While Josh gets nomadic on our asses (read: jet-sets) to Taiwan to see that part of the world in person, the rest of us are doing the best we can to see the sights the old-fashioned ‘internet way.’ Today I’d like to give a nod to the sustainable, Chinese Songjiang Hotel. It looks like something out of a Star Wars movie, or maybe off of an episode of “When the Earth Melts into a Molten Puddle of Shit and We Move to Another Planet,” but supposedly it’s going to become a reality on our own planet Earth. Sci-fi aesthetics aside, this Atkins designed hotel will be built in a huge quarry in the Songjiang District near Shanghai by (reportedly) 2009 (FYI: Atkins also designed Tianjin’s Pile of Boxes and Bahrain’s World Trade Center). The quarry setting allows for the incorporation of a wealth of Green features like reuse of an already exploited site, geothermal energy for electricity and heat, a green roof, and the shelter and natural cooling properties of the quarry itself; oh, and lest we forget… bungee jumping!

Via Inhabitat