Fabulous Marquees and Their Many Uses

When it comes to gorgeous tents, it's what's inside and outside that counts. A marquee will be judged for how it looks on the outside, which is why so many people opt for bright colours and cool shapes, but it will also be judged for what is inside it. Even though the interior decor is not a part of the marquee itself, it becomes associated with it. From flower and table arrangements to fire places and goldfish ponds, there are many ways to make your marquee the talk of the town.

1. Kata tents:

Kata are tipi style tents that were pioneered by the Sami people of Lapland. Papakata is a tent company that specialise in kata marquees. They can do dance floors, fires and benches; they also do chill out kungs and more. Tipi tents are quite interesting to look at from the outside and can easily accommodate formal decor as well as rustic.

2. Khan Shatyr:

Khan Shatyr is located in Astana, Kazakhstan and is the largest tent in the world. It is a Norman Foster designed structure, which in addition to its size has also received attention for its impressive green features- from plentiful natural day lighting to interior gardens and living systems. The tent is 150 metres tall; it has a 200 metre radius and 100,000 square metres contained within the translucent canopy.

3. Movable palaces:

Since the Middle Ages, European travellers have remarked on the great tent cities often seen in Muslim lands. Amongst the cities, there were often, what came to be called 'movable palaces', that housed royalty and their entourages. They were also used for big celebrations and often included religious temples such as mosques. But it wasn't just their great size that was impressive; it was the textiles that they were made of and the physical comfort that they provided.

4. Performance marquees:

Marquees are often used to stage theatrical and musical performances. Of course all of the lights, sound equipment, seating and bathrooms need to be transported and reinstalled every time the production moves, but it is ideal for certain types of performances. Cirque du Soleil for instance, often perform out of marquees. Their signature marquee has blue and yellow swirls on the outside.

No matter what style of marquee you choose, you can make it your own thanks to its customisable features and impermanence. So no matter what you have planned to take place inside, it will surely be well suited and beautiful.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tamara_Jacobs

Tabletop Water Fountains Bring Tranquility to the Workplace

For many, work can be very stressful. Unfortunately, most of us spend a considerable amount of our lives at the workplace. On the positive side, we can all find ways to reduce the amount of stress we experience at our jobs. Whether it's changing our attitude or outlook on life, eating a healthier diet, improving relationships with coworkers, or adding a better physical atmosphere to our workplace, steps can be taken to ensure a more relaxing working environment. Tabletop water fountains, for instance, are a unique way to provide a little more serenity to a workplace.

Large outdoor water features draw people from all walks of life to them. Whether as a place to sit while eating lunch, to share in conversation, to read a book, to cool off, or just to sit by and unwind, fountains have been a source of inspiration, serenity, and self improvement for thousands of years.

Initially built purely for functional purposes, for drinking water and bathing, fountains quickly became a source of decoration for many cultures around the world. The calming effect of water through touch, sight, and sound has been a natural draw for humans throughout history.

Over time, dramatic outdoor water fountains were designed for indoor use in the homes of the wealthy. These days, indoor water fountains have been fashioned for those of all income levels. Not only can they be used in the home, innovative tabletop water fountains can now be placed on a desk to provide that extra bit of serenity needed in the workplace. The modern-day versatility of fountains allows an increasing number of people to enjoy the calm atmosphere that flowing water provides.

Bringing the benefits that a fountain offers into the workplace allows for a touch of nature otherwise inaccessible in stale, indoor environments. The sound of flowing water can also help drown out other less desirable noises, including that of machines and the constant drone of computers.

The natural sound of flowing water relaxes the senses. This has the capability of increasing work productivity while, at the same time, reducing anxiety and stress. In the end, the benefits of an indoor tabletop water fountain may result in less fatigue and irritability resulting in improved overall health. While a tabletop water fountain is just one addition one might add to the workplace, it is a great way to begin providing workers with a more relaxed, calm atmosphere.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Polly_Godwin

About Corncribs and the Unpainted Aristocracy: Contemporary Architecture in North Carolina

It is possible to discuss the current condition of architecture in North Carolina by referring to a geologic event that happened between 150 and 200 million years ago: a great geologic uplift, known as the Cape Fear Arch, pushed what is now North Carolina upwards several hundred feet. The arch also raised the sea floor, which had once been joined with South America, and the waves produced by this change created the Outer Banks, a chain of barrier islands that are farther offshore than in any other part of the Atlantic Seaboard. As a result, North Carolina has shallow rivers and only one major harbor at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, which is made treacherous by offshore shoals. Shifting river patterns caused by the Cape Fear Arch, which continues to rise, remove topsoil thus giving North Carolina poorer soils than in surrounding regions. The lack of rivers for transport, inaccessible harbors and poor soils meant that early settlements in North Carolina were modest. For much of its history, North Carolina was a land of small landowners, its population scattered across a vast landscape.

Though we have become the 10th largest state in the nation, our dispersed settlement pattern persists to this day. And that dispersal has created among North Carolinians a spirit of independence that is individualistic, self-sufficient, resourceful, and proud. If we have less wealth, we have less pretense. A long history of dwelling apart can also engender a people who are watchful of their neighbors, self-righteous, and at times dour. I believe that all these qualities can be found in the architecture of North Carolina, not only in the past but also in the present.

