The Caland Canal allows ships to pass from the North Sea via the Nieuwe Waterweg to the industrial port of Brittaniehaven. As ships increased in size – in particular those used to transport cars – the narrow waterway became more difficult to navigate in strong winds, particularly around the Calandbrug bridge.

In the mid-1980s architect Martin Strujis and artist Frans de Wit were tasked with creating an effective – yet aesthetically pleasing – wind barrier. Using a number of different designs for the slabs, they were able to provide the required protection, allowing only 25% of the wind to pass through, yet be judged pleasing enough to the eye that the windscherm is also considered to be a large-scale landscape art installation.

The southern section uses the largest semi-circular slabs – 25m tall and 18m wide.

These immense barriers shield the harbour, where ships maneuver slowly to and from the dockside.

Around the bridge, the slabs are the same height and still semi-circular to deflect the most wind, but narrower (4m) and spaced much more closely together to provide maximum protection as ships pass through this narrow obstacle with only a small distance to spare on either side. This YouTube video (in Dutch) shows just how tricky this passage is³.

Canal traffic has priority, so as the port became busier, road and rail traffic on the bridge increasingly faced lengthy delays. To ease congestion, a tunnel was built just to the south in 2004.

A bike route also crosses the bridge, and a special portal was created to protect cyclists from swirling air currents created by the barrier.

North of the bridge, the semi-circular slabs are replaced with slabs 10m square, which – placed on top of a 15m embankment – attain the same 25m height as the other sections.

The barrier continues in this form until it ends in a stand of trees near a gas storage facility.

Locations: Netherlands / Categories: Bridges, Street Views, Structures, Watercraft

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The Kingdom of Lesotho (pronounced li-SU-tu) occupies 30,355 km2 (12,727 sq mi) in the middle of South Africa and gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. While it’s easily recongisable on a map from being an enclave in the middle of another country, it’s also recognisable from space even without a map due to the large amount of deforestation in Lesotho; two-third’s of the country economy is based in agriculture.

Most visitors to Lesotho enter through the capital, Maseru, a city of a quarter-million people which lies directly on the western border. Maseru is easily the largest and most modern city in the country.

The Lesotho Parliament sits high on a mountaintop in the middle of Maseru.

Lesotho’s only university is the National University of Lesotho in the town of Roma. The entrance to the University has become a hot area for businesses and street vendors in recent years.

Around 75% of Lesotho’s population lives in rural areas, and most of the population is concentrated in the lowlands along the western border. A common sight along the roadside is people gathered around bus shelters made from corrugated steel waiting for the next minibus. Often attached to these are public telephone booths.

Another common sight is the rather staggering amount of billboards and signs along the roadside advertising AIDS prevention services and, even more distressingly, funeral services. Adult prevalence of AIDS in Lesotho is 28.9% according to the UN; the third-highest rate in the world.

Because Lesotho’s population is concentrated in the lowlands, the mountain highlands were largely left alone by Street View. Still, the cameras did capture some of the spectacular scenery, such as at Maletsunyane Falls. At 192 m (630 ft), it’s the highest single-drop waterfall in all of southern Africa.

The highlands are also the source of Lesotho’s major export: electricity. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project exports electricity to South Africa generated from two hydroelectric dams in the centre of the country, Mohale and Katse. The project is scheduled to add three more dams in the coming years. At 145 m (476 ft), Mohale Dam is Africa’s tallest rock-fill dam, while Katse Dam is the second-largest dam in all of Africa, standing 185 m (607 ft).

As seen from the tops of Katse and Mohale, even in the middle of the highlands the forests have long been stripped bare. Soil erosion caused by deforestation has ruined much of the country’s land; a major problem in a place where less than 11 percent of the land is suitable for growing crops.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Thanks to its high altitude, Lesotho is home to one of Africa’s few ski resorts. The cameras came by in the middle of summer, though, so no snow is present.

The Street View cameras managed to capture quite a few slices of bucolic rural life in Lesotho. Here, we see a farmer with his cattle (and associated cattle by-products) in front of his traditional Sotho hut, a group of children who decided to chase after the Street View car down this dead-end road, and a traditional village so remote that it doesn’t even have roads.

