Ecca collection

Copenhagen aquarium "The Blue Planet"

Inspired “by the shape of water in endless motion”, Denmark’s new national aquarium, the Blue Planet, is northern Europe’s largest and most modern.

The whirlpool concept on which this unusual edifice originates is, according to Copenhagen-based architectural practice 3XN: “in a narrative about water, and as an image, is at once both abstract and figurative”. The practice also cites shoals of fish and swirling starlings for influencing the vortex-like form of the building.

Images courtesy of Adam Mõrk

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Chatterley Valley Blue Planet Distribution Centre

If you think you know what a warehouse looks like, even a quick glimpse at the Chatterley Valley Blue Planet distribution warehouse in Newcastle-under-Lyme, North Staffordshire, will confound your expectations. Where most warehouses are rectilinear this one is sinuously curved; where most are of a single dull colour, this one is clad in stripes and different shades of green.

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Aluminium Centrum

Few buildings evoke the universal response ‘how on earth does it stand up?’ but the Aluminium Centrum in Houten, the Netherlands, is one of them. A flat simple slab of a building (although not as simple as it first looks) is supported on the slenderest possible of supports coming up out of the water. On a day when the light is right, with reflections in the still water, the effect is of the tentacles of a jellyfish – not the most structurally rigid of concepts.

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