Awesome Cities

They look like run-down European tenements, but Berlin artist EVOL’s buildings are Lilliputian in size: they’re power and utility boxes that are meticulously spray painted with stencils.

This Making of Coruscant video for Star Wars: The Old Republic has us excited: the devs discuss never before seen areas and emulating the sheer scale of the planet-spanning city.

Kobe’s 59 foot tall Gigantor is finished; costing $1.5 million and weighing 50 tons, it’s Japan’s way of saying “In your face!” to the 1995 quake as it also serves as the city’s guardian angel.

We Yanks are still smarting over Chicago’s loss, but this upbeat 2016 Olympics video for Rio De Janeiro softens the blow; we love the Windy City, but check out those Brazilian beaches!

Mansion too pricy? Phiippe Tournaire’s handmade 18k gold/platinum Villa de Reve rings aren’t cheap, but they put the whole world on your finger; he uses Google Earth to design them.

Hong Kong gets walloped by four successive rain walls between 7 am and 9 pm from June 2009’s Typhoon Nangka in this beautiful time-lapse video; it was shot on a Canon 50D.

Sure to whip virtual voyeurs into a frenzy, Georgia Tech is taking Google Earth real-time; they’ve incorporated real-world imagery including traffic, football games and even clouds.

It looks straight out of The Matrix, but Brian Novello’s Flood Harnessing Housing is benign: these modular and deployable communities harness waterway currents for energy.

Brilliantly using negative space, this Journey to the City of No Horizon t-shirt also took 3rd place in Design By Humans’ 10K contest; we like the way it “flows” into a pair of jeans.

Shot by Sam Javanrouh with a Canon 5D Mark II, this 347 frame video of a Toronto lightning storm shows that it can strike twice–multiple times for the CN Tower in the middle.

City builders are more than the sum of their parts, but based on this latest Cities XL Build Your Dreams trailer we’re liking those parts; it arrives 10/8 in Europe, with no US date announced.

PSFK’s Snapshot Brooklyn is a 60-page book that serves as a quirky insider’s guide to NYC’s most populous borough, from canoe tours through factory ruins to underground supper clubs.

Walls and floors are usually the last things we ogle, but Lea Ceramiche’s City Tiles are ideal for urban bachelor pads; they’re ceramic tiles with anthracite, steel and bronze finishes.

We liked the navigable map of Shanghai, but we were really waiting for a Hong Kong Pixel Map; the island of Triad mafias, colonial influences and urban vinyl is a feast for the eyes.

If you liked the Procedural City we demoed previously, Procedural System Structure blows it out of the water: in English, it not only generates cities on the fly but their interiors, too.

The tilt shift thing has be done to death, but this Tokyo video’s blend of time lapse gives the megalopolis a miniaturized feel; anybody else getting the urge to go Godzilla on it?

School’s out and summer is upon us, which means hordes of tourists; for those who prefer to be left alone, Reason Clothing’s Go Love Your Own City is a polite way of saying GTFO.

We’ve seen plenty of time-lapse videos, but Static: Pulse is one of our favorites, if only for its subject: shot on Canon 350D and 5Ds, Tokyo comes to life in this video set to “Edge to Life.”

LEGO’s Architecture Series site still says “coming soon”, but they’ve signed up with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for six buildings including Falling Water and the Guggenheim.

Although software engineer Shamus Young’s Procedural City above looks simple, what makes it special is that it is generated on the fly using algorithms with no textures or models.

Taken high above Manhattan locations such as Times Square and Central Park, this panoramic Aerial NYC Tour is both breathtaking and relaxing thanks to chill music by Solid Beats.

Made with nearly indestructible (and recyclable) Tyvek, this slim NYC Subway Map Mighty Wallet is ideal for a night on the town, but can easily expand if you’re loaded with Benjamins.

First we saw Manhattan 400 years ago, and now it’s horizonless: this poster of Manhattan reminds us of Halo, but it’s actually a curved 3D projection that allows us to see over obstacles.