Hopefully, we will get to see even more of rural Africa in the coming months. South Africa and Botswana are already on the roster, and Swaziland is scheduled to be added soon.

Locations: Lesotho / Categories: Animals, Buildings, Crowds, Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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Does anyone want to have a go at providing an alternative suggestion of what might be going on here?

Via @myfangrykitty.

Locations: Netherlands / Categories: Bridges, Crowds, Watercraft

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Any tour of the ice hockey world should probably begin at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Established in 1943, the Hall has collected countless amounts of hockey memorabilia and inducted 370 members for their contributions to the game. Since 1992, the Hall has been located in this historic downtown Toronto building. Its museum has 4,700 m2 (50,600 sq. ft.) of exhibition space and receives 300,000 visitors each year.

As with many major team sports, ice hockey was already played informally by the beginning of the 19th century, becoming formally codified in the middle of the century. The first modern hockey game with proper rules was played on 3 March 1875 at Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Closed in 1925, the site of the humble wooden rink has long been occupied by a parking garage. It’s a far cry from Michigan Stadium, where in 2010 a massive 113,411 fans watched teams from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University do battle. The NHL will attempt to replicate the feat next January when the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs play in the same stadium.

Ice hockey fans often create their own shrines to the game. This pub in Columbus, Ohio is all decked out for the next Blue Jackets match.¹²

As you’re likely aware, hockey is borderline religion in Canada. It’s even responsible for Canada’s most popular restaurant chain. In 1964, Maple Leafs star defenceman Tim Horton parlayed some of his hockey earnings into a doughnut store in Hamilton, Ontario. Five decades later, Tim Hortons has over 4,500 locations around the world, but the original Hamilton store is still going (note the plaque).

Other stars of the day took up more esoteric endeavours. Chicago forward Bill Mosienko ³ opened up a chain of bowling alleys in his native Winnipeg. His family still operates this alley, which bears a giant mural in Mosienko’s honour.

Another mural recipient is Paul Henderson, who scored the winning goal for Canada against the Soviet Union in the 1972 Summit Series, the first-ever best-on-best meeting between the two ice hockey superpowers of the day at the height of the Cold War. An estimated 75% of Canadian households watched the final game. Henderson’s hometown of Lucknow, Ontario painted this mural for the previously unheralded player who instantly became a national sporting hero.⁴

These days, ice hockey is a truly international game. 72 countries are now members of the International Ice Hockey Federation, including unlikely candidates such as Thailand, India, and Qatar. Players who head off to the NHL to ply their trade can become national heroes back home. On the side of the Arena Riga in Riga, Latvia, we find this giant poster of Sandis Ozoliņš, who played 15 seasons in the NHL and was voted the country’s most popular sportsman in 2009⁵. Perhaps the biggest evidence of the sport’s growth can be found in places like the Rødovre Skøjte Arena, a small rink in the suburbs of Copenhagen. There are fewer than 5,000 registered ice hockey players in all of Denmark, yet three of them – Mikkel Bødker, Lars Eller, and Jannik Hansen – emerged from a junior team based at this rink to end up as prominent players in the NHL in recent years.

The second-strongest ice hockey league in the world is the Eastern Europe-based Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Tragedy struck the league in September 2011 when the entire roster of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, containing many international stars, was killed in a plane crash en route to the season’s first game. Yaroslavl’s Arena 2000 continues to display the images of the 37 players and staff who perished.

More than anywhere else in Europe, ice hockey has been embraced by Finland, where it is the most popular sport. Numerous hockey stars come from Finland to play in the NHL, and as we see at Helsinki’s Hartwall Areena, Finland hosts NHL games itself, such as the Chicago/Florida tilt advertised on this poster. The NHL now opens every season with multiple games in Finland and Sweden.

The most out-of-place rink may be the one in the United Arab Emirates. Surrounded by the heat of the Arabian desert, Emiratis and expatriates play with and against each other in a rink inside the Dubai Mall, the world’s largest enclosed shopping centre. There is a five-team national league and eight-team amateur league, and in recent years the UAE has even begun sending teams to the World Championships.

And what coffee and doughnut shop happens to overlook the rink? You guessed it, Tim Hortons.

