest vertical line of any elevator in the world and also travel faster than any others: 10m.s^-1 (36km/h or 22.5mph)

Shanghai Pudong International Airport

An computer-generated aerial view of the huge transport hub

Interior view of the expansions, completed in 2008

Shanghai Pudong International Airport is the world’s third busiest airport by cargo capacity and, after serving 40,578,621 passengers in 2012, the 20^th busiest airport by passenger traffic.

The airport underwent a major expansion programme beginning in 2005 in order to prepare for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The expansion included some revolutionary features, such as a $1.5 million lighting system. The system is directly linked to the arrivals and departures information so that it lights up a gate when an aircraft is expected to arrive or depart.

130 CCTV cameras around the airport monitor traffic flow. When it is found that there is a bottleneck anywhere in the airport, the direction signs automatically change to guide passengers through a different route to their gate.

The air conditioning system uses enough water to fill around 150 Olympic swimming pools. To save costs, engineers used river water and filtered it with plants’ roots to collect the water.

When current expansions are completed in 2015, the airport and its train hub will be able to serve 1.5 million passengers daily.

Pudong Airport is connected to a dramatic link of transport routes. Four different loop roads (completely independent of each other) send cars to the correct terminal and there is also an underground metro station. Alternatively, passengers can use the Maglev train. This transports passengers from central Shanghai to the airport at around 450km/h (280mph).



A Maglev train leaving the airport



The Maglev station is built directly above the metro station. In order to prevent vibrations from the metro trains disrupting the delicate Maglev, engineers built a concrete layer deep enough to bury a tank below the Maglev platform.

For clarification, Maglev (magnetic levitation) is a technology developed in Germany. The train essentially glides on the rail and is propelled forward by strong magnetic waves. This makes the journey frictionless and very smooth.

SS 'Great Britain'



The ship in Bristol. This 1844 photograph is believed to be the oldest surviving photo of any ship



The SS Great Britain was by far the largest ship in the world when completed in 1843. Designed by the legendary Isambard Kingdom Brunel, she was also considered the most advanced ship of her time, largely due to her feature of both an iron hull and a huge propeller powered by the largest steam engine on the seas at the time.

At 322ft (98m) long, she is 3.7 times shorter than the MS Oasis of the Seas and at 3,675 tons, she is 61 times lighter than the largest passenger ship presently. To be fair though, comparing the Great Britain to the Oasis of the Seas is a little like comparing the Wright Flier to the Airbus A380 – completely unrealistic.

The first class dining room, in characteristic Victorian style

The Great Britain is currently a well-preserved museum ship in a Bristol dry dock. Visitors can explore the interior and exterior (even the giant propeller is visible under glass).

With a capacity of 360 (later increased to 730) passengers and 130 crew, her total initial capacity was 490 people, 6.7 times less than that of Titanic, launched 69 years later.

3^rd Class accommodation consisted of little more than rows of berths in terribly claustrophobic conditions. 1^st Class was better off with amenities such as fresh water available in all cabins. By modern standards, it would still be an uncomfortable way to make a 14-day transatlantic crossing though.

Livestock was kept on deck so that there would be a constant supply of fresh meat, eggs and poultry. The ship had no refrigeration which called for the need of fresh supplies for its passengers and crew.

Despite her luxury, she was a financial disappointment. Considerably delayed and 1.7 times more expensive than planned, she was sold in 1852 and refitted with an extra upper deck to suitably transport emigrants from the UK to Australia.

Aboard her deck