Going against the grain of boutique hotels seems to be the basic premise of Seattle-based Ace Hotels, which has gone eastward and planted their first brand of new cool in the Big Apple. This is after a series of successfully acing hotels by the same name in Seattle (obviously), Portland and Palm Springs.

After all, what boutique hotel could claim having bunk beds, turntables and SMEG fridges in the guest rooms, an industrial-style elevator, and mix and match vintage furniture so unique, it feels as if New York’s famous ABC Carpet & Home furnishing has decided to start allowing stay over night in the store.

Ace New York City, a reincarnation of the 1904 edifice that housed the former Breslin Hotel, and what a sumptuous reincarnation at that! Ace defies classification, it’s as if you’ve entered an old aunt’s living room in Prague, Berlin or Paris.

From the 18-foot-high ceiling that adorns the lobby, to the original mosaic tile floor and carved plaster ceiling in the public areas, to the vintage faucets and blackboards for scribbling your thoughts in the guest rooms, Ace is uniquely different.

Ace , positions itself impeccably against Gotham City’s plethora of hotels with personality. For this one’s shines through.

Inspiration: Enchanting Eden

What happens when Bali meets a Scandinavian city in Northern Europe? If that place is Copenhagen, home to Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, and a city renowned for its clean design flair, the result is a pleasant exercise in mix and match.

That special hotel is Axel Hotel Guldsmeden, and the location befits a hotel that defies categorization, in Vesterbro, Copenhagen hippest neighborhood.

Axel is casual and laid back, with furnishing that is part Balinese, part vintage local finds. The adjoining organic Bakery Cafe gives it the home appeal it screams out so comfortably.

Inspiration: Enchanting Eden

One of America’s premier urban parks, The Golden Gate Park in beautiful San Francisco, is now home to one of the country’s greenest buildings and San Francisco’s hottest attraction: California Academy of Sciences. This wonderfully-conceived museum, designed by world-acclaimed architect, Renzo Piano, features an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum and a four-story rainforest all under one roof!

The California Academy of Sciences is devoted to in-depth research, educational outreach and will engage you in its many exhibits and programs. Filled with hundreds of exhibits and thousands of animals, the California Academy of Sciences has something for everyone to enjoy. Ideal for a family day out, prepare to be amazed and taught about the planet’s diversity and biology.

This new LEED® Platinum-rated museum now hosts the largest green roof of any natural history museum in the world. The roof top’s 2.5 acres of planted material gives the Academy one of its most forward-thinking exhibits, a dedication to research and education in both urban ecology and living architecture. Visitors will be awed by the increased vegetation and unique architecture. At the same time, the roof’s diverse assemblage of nine indigenous plant species is a new link in an ecological corridor for the City’s wildlife. Habitat space taken away from urban development will be restored for the native plants and animals of the area. For San Francisco, the green roof creates the most concentrated area of native wildflowers within the city.

One of the ingenious designs of Renzo Piano was his vision of continuing the topography of San Francisco through the Academy’s rooftop. Mimicking the hills of nearby Twin Peaks, the roof has four undulating, steeply sloped domed structures. This however presented design challenges for the installation of the plants. In order to solve the technical challenges, Rana Creek worked with the design team to develop a built-up green roof system with stacked benefits. The key to this process was the BioTray®, a biodegradable, reinforced, modular propagation tray made from rapidly renewable coconut coir fibers. This tray provided water retention for the plants and helped to hold the growing medium in place during plant establishment. Contract-grown by Rana Creek’s Wholesale Nursery, the BioTrays® encourage plant growth from the use of a mycorrhizal biological inoculum that facilitates nutrient uptake and helps roots to grow through the tray providing further stabilization.

The steep slopes of the roof act as a natural ventilation and cooling system. Fresh air, cooled by the vegetated surface, is funneled into the entry plaza, whose retractable skylights peel back to allow cool air to sink into the building to offset mechanical cooling demand with natural ventilation. Additionally, the thermal mass, surface moisture and insulation in the roof assembly are expected to maintain the building’s interior an average of 10 degrees cooler than a standard roof would. These energy savings are being empirically investigated and the results have been presented at the 2008 Greening Rooftops for Sustainable Communities Conference.