Locations: Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Manitoba, Michigan, Ohio, Ontario, Quebec, Russia, United Arab Emirates / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views

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Midway Atoll lies at the extreme northwest end of the Hawaiian Islands, though it is not part of the state of Hawaii itself. A National Wildlife Refuge administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Midway is indeed ‘midway’ between Asia and North America: 4,100 km (2,500 mi) east of Tokyo and 5,200 km (3,200 mi) west of San Francisco. The atoll consists of a coral reef that contains a 68 km2 (26 sq mi) lagoon with three islands in its south end – the final remnants of a prehistoric volcano formed 28 million years ago that has long since sunk into the sea.

The largest of the three islands is Sand Island, which makes up about 78 percent of Midway’s land area. Sand Island hosts the airport, Henderson Field, as well as all of Midway’s buildings and residences. Directly to the east lies the other two islands of Midway, Spit (the small one in the middle) and Eastern, home to the original World War II airstrip.

It’s probably not surprising that the staff at Midway were more than excited to greet the Street View folks – the year-round population on Sand Island is around 60 people, and the nearest town is 1,865 km (1,160 mi) away!

Fortunately, accommodation on the island is pretty nice. Just look at Midway House, the residence of the officer-in-charge built in 1941. Nice front garden, too.

Did you notice the birds in the staff image or in the courtyard? If there’s a recurring theme in the Street View imagery at Midway, it’s birds. As both a protected wildlife refuge and as one of the pivotal stopover points for seabirds crossing the Pacific, birds are everywhere – and we mean everywhere. Almost every outdoor image taken on Sand Island includes some of the three million birds that call Midway Atoll home, including 70 percent of the world’s Laysan Albatrosses and over one-third of its Black-footed Albatrosses.

Midway was not permanently settled until the United States Navy arrived in 1940 to open a Naval Air Facility. Within two years, Midway would be the battleground for one of World War II’s most decisive victories. Taking place over four days in early 1942, the US thwarted an attempted Japanese capture of the island. Midway’s history of warfare is evident in the island’s landscape. The ruins of the old command post stand to this day (the roof now bearing stalactites), and this old bunker lies hidden in the grass on the south shore. Unsurprisingly, albatrosses have even found their way inside there, too.

Naturally, memorial cairns exist to commemorate the battle, complete with a list of ships involved in the battle and a centrepiece map. On the east side of the island, there are also three cairns engraved with Japanese writing; a memorial to three fisherman lost at sea back in 1911.

There are a few dozen buildings on Sand Island, some dating back as far as 1903 and the Commercial Pacific Cable Company’s attempt to build a trans-Pacific telegraph cable. Others were tourist facilities built during the first days of transcontinental flight in the 1930s. Most buildings on the island, however, come from Midway’s WWII and Cold War heyday as a naval air station. At one point, over 3,500 people lived on the island, and even into the 1970s the population was over 2,000. Most of the pavement arund the island is crumbling, and the many abandoned barracks and naval facilities are in various states of disrepair. An ongoing US$5 million project to strip the toxic lead paint from the all of the abandoned buildings’ walls is scheduled to be completed in 2017.

The largest buildings on Sand Island are the hangars and maintenance facilities. One of these huge buildings is dedicated exclusively to storing golf carts and bicycles – the only motorised land transportation on the island.

Between 2008 and 2012, Midway was opened up not just to government personnel and Fish & Wildlife Service volunteers, but to eco-tourists as well. In 2012, the year Street View visited Midway, the island received 332 tourists. And there’s no shortage of services for staff and visitors alike; at the Midway Mall, one can shop at the gift shop, go to the library, or even have a bite to eat or a haircut while waiting for their bicycle to be repaired at the bike shop!

Sadly, these facilities will see far less use in 2013 due to budget cutbacks that have suspended all visitor and volunteer programmes. With no public access to Midway scheduled at the moment, the only time you can visit now is if your plane was forced to make an emergency landing over the Pacific. But, hey, if you do get marooned at Midway, there’d be a lot worse places to get stuck.

