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Renderings are unveiled for what will become the world's northernmost contemporary art museum

2021-07-14T19:19:00-04:00

A former mall in central Russia is being converted into a museum as part of a larger $2 billion development project that will give the isolated Siberian city of Norilsk what could potentially be the northernmost contemporary arts facility in the world.

Images have been unveiled for the new Arctic Museum of Modern Art (AMMA), a new $40 million institution that will give new life to a defunct mall thanks to a city-wide cultural renewal initiative funded by a local nickel-producing magnate.

Russian architect Ilya Mukosey is behind the 8,500 square meter design meant as a new home for the collection of mostly regional art put together by Nornickel. The new museum will feature added exhibitions spaces, open storage, and a new above-ground entrance not common to the closed Arctic city. Mukosey is the creative director of a Russian-language online magazine Artplay Today and has his own practice founded in Moscow in 2019.

AMMA will be joined by another museum called MAMA as well as existi...

Heating your home with...bitcoin mining?

2017-11-06T15:24:00-05:00

Two entrepreneurs have figured out how to heat their homes for free: bitcoin mining. Bitcoin transactions require a lot of processing power, which creates a lot of heat. So Ilya Frolov and Dmitry Tolmachyov built a wooden cottage in the Russian Siberian town of Irkutsk, and they’re heating it with two bitcoin mines. The men pocket about $430 a month from bitcoin transactions, while keeping the 20 square meter space warm.

The Siberian Silicon Valley: the billion-dollar tech hub built on the ruins of a Soviet science city

2016-01-06T14:14:00-05:00

Located in the middle of the Eurasian landmass 3,000km east of Moscow, with a climate that ranges from 30C mosquito-ridden summers to -40C snow-drenched winters, this isn’t the most obvious place for a tech startup hub... The Academpark is not some random outpost in the middle of nowhere, but the latest part of a plan to revive Akademgorodok, the Soviet science town that was established here in 1957, and long since left to languish.

Officials endorse tunnel to link Alaska and Siberia by train

2011-08-31T20:40:36-04:00

Russia appears to be edging closer to giving the go-ahead for an underwater tunnel which could one day allow vacationers in Alaska to take a day trip to Siberia in Russia.