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  <channel><title>BEEN-SEEN.COM : TRAVEL by DESIGN</title>
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	<description>A difference where and how we travel.</description>
	<language>en-au</language>
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	<copyright>Copyright 2008 Been-Seen</copyright>
	<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jul 2008 2:39:48 PM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Heliotrop
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		Imagine you lived in a rotating house that gathered energy from the sun as it turned. It&apos;s what we do as a planet, so it makes sense to do it with our homes too. Architect Rolf Disch has built the Heliotrop (from the Greek for &apos;turned towards the sun&apos;) on this very&nbsp;principle.


The Heliotrop is a&nbsp;rotating solar building in Freiburg-Merzhausen, Germany, that houses a luxury home (Disch&apos;s since 1994) as well as&nbsp;office space. In order to make the most of the sun&apos;s power, the house turns on its central axle.&nbsp;In other words, you can move it to face the optimum direction for generating solar power. Windows on one side are triple glazed to capture heat during the winter. On&nbsp;the other side, they are insulated to keep it away in summer. On top of the house&nbsp;are solar vacuum tubes for heating water.&nbsp;In this way, the house actually produces more energy than it needs.
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Rolf Disch&apos;s goals are &apos;to save energy, to make use of solar power and thereby imp...
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		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10777</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10777</guid>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Puyo
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		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		Last October at the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda unveiled Puyo. This little bubble car is another futuristic concept that threatens to blow&nbsp;gas guzzlers&nbsp;out of the water - or at least off our streets.


Apparently the word &apos;Puyo&apos; is&nbsp;Japanese onomatopoeia for the&nbsp;sensation of touching the vehicle&apos;s soft body - though I&apos;m not entirely sure what that means. The car itself was designed to bring together clean, safe and fun functionality in a minimalist, environmentally-friendly way.&nbsp;

On the outside it&apos;s a seamless, curvy box that&apos;s supposed to remind you of a favorite pet.&nbsp;It has a soft gel body and is luminescent to refle...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10768</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10768</guid>
		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Hatari!
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		In 1960, director Howard Hawks arrived in Tanganyika, now Tanzania, with actors John Wayne, Red Buttons, Hardy Kr&uuml;ger and Elsa Martinelli in tow. They were there to shoot action scenes for his movie Hatari! (meaning &apos;danger&apos; in Swahili). They filmed on location at the Arusha&nbsp;and Serengeti&nbsp;national parks, at Mount Meru and in the town of Arusha, and created one of the most visually interesting African movies of all time.


Hatari!&nbsp;tells the story of a Western expat animal capture team, headed up by John Wayne, collecting animals for the world&apos;s zoos. Much of the movie shows them racing across the open savannah around Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater, chasing rhinos, giraffes and zebras. The scenery is breathtaking.

The movie has been the subject of much praise for its cinematography, by Russell Harlan, including an Oscar nomination in 1962. Rather astonishingly, according to Howard Hawks, all of the hunting scenes were filmed using the actors, and not stunt doubles, animal handlers&nbsp;or professional hunters. When, at one point,&nbsp;a rhino escapes, it&apos;s the actors themselves who have to recapture it. Hawks kept this scene in for its realism.

The movie has been praised for&nbsp;this authenticity - capturing Tanganyika as it was, the animal pursuits as they really were, and getting up close to the wildlife&nbsp;without using special effects. (Interestingly, the same animals that were filmed in Africa were captured&nbsp;and flown in a DC6 across Africa to Hollywood for scenes finished there.)

The film ends with three baby elephants marching through a small local town. This is Arush...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10780</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10780</guid>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Live like a king
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		In China these days it seems there is&nbsp;beautiful design springing up all over the place, and not just for the high-profile summer Olympics. If Kayumanis Nanjing is representative of what&apos;s going on there, we&apos;re impressed.


Kayumanis Nanjing is a&nbsp;private villa retreat located on a natural hot spring in the Tangshan Mountains, once reserved for Chinese royalty. The hotel is stark and employs a lot of hard lines, but that doesn&apos;t mean it isn&apos;t luxurious.

Far from it. There are&nbsp;21&nbsp;spacious villas, decorated in a mix of European, Chinese, Peranakan, Javanese, Tibetan and Balinese styles, and surrounded in willow trees. Each has a flagstoned courtyard with a private&nbsp;pool and outside bath.