Locations: Unincorporated territory of the U.S. / Categories: Abandoned, Animals, Buildings, Crowds, Islands, Monuments, Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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After a couple of decades of fundraising and dealing with state and local bureaucracy, the desert location was selected and construction began in 2009 and is now close to complete, at a total cost of more than $200 million.

The flat terrain was ideal for the length of runway needed for horizontal take-offs and landings of spacecraft. The runway is currently 3km (10,000 ft) long, though it will soon be extended by another 600 metres (2,000 ft). It is officially termed Spaceway 16-34, with identification numbers at either end, the red X presumably indicating that it was not operational when the satellite imagery was taken.

Bing’s coverage of the Spaceport is much clearer than Google’s so we’ll use it for the rest of this post.

Virgin Galactic is based in the distinctive horseshoe-shaped building to the west of the runway, named the Gateway to Space. It includes hangar space for multiple SpaceShipTwo spacecrafts which will carry two crew members and six tourists, and the larger White Knight Two planes which carries SS2 aloft until releasing it for rocket flight on a suborbital trajectory which peaks at around 110km (70 miles). Several test flights have already taken place and the first public flight is expected to take place later in 2013.

Spaceport Central – a terminal for visitors to the site¹ – is currently in the planning phase and should be built this year to the west of the Gateway building. Space tourists will undergo three days of briefing and training before their flights, which will last less than three hours – including about 6 minutes of weightlessness – and cost $200,000. Hundreds of people have already put down the required 10% deposit².

Employees of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority work in the shell-like Spaceport Operations Center which houses mission control, general offices and support services.

Further away from the runway are fuel and water storage depots. The fuel area provide secure storage for conventional regular fuels like gasoline and diesel, as well as what are dubbed “exotic propellants” such as liquid oxygen or nitrous oxide. The water tank holds 5 million litres (1.3 million gallons) of water for general use, and as preparation for any emergency situations.

Bing even allows us to see the Spaceport under construction, with its Birds Eye imagery showing a large concrete plant and other facilities that were built on-site due to its remoteness from major cities and the sheer quantity of material needed to pave such a long runway.

Spaceport America also has a vertical-launch facility, a short distance south of the runway. A couple of small huts make up the mission control centre.

To the east is a rail-launch site – we can make out the 14m (45′) rail protruding from its storage building. Small rockets are mounted to the rail which can be inclined as needed for specific launch trajectories.

While to the west are three 10m (30′) launch pads used by experimental aerospace companies, named Tranquility Base in honour of the location of the first manned landing on the moon.

You can learn more about Spaceport America at Wikipedia and the official Spaceport and Virgin Galactic sites. YouTube has a preview tour of the Spaceport and an animation of what a flight on SpaceShipTwo should be like.

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Aircraft, Buildings

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Most of those who built model villages are credited with being philanthropists who were genuinely concerned for the welfare of their workers, moving them from generally grim living conditions to affordable modern cottages in planned communities with shops, schools, recreation and other amenities.

Detractors counter this with the belief that industrialists were only looking to maximize profits, with happy workers generally being more productive. Improving their housing could therefore be seen as an essential contribution to increasing the success of the business. In some cases the creators of model villages were also looking to impose a significant amount of control over their employees, dictating what they could and couldn’t do in these new communities designed to strictly follow their own beliefs.

Salt moved his five woollen mills out of Bradford in order to be able to provide better housing than was available in the city. Around 850 small stone houses line the narrow streets, which were named after Salt’s family, the royal family, and architects who helped plan the town. Saltaire also had a number of almshouses – residences for those too poor to be able to afford their own house.

The town had a hospital, a school, allotments and other civic services. The Saltaire Institute (now Victoria Hall) provided a library, meeting rooms, a gym and other recreational facilities. The iconic stone lions at the corner of the property represent War and Peace.

There was also a dining room where hundreds of mill workers ate affordable meals every day. However, because Salt was a Quaker who believed in temperance, he would not allow pubs to be built in his town.

A friend of Titus Salt, Edward Akroyd, built two other nearby model villages for his mills – Akroydon and Copley. He also added a financing scheme which allowed workers to eventually own their houses rather than just renting them.

Members of the Cadbury chocolate-maker family were also Quakers; they built the model village of Bournville near Birmingham after they had moved the business out of the city to allow for growth. Eventually a dark chocolate bar was named after the village¹.