The roof also retains 2 million gallons of rainwater, preventing 70% of the rainwater that falls on the roof from becoming runoff. The water that does run off the roof is collected in basement-level cisterns and reused for roof irrigation. No potable water will be used to irrigate the living roof.

The roof covers an ambitious 197,000 sq. ft. to a depth of 6-7 inches and cost $17 per sq. ft. In conjunction with the building’s other innovative sustainable features, the living roof contributes to many of the anticipated LEED® points, which, when achieved, will make the Academy the world’s largest LEED® Platinum -certified public space. Ambitious, innovative, informative and visually spectacular, the green roof on the California Academy of Sciences exemplifies all the potential of the extensive institutional green roof.

Source: Green Roofs and Ideas Inspiring Innovation

The hallmark of any great city is its urban park! Commonly located at the center of its core, urban parks play a significant role in providing traffic-choked cities with much-needed green lungs. As well as recreation, sporting and cultural venues for residents and visitors alike.

Here’s a look at some of the larger urban parks from across the world, as seen in through the lens of Google Earth.

JARDIM BOTÂNICO (BOTANICAL GARDENS), RIO DE JANEIRO (140 hectares)

Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro was founded on June 13, 1808 by Dom João VI, who then was prince regent of United Kingdom of Brazil and Portugal. It is one of the great tropical botanical gardens of the world.

Jardim Botânico is conveniently located in the heart of the South Side, minutes away from Ipanema and Copacabana. Spend an afternoon leisurely walking along the gardens, ponds and well-manicured lanes. Cariocas themselves do this every now and then to recharge the energies, and get in closer contact with nature. Einstein and Queen Elizabeth of England are among famous international visitors to the park, that was also a favorite of Tom Jobim.

The Botanical Garden was originally created to adapt to the Brazilian climate plants like nutmeg, pepper and cinnamon that were imported from the Western Indies. It was open for public visitation in 1822 during the reign of Dom Pedro I, Dom João VI’s son. In 1937 it was listed as part of the Brazilian Historical Heritage, and in 1992, UNESCO named it a biosphere reserve.

The gardens have several special areas featuring plants of specific Brazilian regions such as the Amazon. The most well-known symbol of the park are the royal palms, some dating back to the period of Dom João VI!

Walk among cocoa and rubber trees, breathe in the pungent aroma of the abricó-de-macaco trees, and watch out for the falling fruit – they are the size of a football! The greenhouses with bromeliads and orchids are very popular. There is also a sensorial garden, a Japanese garden, and many other special areas to visit.

The park is dotted with sculptures and fountains. The central fountain surrounded by royal palm trees is made of wrought iron, and was brought in England and brought to the park from Lapa in 1905. On the same year they brought from Passeio Público (Downtown) the beautiful sculptures by Mestre Valentim, including the statues of Eco and Narciso and the tall-legged birds. They are now housed in their own special niche.

Source: Ideas Inspiring Innovation

The hallmark of any great city is its main urban park! Commonly located at the center of its core, urban parks play a significant role in providing traffic-choked cities with much-needed green lungs. As well as recreation, sporting and cultural venues for residents and visitors alike.

Here’s a look at some of the larger urban parks from across the world.

FLAGSTAFF GARDENS, MELBOURNE (18 ACRES)

Since 1862, residents of Melbourne have known Flagstaff Gardens as the prime location in the city to experience nature. Near Queen Victoria Market and the Flagstaff railway station, the park is ideal for visitors who want to see wonderful eucalyptus and elm trees, flower gardens and endemic wildlife.

Source: Rates to Go and Ideas Inspiring Innovation

The hallmark of any great city is its main urban park! Commonly located at the center of its core, urban parks play a significant role in providing traffic-choked cities with much-needed green lungs. As well as recreation, sporting and cultural venues for residents and visitors alike.

Here’s a look at some of the larger urban parks from across the world.

ENGLISCHER GARTEN, MUNICH (3.7 sq.km./1.4 sq. mi.)

