Tsingy de Bemaraha
Tsingy de Bemaraha is a national park in Madagascar. The Tsingys are karstic plateaus in which groundwater has undercut the elevated uplands, and has gouged caverns and fissures into the limestone.
Shagreen
Shagreen is a type of leather or rawhide consisting of rough untanned skin, formerly made from a horse's back or that of an onager (wild ass), and typically dyed green. Shagreen is now commonly made of the skins of sharks and rays.
Hreinn Fridfinnsson
In 1972, Hreinn Fridfinnsson created gates for the South Wind at a lonely spot on the southern coast of Iceland. He constructed them in such a manner that the South Wind could open the leaves of the gates. On one rainy day, when he had just finished constructing the gates and was taking a photograph of them, the wind blew from the north; the leaves remained closed and the artist never again returned to that place.
Barreleye
These fish are named because of their barrel-shaped, which are generally directed upwards to detect the silhouettes of available prey. Their heads are also transparent.
Gerald and Sara Murphy
Gerald and Sara Murphywere wealthy, expatriate Americans who moved to the French Riviera in the early 20th century and who, with their generous hospitality and flair for parties, created a vibrant social circle, particularly in the 1920s, that included a great number of artists and writers of the Lost Generation.
Villa Mairea
Villa Mairea is a villa, guest-house, and rural retreat designed and built by the Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto.
Travelling menagerie
These days a travelling menagerie is so far removed from the reality of our daily lives that it barely seems possible such a thing existed at all. But in the 18th and 19th centuries the only chance people who lived in villages and most towns ever had of seeing live wild animals was when a travelling menagerie visited their area. An event that invariably caused great excitement.
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky was a patient poet. His major work was the long poem "A" - he never referred to it without the quotation marks - which he began in 1927 and was to work on for the rest of his life, albeit with an eight-year hiatus between 1940 and 1948. The poem was divided into 24 sections, reflecting the hours of the day. The first eleven sections contain a lot of overtly political passages but interweave them with formal concerns and models that range from medieval Italian canzone through sonnets to free verse and the music of Bach. Especially the sections of "A" written shortly before World War II are political: Section 10 for example, published in 1940, is an intense and horrifying response to the fall of France. The tone of the poem changes for good with Section 12, which is longer than the first eleven sections combined. Zukofsky introduces material from his family life and celebrates his love for his wife Celia and his son Paul. From here on "A" interweaves the political, historical and personal in more or less equal measure. The extensive use of music in this work reflects the importance of Zukofsky's collaborations with his wife and son, both professional musicians. "A" grew frequently difficult and even eccentric (section 16 is only four words long). The complete poem, 826 pages long, beginning with the word "A" and ending with "Zion", was published in 1978.
Villa Necchi Campiglio
Villa Necchi provides an oasis of calm in the centre of Milan. Surrounded by a beautiful garden with swimming pool and tennis court, the villa is an unexpected find an otherwise hectic city.
Enzo Mari
Enzo Mari was an Italian designer.