From the late 19th century onwards, the Cadburys built almshouses, a meeting house and hundreds of cottages. The new community also included spacious parkland and sports and leisure facilities, and like Saltaire, there are no pubs. The Cadburys were also known for paying good wages, starting pension plans and providing medical services to their workers.

Grateful residents built the Bournville Rest House to mark George Cadbury’s silver wedding anniversary. Today the village – now numbering thousands of households – is controlled by a trust independent from Cadbury, but which tries to maintain the historic goals of the community.

Railway Village in Swindon was built in the 1840s to accommodate workers from the Great Western Railway Works, and is one of the best examples of how a model village could really benefit its residents.

Rows of identical houses lined streets named after the country’s major cities which were all newly accessibly by train.

What really transformed it into a successful community were the facilities that were provided – schools, medical centres, laundries, bath houses and swimming pools. The central Mechanics’ Institute (unfortunately now in a state of disrepair) also had the country’s first lending library, a theatre and space for courses on a wide range of topics. As a result, GWR’s workers were some of the best educated in the country. (The Institute in Saltaire was also affectionately known as the Mechanics’ Institute because it was modelled on this one.)

However, the residents of Railway Village liked to have fun too, with three pubs around the Institute, each as identical as the houses that surround them! This blog post gives more history and a sense of what it is like to live in Railway Village today.

From mills, chocolate and railways to … soap! Port Sunlight² was built in the early 20th century by the Lever Brothers, and named after their most popular detergent. It remained exclusively populated by employees until the 1980s.

The 800 houses were designed by many different architects, with wildly varying styles placed next to each other. The community had many of the same facilities as the villages above – parks, schools, a hospital and sports facilities. William Lever was a noted collector of art and built the Lady Lever Art Gallery to show off his collection.

In England, construction of model villages ceased in the 1920s, but was revived in the mid-1990s with the development of Poundbury in Dorset.

With support from Prince Charles (who is well-known for his views on urban planning), Poundbury is intended to be a traditional community which provides all the amenities its residents need, including leisure facilities, parkland and shops scattered amongst the houses. However the goal of encouraging people to focus on their local environment and walk more has not been successful, with a survey revealing that car use was higher here than in the rest of the area.

While the village is certainly attractive it has been criticised for the extensive use of remotely-sourced building materials over local goods. Construction will be ongoing for some years yet, so it could be a while before the community reaches its full potential.

Taking a quick look at some other model villages around England, the earliest example is Trowse Newton³ in Norfolk, which was established in 1805 by the Colman family which owned the mustard company which still bears their name today. The first cottages in Trowse Newton were built with distinctive red brick and originally had mustard-coloured front doors, some of which are still painted the same colour by current residents. The Colman family still owns thousands of acres of land around the village and contributes to its growth, as explained in this article from the Telegraph.

Some model villages were built to house workers in their retirement as a reward for years of service. In the case of Blaise Hamlet near Bristol, nine cottages were built in 1811 for former employees from the country estate of banker John Scandrett Harford. The cottages were designed by John Nash who was more famous for his grand regency buildings in London. They are now owned by the National Trust but occupied privately.

Selworthy in Somerset served a similar purpose. While the village has a long history, many of the whitewashed thatched cottages were built in 1928 for retired workers from Sir Thomas Acland‘s estate.

Snelston in Derbyshire is noted for its cottages which were designed in the middle of the century by Lewis Nockalls Cottingham who had also designed the nearby estate where the villagers worked.

Layout of roads and houses was an important factor in some model villages – see the grid-like roads of the Railway Village, in contrast to the meandering streets around it, which are the norm for England. Creswell, also in Derbyshire, was built to house workers from the nearby coal mines. Built around an oval-shaped green, the houses originally received a supply of coal by a miniature train which ran behind them.

Just a short distance away, New Bolsover occupies three sides of a square and was also a mining community.

Whitely Village in Surrey is octagonal and still serves the same purpose it was built for in 1907 – housing retirees of limited means.

Woodlands in South Yorkshire is more abstract, but the design was intended to maximise the green space behind each of the homes, again built for mine workers.