The city that is synonymous with the good times and beer – Munich – the world capital for the annual Oktoberfest Beer Festival is also home to one of Europe’s most picturesque parks.

The Englischer Garten is the German term for “English Garden”, a large public park in the center of Munich, the Bavarian main city in South Germany. Created in 1789 by Sir Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), later Count Rumford (Reichsgraf von Rumford) and extended and improved by his successors, Reinhard von Werneck (1757-1842) and Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750-1823), who had advised on the project from the beginning.

At 3.7 square kilometers (1.4 square miles), Englischer Garten is one of the world’s largest urban public parks, larger than New York’s Central Park but smaller than London’s Richmond Park. The name refers to the style of gardening; the term English garden is used outside of the English speaking world to refer to the style of informal landscape gardening which was popular in the United Kingdom from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century, and is particularly associated with Capability Brown.

Today Englischer Garten is also popular as one of the few city-center rivers for surfing. A unique pastime that doesn’t immediately come to mind in a full four season European city like Munich.

Source: Ideas Inspiring Innovation

The hallmark of any great city is its main urban park! Commonly located at the center of its core, urban parks play a significant role in providing traffic-choked cities with much-needed green lungs. As well as recreation, sporting and cultural venues for residents and visitors alike.

Here’s a look at some of the larger urban parks from across the world, as seen in through the lens of Google Earth.

MONSANTO FOREST PARK, LISBON (2,300 ACRES)

Created: 1930s. This giant parcel of urban forest was created by replanting the formerly barren Monsanto Hills. It is a great place for hiking right in the city–but the fact that it’s also wrapped in highways lessens its appeal as a walking destination.

Source: The Infrastructurist and Ideas Inspiring Innovation

The hallmark of any great city is its main urban park! Commonly located at the center of its core, urban parks play a significant role in providing traffic-choked cities with much-needed green lungs. As well as recreation, sporting and cultural venues for residents and visitors alike.

Here’s a look at some of the larger urban parks from across the world, as seen in through the lens of Google Earth.GOLDEN GATE PARK, SAN FRANCISCO (1,017 ACRES)

Created: 1870. Built in the wake of New York’s plan to create a “central park,” Golden Gate has a similar shape and abundance of attractions. The Summer of Love was launched there in 1967. Also, it’s very easy to buy drugs.

Source: The Infrastructurist and Ideas Inspiring Innovation

The hallmark of any great city is its main urban park! Commonly located at the center of its core, urban parks play a significant role in providing traffic-choked cities with much-needed green lungs. As well as recreation, sporting and cultural venues for residents and visitors alike.

Here’s a look at some of the larger urban parks from across the world, as seen in through the lens of Google Earth.

CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY (843 ACRES)

Created: 1853. Located in uptown Manhattan, in the midst of some the island’s densest and wealthiest neighborhoods. Frederic Law Olmstead’s urban pastoral masterpiece contains several bodies of water, a zoo, playgrounds and fields, natural wooded areas, and so very much more. Sadly, if America ever become totally insolvent, the government will likely have to sell Central Park for trillions of dollars to the Chinese so our nation can keep buying cheap toasters.

Source: The Infrastructurist and Ideas Inspiring Innovation

Cities! What would we be without them? The energy that they emanate, as hives of a myriad of activities. From dawn till dusk. Home to contrasting realities, for the teeming populace defined by marketers and urban planners alike by specific socio-demographic niches. And today, increasingly cities are distinguished by the residents’ lifestyles. Cities are adept at re-inventing themselves, evolving with the times and changing needs. Ultimately, every city strives to become more sustainable.

One way to experience the changing face of cities is through her Boutique Hotels. A window into the city’s distinctive style, character, personality, culture, and personalized service. In short, inseparable from the city’s brand!

Here’s a fascinating look at Singapore, a small city-state that is best explained as “the little engine that could!”. Home to Asia’s only in-city Formula-1 Grand Prix, befitting its fast pace as one of the original Asian Tiger economies that went from third world to first world in under three decades. (click on any picture for more info).