Dream Cube

ESI Design worked with the Shanghai Corporate Community to create the Dream Cube, a 43,000 square foot Corporate Pavilion for the 2010 World Expo. Made from recycled cd cases, the Dream Cube is covered in LED lights which change color when people are interacting inside the building.

Visitors are invited to participate online and in-person in a visual composition of the city’s future by contributing thoughts and images of their city via the website. The words and photos of thousands of Shanghai residents will mingle throughout the pavilion to symbolize their co-creation of Shanghai’s future.

In addition to using recycled materials and LED lights, the roof collects rainwater before filtering and storing it for daily use. The pavilion also features a solar thermal tube screen on the roof, which collects solar energy for producing hot water. After the Expo, the building materials will be recycled again for other applications.

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Wild Life Photography by Nick Brandt..

Nick Brandt is one of those photographers who is, quite simply, impossible to pin down. Born in England, he moved to California where he became a high profile maker of music videos for stars such as Michael Jackson. It was actually while directing the video for Michael Jackson's Earth Song in Tanzania in 1996 that he first began his love affair with Africa. Having enjoyed a deep connection with animals since childhood, and sharing his Californian home with a menagerie of pets, it was the beautiful and graceful African creatures and the wild, sweeping landscape they inhabit that particularly appealed to Nick.

Around five years ago, he decided to leave behind the glamour of the music business to concentrate on becoming a photographer. He made his mind up from the outset, however, that he was not going to attempt to emulate the litany of wildlife photographers who had found themselves drawn to this charismatic continent, but that he would approach his Chosen subject in a highly individual manner.

The result was a decision to tackle wildlife in a way that was almost diametrically opposite to the norm: using a black & white fine art style, a medium-format camera and a portrait or wide-angle lens. In short, Nick set about photographing his subjects almost as though they were human, and he himself insists that he is not a wildlife photographer at all in the conventional sense of the word.

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