We’ll end this post with a look at some model villages within a model village!

In 1961 the London Lead Company, owned by Quakers, built a large number of houses around their mines in Nenthead, Cumbria. Hazardous working conditions cost many miners their lives, but outside the pits, life was considerably better than in other mining communities.

The mines closed more than 50 years ago and little remains of the model village, with the current housing mostly newer. One current resident clearly takes the ‘model village’ theme very literally and has built three model villages on their front lawn!⁴

You can learn more about model villages at Wikipedia. We will look at model villages outside England in another future post. If you live in a model village, let us know what life is like there by posting in the comments!

Locations: England / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Abandoned, Buildings, Street Views, World Heritage Sites

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At an elevation of 1,358 m (4,455 ft), the Crowsnest sits on the drainage divide between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and is the southernmost transportation route through the Canadian Rockies. In 1897, the Canadian Pacific Railway was built over the pass and almost immediately thousands of people flooded into the mountain valleys on either side of the pass looking to find their riches through coal. In a 15-year span between 1902 and 1917, over 400 miners died in various catastrophic mine disasters.

The pass forms the border between the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. Sitting on the top of the pass is the appropriately-named Inn on the Border. The border splits the main building in two – the kitchen lies in Alberta, while the dining room lies in British Columbia.

Four separate glacier-fed lakes lie at the top of the pass. Here, the Crowsnest Highway divides Island Lake in half as it enters Alberta.

When the railway came, numerous mining operations large and small were formed, each with its own company town to house its residents. One of those towns was the sleepy village of Frank, Alberta. The village sits to the north of Turtle Mountain, the mountain its residents mined. Topped with weak limestone, the removal of the underlying coal accelerated the slumping of the mountainside that had been occurring for thousands of years.

At 4:10am on 29 April 1903, a 30 million cubic metre (1 billion ft³) block of Turtle Mountain collapsed, sending a plume of rock and mud racing toward Frank at a speed of about 70 km/h (120 mph), wiping out the eastern portion of the town and burying between 70 and 90 people in their sleep. The exact number of dead remains unknown as only 12 bodies were ever recovered; the rest still lay somewhere in the rubble.

More than a century later, the scar of the Frank Slide defines Turtle Mountain, and limestone boulders still cover thousands of acres of the valley. The railway and highway were rebuilt through the middle of the debris, and eventually the Frank Slide became one of Alberta’s major tourist attractions. Today, more than 100,000 visitors per year visit the slide.

Another unlikely attraction on the Albertan side is this old cafe in the hamlet of Bellevue. In 1920, a group of miners got word that the wealthy bootlegger Emilio Picariello would be aboard a train coming through the pass and decided to rob the train. Picariello was nowhere to be found, but the miners made off with passengers’ money nevertheless. Five days later, two of the miners were spotted inside the Bellevue Cafe by police, and a shootout erupted. One of the miners and two constables were killed. The other miner slipped away wounded and escaped into the rubble of the Frank Slide a few minutes to the west, only to be captured four days later in a nearby town.

While coal mining on the Albertan side of the pass ended decades ago, the coal operations at Elkford and Sparwood, British Columbia are some of the largest on the planet, covering hundreds of square kilometres.

Sparwood, a town of 4,200 people, is barely visible in the centre-left of the following image, dwarfed by the massive mine to the east.

Street View can’t take you right inside the mines (yet), it does drive right up to the entrance of the big mine at Elkford, where we see a massive wash plant and tailings pile.

Sparwood’s largest tourist attraction is the Terex Titan, which sits in its own park at the entrance to town. Built for hauling up to 320 tonnes of coal, it was the largest truck in the world when it was built in 1973, weighing 231,100 kg (509,500 lbs) and standing 6.88 m (22 ft 7 in) high.¹

At the west end of the Crowsnest corridor is the city of Fernie. Destroyed by fire five times between 1902 and 1908, Fernie’s central business district was rebuilt the fifth time using brick and stone. Today, the buildings remain almost exactly as they were in 1908.

Fernie is also home to Fernie Alpine Resort, which receives some of the largest snowfalls of any ski resort in North America. The resort is known for its deep powder and panoramic vistas. Best of all, the entire resort is now available in Google Street View, so you can sit back at your computer and take it all in – perhaps while enjoying a nice Currie Bowl.