Kayumanis may be an Indonesian hotel group, but&nbsp;...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10675</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10675</guid>
		<pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Abandoned skyscraper
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		The picture above is of Pyongyang in North Korea. Look to the top right corner and you&apos;ll see a skyscraper not unlike San Francisco&apos;s Transamerica Pyramid. The Ryugyong Hotel, as it is known, is not quite as prosperous as its American counterpart. In fact, it has been deserted since it was built - way back in 1992.


All 105 glorious floors of it. When it was due to open in 1989, it would have been the world&apos;s tallest hotel and one of the world&apos;s highest skyscrapers.

It cost $750 million to build, but building came to a halt when the money ran out and logistical problems set in.

So its 3,000 rooms remain unoccupied and its seven revolving retaurants have never turned. What will become of it is completely unclear, though there is talk of the North Korean government starting another tower. Intriguing... RM

Images: Ryugyong Hotel...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10779</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10779</guid>
		<pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Remembering Las Islas Cíes
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		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		On the Sunday beaches of the Islas C&iacute;es our trip to Galicia found its playful rhythm. The islands&apos; orchestration of sun, sand and sea carried us through the next few days on the mainland like a smooth, subtle bassline we couldn&apos;t shake. Our shoulders relaxed. The skin opened like a flower towards the light. And lungs sifted the salty perfume of the Atlantic. 
No special feeling on the islands - the C&iacute;es are this way -- but for us, brilliantly banal. Just a deep sigh away from Vigo -- a mere 45...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10782</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10782</guid>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Aeolian Ride
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		It&apos;s like the Tour de France with a sense of humor. Next time you see a bunch of cyclists drifting past you in inflatable white jackets, remember this article. They&apos;re taking part in an Aeolian Ride. A what? &apos;Aeolian&apos; means being caused by wind, and &apos;Ride&apos; means, well, ride.


Organized by Jessica Findley, Aeolian Rides are whimsical adventures that promote a love of bikes and silliness - and are made up of 52 riders in wind-inflated white nylon suits. They&apos;ve been taking place for four years now , and so far, they&apos;ve hit New York, San Francisco, Cape Town, LA, Melbourne and Halifax.

Jessica is considering locations for future rides, so get in touch if you&apos;d like one i...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10776</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10776</guid>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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	<item>
		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Heavens above
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		We have a telescope that&apos;s never been used. As far as I&apos;m concerned, it&apos;s too fiddly, and setting it up just so I can see microscopic dots that are supposed to be planets doesn&apos;t seem all that worth it. Let&apos;s face it, in this age of satellites and CGI, we&apos;re spoilt. That&apos;s why Microsoft&apos;s WorldWide Telescope sounds really cool.


Using this free download, you can watch swirling galaxies, nebulae and star-bursts&nbsp;on your computer. The web-based&nbsp;tool pulls together images from ground-based telescopes all over the world, and some from space - including&nbsp;the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes,&nbsp;and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

You can locate planets in the night sky, take a guided tour by an experienced astronomer (like University of Chicago cosmologist Mike Gladders who takes you two billion years into the past to see a gravitational lens bending the light fro...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10734</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10734</guid>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Pivo 2
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		Talk about a cute concept car. The Nissan Pivo 2 almost makes Wall-E look dull - almost... This environmentally-friendly electric urban commuter vehicle has a built-in robotic interface and rotates 360 degrees on its axis. By getting rid of traditional mechanical linkages like shafts and hydraulic cylinders and using drive by wire electrical technology instead, it&apos;s infinitely more flexible than most cars we&apos;re used to.


In addition to looking adorable and fitting into small spaces, it also does what so many electric cars seem incapable of doing - sits three. If this isn&apos;t the car of the future, I&apos;ll be so disappointed. RM

Images: Nissan...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10769</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10769</guid>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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		<title>
		<![CDATA[
		Le Dupleix
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		</title>
		<description>
		<![CDATA[
		There&apos;s something magical about historical hotels - the sense that many people have passed through the same walls as you and even slept in the same beds. In&nbsp;the French quarter (Ville Blanche) of the Indian city of Pondicherry, you&apos;ll find Le Dupleix, a converted 18th-century mayoral mansion, a hotel steeped in the region&apos;s history.

&nbsp;
Enter the elegant white building through an ancient wooden gate, and inside you&apos;ll find a hotel that blends history with sleek modern renovation.

It took four years to renovate the premises, which the architects did using 18th-century methods such as&nbsp;a traditional lime plaster called Chettinad Egg Plaster (covering the walls in thin layers of egg white, powdered sea shell...
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		</description>
		<link>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10721</link>
		<guid>http://www.been-seen.com/article.cfm?id=10721</guid>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:00:00 AM EDT</pubDate>
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