North_America travel tips and stories. Vacations ideas, cruises spa and resorts

Venetian Islands are a chain of artificial islands near by Miami, Florida. The islands from west to east are Biscayne Island, San Marco Island, San Marino Island, Di Lido Island, Rivo Alto Island and Belle Isle.

The islands form a slice of tropical suburbia that extends eastward almost to Lincoln Road in South Beach, with its proliferating shops and restaurants. They stretch west to the mainland and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the $461 million downtown complex that opened in 2006.

Their centralized location has helped the islands very much. They are positioned comfortably between extremes: on the one hand, downtown Miami, with falling prices and climbing inventories that have placed it at the leading edge of the nation’s real estate crisis, and on the other, the strenuously hip environs of South Beach, where prices continue to climb, albeit slowly, keeping waterfront properties out of the reach of most buyers.

The Venetians are hot. There’s still an upside here; you can get luxury properties at under $10 million. That’s true nowhere else on Miami Beach.

Loreto Bay is a resort community with total of 6, 000 residences in desert of Baja California. The resort has 240 pretty colorful houses with cupolas; some of them are painted bright blue or yellow, others are pink, beige or green.

If you are guest there you’ll understand much better Loreto on foot. No matter where you are standing, you can see either the sea or the Sierra de la Giganta; nature always feels close by.

But for some houses shops accessibility is a problem — Loreto is 700 miles south of San Diego via mainly two-lane roads. But air including flights on Alaska Airlines through Los Angeles, on Continental from Houston, and on Aero California and Aeroméxico from Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix.

The guests at Loreto Bay will have three golf courses, beach and eco-tourism just a boat ride away. As well as the residents will travel about their villages on foot, by bicycle or in electric-powered golf carts, because the streets are too narrow for automobiles.

People who have a rest in Loreto spend their days golfing, kayaking, deep-sea fishing and hiking.

The Cor Tower is sitted in a splendid district in Miami, Florida and it’s a green eco structure. The $40 million building will incorporate mixed-use residential and commercial space, integrating green technologies such as wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and solar hot water generation.

The building’s ecoskeleton is a hyper-efficient structure that provides thermal mass for insulation, shade for residents, and architectural elements such as terraces and armatures that support turbines.

The Cor Tower is build to attract creative and design-oriented businesses and professionals, the interior of COR features sleek commercial and comfortable residential spaces ranging from $400,000 to $2 million.

Chad Oppenheim -architect and designer said that ”each residential unit will include Energy Star appliances, recycled glass tile flooring, and bamboo-lined hallways. In total, COR will play host to 113 residential units, 20,100 square feet of office space and 5,400 square feet of retail space (which already includes a café and furniture store). Estimated completion is scheduled for 2009…”

The Screening Room is located 54 ft of street frontage on Camden Drive Beverly Hills, California. The room is not only for a high performance, it also consist 80 seat space for viewing films, a large pre function lobby area, a kitchen/bar and a major facade to the street. The idea is the private space to become more public.

The aluminum panel facade and the smooth white ceiling and wall surfaces allows passersby to peek in through, and around these surfaces to catch fragments of the floor and ceiling surfaces inside. This sense is analogous to cinema watching or even stargazing.

Inside, the ceiling surface splits into 3 major bands that each has its own programmatic performance and sectional profile. The exterior wall of the screening room is wrapped with wallpaper designed by 2X4. The interior of the screening room is a deeply saturated red world consisting of different materials and textures of paint, carpet, and fabric.

The hotel Azucar is located in Mexico, North America. The hotel architecture and the interior design is created by Carlos Couturier, Elias Adam, Jose Robredo.

The design is a mixture of elegance and a fashion with nature and the hotel consist 20 low-lying withewashed palapas (bungalows) each topped with a thatched roof and having a private terrace overlooking the stunning beach of Mexico. Just one look is enought to feel the airy and breezy atmosphere.

The red-cedar woodwork in the private spaces comes from driftwood collected from the beach. Public spaces are largely open-air, like the relaxing biblioteca(library) where guests can lounge in wicker chairs or on pinkpillows under jug lamps hanging from an open thatched ceiling, or an outdoor spa that features a yoga space and spa services.

Visitors can take a dip in a funky pool with sunbleached pink beanbags, and can have a dinner at almost cartoon-like colourless furniture in the hotel’s sugar-white restaurant. This hotel offsets its luscious surroundings, but it’s like a sweet treat that keeps you coming back for more.