Locations: Alberta, British Columbia / Categories: Buildings, Natural Landmarks, Other Vehicles, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views

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Standing 22m (72ft) tall, this steel sculpture – like most of the others in the series – has a motorised arm which makes a slow hammering motion every 77 seconds (video). In 2008 it was moved a few metres closer to the street to “interact more fully with the urban landscape”.

A close-up of the feetemphasises the enormous scale of the sculpture – people barely reach its ankles!

The Hammering Man sculptures are meant to represent all workers, manual labourers and craftspeople around the world. Typically, the arm movement is switched off at night and on national days intended to honour workers, such as Labor Day in the US.

The Hammering Man in Frankfurt (featured in our original post) is just one metre shorter than the one in Seoul.

For idle amusement, you can create your own ‘stop motion animation’ of the hammering motion, by starting here, where the hand is raised, and clicking forward (actually backwards against traffic) – the arm was falling as the Street View car drove away from the sculpture!

Elsewhere in Frankfurt there is an unauthorised – and much smaller – copy of the Hammering Man. It was created by a community group to protest a 1993 neo-nazi arson attack. The one visible on Street View is the second version – the original was damaged and removed in 2007.

In Seattle, the 14m (48ft) Hammering Man stands outside the city’s art museum and is mirrored by the crossing signal in front of it.

We’re also able to get an entirely different perspective. At first glance, I thought the statue had been completely removed – but in fact it just highlights how two-dimensional the sculptures are.

In Switzerland, the Hammering Man in Basel is – perhaps appropriately – surrounded by construction work. Again he ‘disappears’ when seen from a different angle, though in this case he’s revealed by his reflection!

In Los Angeles, a Hammering Man Sculpture was installed in 1988 in a courtyard near the intersection of Ninth and Main. It can just be glimpsed on Street View.

A couple of hours to the south, the Hammering Man in La Jolla has one of the most scenic locations, surrounded by palm trees and with a view of the Pacific Ocean.

There are also Hammering Man sculptures inside a number of art galleries and private buildings in cities around the world¹. However, Borofsky has created many other public artworks, often with representations of the human form. Another series is called Walking to the Sky, which has a number of figures walking up a 30m (100ft) inclined pole.

The first Walking to the Sky sculpture was installed outside the Rockefeller Center in New York in 2004 then moved a year later to the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, where we can just see a portion of it from the road outside the garden (which also apparently houses a Hammering Man).

Walking to the Sky was inspired by stories Borofsky’s father recounted when he was a child, in which people visited a giant in the sky. It is intended to be “a celebration of the human potential for discovering who we are and where we need to go.”

A copy of the sculpture can be found at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where Borofsky studied Fine Arts. Its 2006 installation was received with some controversy by the student body who described it as “ugly and cumbersome” and “a huge phallus”. Eventually the original was found to be structurally unstable so a second version had to be, er… erected.

Another copy of Walking to the Sky is installed outside a commercial building in Seoul.

To wrap up, here are all the remaining Borofsky artworks that I was able to find on Google Maps!

Male/Female – a series of different sculptures which include a 9m (30ft) sculpture in Biedefeld, Germany…

… a 16m (52ft) structure in Baltimore…

… and a wire-frame structure in Offenburg, Germany, which is just about visible on the satellite image.

Molecule Man (also featured in our original post) – a 30m (100ft) sculpture which stands in the Spree River in Berlin and outside an arena and convention centre in Council Bluffs, Iowa (and in the West Yorkshire Sculpture Park, though it’s not clearly visible).

Walking Man in Munich.

Human Structures on Mission Street in San Francisco.

And finally, showing a different side of his work, Ballerina Clown in Venice, California. A cross between a classical dancer and a street performer which Borofsky apparently feels is right at home with the mix of personalities found on the nearby boardwalk.

If this tour has inspired you to learn more about his work, you can read more about Jonathan Borofsky on Wikipedia, or at his own site.

