Have you ever wanted to have an apartment with a pool… in the ceiling? Well now you can – thanks to Rem Koolhaas, who is developing a new residential tower in New York City.  With a characteristic gesture of willful contrarianism, his design inverts the typical Manhattan tower, stepping outward - not inward - as it rises to create an alarming attention grabbing profile.  Ostensibly, these cantilevers are intended to provide views to a nearby park. 

In reality, I think Rem is just showing off. But the pool is awesome.

Click here for the Office of Metropolitan Architecture.

Check out this link to flickr images of The Birds Nest - the Olympic Satadium in Beijing by Herzog and DeMeuron. It is a beautiful form and a very expressive skin. In these images you really get a sense of how the architects created a blurring between the inside and outside of the building. You also get a blurred sense of where the building starts and the plaza ends. Even the roof tends to be ambiguous in the way it expresses inside and outside.