china's ghost towns

Marketplace: "An empty residential complex in the city of Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia. The city, part of the region known as Ordos, is built for a population the size of Pittsburgh's, but for years has sat empty. It's one of China's many 'ghost towns' built by ambitious local governments eager to report high GDP growth by any means necessary."

After listening to this Marketplace piece on China's ghost towns on Monday, I had to go online and take a look at the photos. Go listen and a take look...

[photo: Rob Schmitz/Marketplace]

happy weekend + goodbye to may

Enchanted Forest by Elsa Mora

Happy weekend, friends!

Vegan Mint Brownie Ice Cream

London Growing. This is FASCINATING. (Maserati's "Cities" is a lovely accompaniment)

The star recipe this week

Chic Fille

Men Who Drink Breast Milk

Elsa Mora's awesome papercuttings

Hachette vs. Amazon

The movie version of Jonathan Tropper's This is Where I Leave You looks funny

Hershey Felder does Leonard Bernstein at Berkeley Rep

walmart to library

Have you seen the photos of this abandoned Walmart turned library in McAllen Texas? It's now the largest single floor library in the U.S. Pretty impressive...

Via WebUrbanist:

The design won the International Interior Design Association’s 2012 Library Interior Design Competition. MSR stripped out the old ceiling and walls of the building, gave the perimeter walls and bare warehouse ceiling a coat of white paint, and set to work adding glass-enclosed spaces, bright architectural details and row after row of books.

cloudscapes

Beautiful.

Cloudscapes by transsolar & tetsuo kondo architects.

[via of paper and things]

cinema center matadero

Cinema Center Matadero

Madrid, Spain

by ch + qs

[via of paper and things]