BURNING MAN 2013!

This year, Burning Man brought 60,000 to the harsh deserts of Black Rock City near Reno for a week long experiment in art, music, self-expression and living. Here are some scenes from around the playa at Burning Man 2013. 

Major art includes BELIEVE, The Man, French CORE: Stairway to Heaven, Minnesota CORE: The Year the Playa Stood Still, New Orleans CORE: Altar of the Wetlands: Recreating Nature in a Post-Industrial Society, Fractal Planet, The Janky Barge, Truth is Beauty, Coyote, East Bay CORE: First Home, NYC CORE: Star of the City, Like4Real, The Temple of Whollyness, Photo Chapel. 

Soundtrack: Elixir by Fingers in the Noise. https://soundcloud.com/fitn

Be sure to watch in HD at full screen for maximum awesomeness! For Burning Man 2012 check our previous post here!

FOR SALE: HOT PROPERTIES!

A man's home is his castle, and whether that castle is a penthouse in the city or an escape in the country, its style and appointment speak volumes about its owner. Sure, you have the right wardrobe, the watch and the car, but the final piece of the jigsaw doesn't fall into place until you've found the perfect home, regardless of whether your lifestyle entails hosting lavish soirees for 40 people or lying around in a Turnbull & Asser cashmere robe eating Ben & Jerry's straight from the tub. In case you're in need of some property inspiration, or have a serious wad of cash to burn, we've rounded up 10 of the most extraordinary residences in the world that are currently for sale. Check the gallery, below, to discover more. 

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BLACK ROCK DESERT: BURNING MAN FESTIVAL!

BLACK ROCK CITY, NV (CNN) – Burning Man is back! 

The annual festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert started on Monday. Organizers expect nearly 50,000 people to attend the week-long event, creating a temporary "Black Rock City". 

Described as an "experimental community," the event focuses largely on art and expression. It often incorporates themes and costumes, but organizers stress it's mostly up to participants to decide what Burning Man is. The biggest tradition comes at the end of the week, when participants set fire to a giant wooden "man," thus the name.

SUMMER READING: HOUSES OF THE SUNDOWN SEA!

Houses of the Sundown Sea: The Architectural Vision of Harry Gesner. For more than sixty years, casual observers and architectural aficionados alike have craned their necks to catch glimpses of Harry Gesner houses of Southern California. There's one hovering on a mountaintop above Malibu, as it poised to take flight over the Pacific. Another is bolded to a cliff so that the site can support a home before the next 60 -foot cliff drops off. And yet another is tucked away on the grounds of the Getty Museum centre in Los Angeles. Maverick architect and inventor Harry Gesner was always drawn to unusual, challenging sites, which called for dramatic architecture and living environments. Houses of the Sundown Sea: The Architectural Vision of Harry Gesner will open doors to these and twelve other intriguing homes, all located in and round the Los Angeles area, accompanied by magnificent photographs by Jurgen Nogai. The book's scope will be broad, using archival photographs, documents and a rich collection of Gesner's own spectacular design drawings, blue prints and floor plans to trace his career from 1945 to the present. Even in Southern California, a region that has been a catalyst for great Modern architecture for more than a century, Gesner's utterly unique designs are outside the canons of doctrinaire modernism. Rather, his sensibility springs from his interpretation of the landscape and the messages it communicates to him after days of sketching on a new pristine site. Inevitably, for a man born an raised in Southern California, his sculptural designs are imbues with the vision of an almost primeval California, derived from his parents memories of the relatively undeveloped paradise of his youth. He is a Modernist, but one whose romantic, idealistic nature has caused his truly extraordinary body of work to be overlooked. Until now.

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THE REPORT: LE CORBUSIER!

On Le Corbusier's first visit to New York, to open an exhibition of his architecture at the Museum of Modern Art in October 1935, he was so enthralled by the skyscrapers - by the Empire State Building especially - that he told a friend: "I wanted to lie down on my back there on the sidewalk, and gaze towards the top forever." 

Then in his late forties, Le Corbusier was in the vanguard of the "rads versus trads" battle in design: idolised by fellow radicals, and loathed by conservative "trads". This summer, nearly 50 years after his death, MoMA is to honour him with another, far larger exhibition, opening on 15 June, which should seal his reputation as the most influential architect of the modern age. 

Just as contemporary art would not be the same without Mr Marcel Duchamp, literature without Mr James Joyce, or fashion without Mr Yves Saint Laurent, our built environment - from houses and schools to towns and cities - would be very different if not for Le Corbusier. But why?

Like most other visionaries who revolutionised their fields, Le Corbusier was blessed not only with exceptional talent, but great timing. He began his career in the early 1900s when the availability of electricity, telephones, aeroplanes and cars was transforming millions of people's lives. Every aspect of society needed to be rethought, including architecture, a challenge that Le Corbusier relished. "The time is ripe for construction," he wrote, "not foolery." 

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MR CHARLES EAMES, THE ARTIST!

When, during World War II, Mr Charles Eames moved to Los Angeles with his new wife Ms Ray Eames (neé Ms Ray Kaiser), the design duo embarked on a career that would define the look of an entire era. 

Their creative and romantic partnership was of unrivalled influence in the post-war period, thanks to the way they combined an engineer's take on modernism, a joyful sense of optimism and a deeply artistic sensibility. They may now be remembered chiefly as the designers of beautiful furniture, but the film suggests that their talents were far broader than their current legacy suggests.

Eames: The Architect and the Painter is released on 3 August!

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