Locations: California, Germany, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Korea, Switzerland, Texas, Washington / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Street Views, Structures

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Located about 20km south-east of the city itself, and only a kilometre or so from the border with Georgia, Sochi Olympic Park will include six purpose-built venues and a plaza for medal presentations. Shown under construction on Google’s current satellite imagery, the venues should all now be complete and ready for test events taking place this year.

The largest venue is the 40,000 seat Fisht Stadium which will host the opening and closing ceremonies. Named for a nearby mountain, the building will later be converted to a football stadium for use during the 2018 World Cup.

The open stadium affords spectators spectacular views of the Black Sea in one direction and the Krasnaya Polyana mountains in the other – a roof is not needed because of the mild winters in the city. It is claimed that Sochi will be the warmest city ever to hold the Winter Olympics (it’s roughly the same latitude as Nice in the south of France!), with average February temperatures in the city well above freezing, and rain far more common than snow.

Working clockwise around the plaza from the stadium, we next come to the Shayba Arena and Bolshoy Ice Dome – ice hockey arenas respectively holding 7,000 and 12,000 spectators. While the Bolshoy (major) Ice Dome is a permanent facility, the Shayba arena is only a temporary structure and will be moved elsewhere after the Games. Shayba apparently means hockey puck, though the building is clearly not made of black rubber, and nor is it 76mm in diameter.

The smallest venue in the Olympic Park is the Ice Cube Curling Centre with room for 3,000 fans of a sport which involves sliding rocks around. Sadly, the building was apparently named for its squareish shape and indoor ice surface, rather than honouring the famous NWA rapper.

Continuing around, we reach the 8,000 seat Adler Arena Skating Centre, where the long-track speed-skating events will take place.

Finally, the Iceberg Skating Palace – a 12,000 seat building which will host figure-skating and short-track speed-skating competitions (though disappointingly not at the same time). Apparently named for its gleaming glass windows and natural form, and not because it is likely to sink passing steam ships.

A Formula 1 circuit is being constructed around the site in conjunction with the Olympic venues, with the first Grand Prix scheduled for a few months after the Games. Though in a battle of sports mega-egos, it has been revealed that Jacques Rogge and the IOC have even more clout than Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA, because the debut race will be delayed a year if there is any risk of track construction interfering with the Olympics.

To the west of the Olympic Park, the Athletes village will occupy a stretch of land along the Black Sea shoreline, and a triangular-shaped area inland. Construction had only just begun when this imagery was captured. The media centre will be in this area as well.

The ‘mountain cluster’ of venues is about 50km inland from Sochi. Games organizers are hoping that winter here is more reliable than in the city, although the current winter has been much milder and less snowy than normal. The CBC has this startling story that piles of artificial snow will be stockpiled through the rest of this winter, then covered with thermal blankets, with the expectation that 60-70% of it will survive the summer and be available to line the slopes early next winter.

Alpine ski and snowboard events will take place at the Rosa Khutor Resort, with freestyle competition being held in the ‘extreme’ part of the venue with seating for 8,000. The village for mountain athletes will be located near this resort as well.

With all the other creative venue names, the best they could come up with for the nordic skiing venue was the Biathlon and Ski Complex, which is a short distance to the north of Rosa Khutor. There will be seats for almost 10,000 spectators.

You’ll have to use your imagination for the final two venues which are only shown in the very early stages of construction. A pair of soaring ski jump towers will occupy this barren patch of ground destined to be the RusSki Gorki Jumping Centre.

Finally you can follow the sinuous course of the bobsleigh/skeleton/luge track at the Sliding Centre Sanki, though only parts of the structure are in place. This is the site of just one of a number of controversial issues surrounding the games – the sliding track is cut through sensitive forest home to an endangered species of bear, though it’s not clear if the organizers are more concerned about impact of human activity on the bears, or if the bears could be a threat to spectators and athletes. The Guardian has a summary of other controversies, claiming the construction process “to be one of the most corrupt projects in Russia’s history”.

Hopefully Google will treat us to updated imagery before the Games, and we’ll be able to make a more detailed post. For now, you can learn more about the Sochi Winter Olympics at the official site, or at Wikipedia. The CBC has a short video and blog reviewing the venues, while the BBC also has a one-year preview of the Games.

Locations: Russia / Categories: Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Structures

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