Today an urban crescent nearly 200 miles long straddles the Cape Fear Arch along Interstate 85, from Charlotte to Raleigh, an urban banana-like farm where, as every proud Carolinian will tell you, there is chardonnay on every table, NPR in every car, and enough digital progress to make, if not a Silicon Valley, a silicon Piedmont. Parallel to this strip, which is about eight miles wide, there lies an older North Carolina, a quieter place where thousands of small frame houses, vegetable gardens and barns rest in the countryside. In these places it is possible to see an architecture of plain living made by hard-working people not opposed to wealth but not happy with opulence either. I believe there is a rare beauty here, portrayed in the paintings of Sarah Blakeslee, Francis Speight, Maud Gatewood, and Gregory Ivy, and in the photographs of Bayard Wooten.

The diversity of plant and animal life in North Carolina is another legacy of the Cape Fear Arch. Six fully distinct ecological zones span the state, from the sub-tropics of the coast to the Proto-Canadian climate of the highest mountains east of the Mississippi. Today our architecture trends towards sameness across this tapestry of plants and climate, but it was not always so. To a degree that seems remarkable now, the early settlement pattern of North Carolina tells a human story of ordinary buildings close to the land, as varied as the mountain tops and coastal plains on which they stand.

The first buildings in North Carolina were sustainable to their roots: built of local materials, embedded in the landscape, oriented towards the sun and breeze. They were made by Native Americans, not Europeans, in the eastern part of our state. In 1585 English explorer and artist John White documented them in drawings that depict a native people at rest in nature. For over three hundred years this pattern of local adaptation would persist across the state.

In the mountains, for example, farmers built their houses on wind-sheltered slopes facing south, next to a spring or a creek. They planted pole beans and morning glories to shade their porches in summer. Their houses were raised on stone piers to level the slope and to allow hillside water to drain underneath. The crops and the animals they raised varied from mountain valley to river bottom, according to how steep the land was and how the sun came over the mountain ridge. Their barns varied from one valley to the next for the same reasons.

Strewn across the Piedmont hills of North Carolina are flue-cured tobacco barns, built to dry what was, for over two hundred years, the state's dominant cash crop. Sixteen to twenty-four feet square and usually the same height, they were sized to fit racks of tobacco leaves hung inside to dry in heat that could reach 180°F. Capped with a low-pitched gable roof, these humble barns remind me of Greek temples. Legions of them populate the landscape, yet no two are the same because farmers modified each standard barn with sheds to suit the micro-climate of his land. To know where to build a shed onto his tobacco barn, the farmer had to know where the sun rose and set, where the good winds came from, where the bad weather came from and when it came. He designed his house just as carefully because the lives of his children depended on his knowledge. The philosopher Wendell Berry has written that in such attention to place lies the hope of the world. Ordinary people who had no idea they were architects designed and built these extraordinary barns and farmhouses across North Carolina. Their builders are anonymous, yet they embody the wisdom of successive generations.

An equally extraordinary group of rustic cottages at Nags Head on the Outer Banks were also built on instinct for place -- not for farming, but for summers at the beach. The Nags Head cottages date from the 1910-1940 era, and for nearly one hundred years have been the first things hurricanes struck coming in from the Atlantic. Though made of wood framing, their builders made them sturdy enough to resist danger, yet light enough to welcome sun and breeze, elevating each cottage on wooden stilts to avoid floods and provide views of the ocean. Porches on their east and south sides guaranteed a dry porch in any weather, but there were no porches on the north side where bad weather hits the coast. Clad in juniper shingles that have weathered since they were built, the Nags Head cottages were referred to by former News & Observer editor Jonathan Daniels as the "unpainted aristocracy." Today they seem as native to their place as the sand dunes.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_Harmon

Process of Drafting Design and Its Importance

Drafting design is not a process new to the designing industry but it has been in use from centuries where people expressed their ideas and thoughts through drawings and illustrations. It is the process of bringing imaginations and dreams into reality in the form of various pictures and designs. Since ancient times the process has not changed and the only difference has been brought to the tools and methods of drafting. Nowadays, the technique is being adopted by large number of industries who seek to offer their customers with quality and perfection in their products. It is an organized and secure way of documenting various ideas and designs to use them for various purposes. It helps the designers to know that how their ultimate outcome should look like.

The process of drafting design, as we know today is elaborated and widely used for many purposes and a large number of industries. These industries involve electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and construction industry. Nowadays, the process of drafting has been stretched to the computer systems in the form of CAD or computer aided designs. The process of drafting building designs with the implementation of CAD theory in it is known as architectural CAD drafting. CAD designs provide many advantages over the conventional drafting on papers. The structures obtained on computer software appear in a dimensional view that helps to examine, edit, and design them in a detailed manner in minimum time. These designs ensure that no flaws or mistakes are left in the final product and it is obtained as desired. Architects benefit the most through CAD designs as these designs facilitate the simpler version of their complicated and time-consuming task of designing on papers. In addition, the introduction of computers in the process has also strengthened the communication and feedbacks between architects and project engineers.

Due to these enormous advantages provided by the CAD drafting process, more and more entrepreneurs are looking forward to adopt it in their designing methodologies. However, to strike perfection and benefit the most from CAD it is essential that the CAD drafting services are selected after due consideration. Certain things have to be kept in mind to ensure that the CAD services are handed over to the most suitable and reliable firm. The past records and performances of the outsourcing firm should be checked to ensure that the firm is capable of meeting the requirements. Cost efficiency is also essential to be kept in mind for the purpose.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rocky_Mishra