Ah, Springtime in Stuttgart. How we wish we were there. Particularly this Friday, the 19th, when Mercedes Benz is having their grand opening ceremonies for their new company museum. We're fans of their cars, sure, but the building itself is a thing of absolute beauty. Typical of German buildings, it looks like the country once again used one of its time machines and brought back a building from the year 2092. Make sure to read the whole story, but here's some to get you interested:

More than 100,000 tons of concrete were used in building the Mercedes-Benz Museum, which has a base area of 4,800 square meters and reaches a height 47.5 meters, so that its walls enclose a space of 210,000 cubic meters. Ceilings measure 33 meters across without a pillar to support them and can carry the weight of ten trucks. There are neither enclosed rooms nor right angles. All walls and ceiling, ramps and pillars are arched or twisted and merge with each other in gentle, flowing forms.

It is not even possible to sharply distinguish between horizontal and vertical areas: the so-called twists, components with a double curvature, are the building's most spectacular innovation. They grow out of the elevator cores as vertical walls and, leaning on the next core, spiral outwards in a light arch. Behind the bright window bands they are finally received by a gently sloping staircase which links one Collection room with the next. The shell of the Museum consists of materials which also find use in vehicle manufacture: aluminum and glass.