Coupons are often used to attract new customers and entice old customers to come back. Before you begin discounting, consider these pros and cons.
Month: August 2016
15 Ways to Overcome Sales Objections
Sales objections are a fact of life when you’re in business, and how you handle them can determine whether your business struggles or thrives. Here are 15 tips to help you overcome sales objections more easily.
Add Value to Your Products Instead of Discounting
Tired of having your products prices questioned? Here’s how to add value to to them so you can avoid discounting.
5 Steps for Launching a New Business or Product
Your business or product launch is the first impression people will remember. These five steps can help you make your launch a success.
How to Get Testimonials from Satisfied Customers
Testimonials from happy customers give your business credibility with potential customers. Here’s how to get those testimonials so you can put them to work.
Designers submit ideas for Brexit design manifesto
Brexit design summit: the freedom to recruit talented staff from overseas is “completely essential” according to leading UK designers, who have submitted ideas for a design manifesto to help the sector thrive after Brexit. (more…)
Adaptation of Olympic Shooting Center Rio 2016 / Vigliecca & Associados
© Gabriel Heusi
- Architects: Vigliecca & Associados
- Location: Deodoro, Rio de Janeiro – State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Area: 53500.0 sqm
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Gabriel Heusi, Andre Motta, Miriam Jeske, Ricardo Cassiano
- Seating Capacity: 7.250
© Andre Motta
The National Shooting Centre (Brasil2016.gov.br) was built for the Pan American Games in 2007. This is an award-winning project done by the architecture office BCMF Arquitetos (Brasil2016.gov.br ) that has been carefully renovated by Vigliecca & Associates to meet Olympic standards without changing the identity of the original structure.
Plan
Although it is a recent construction, the building had to attend more specific standards established by the International Shooting Sport Federation and also needed maintenance upgrades for the target system as well as the air conditioning, hydraulic and electrical systems.
© Andre Motta
The project focused on meeting Olympic requirements, which included three times more seating capacity as well as making sure it would be useful after the Olympics once left as a legacy.
Diagram
Diagram
Since the required Olympic geometries were very different from what was found in the existing building, simply adapting the building seemed unworkable. The only solution would be to build a temporary shooting range for the finals next to the existing range. Once the cost estimate was found to be quite high, Vigliecca & Associados analyzed different ways of reconciling the requirements of the Olympic Games with the situation and was able to presented an innovative solution regarding the standardization of the finals range, using a lower visibility curve profile that adapted perfectly to the existing ceiling height and building geometry.
© Gabriel Heusi
For this, a 2.000 seat temporary grandstand was placed over the existing 600 seats. Once the triple of seats was placed in the same area, the overall visibility angle also had to be reconsidered in order to guarantee visibility to all seats. The result was a softer angled grandstand. The best seats turned out to be the top ones instead of the first ones, just as in permanent stands, and will be designated to press members, also a requirement from the International Shooting Sport Federation. It’s worth mentioning that the first Olympic Medal will be given for this sport modality and surely the entire world will have their eyes on this facility.
This solution proved to be the most suitable for maintaining architectural harmony as well as being the most economical solution, since it only required the range to be expanded, without interfering much with the existing structure.
© Gabriel Heusi
In order to increase the internal area, the shooting area was also expanded and placed under a temporary roofing system. Overall, the design allowed the internal space to be increased simply by being reconfigured instead of having to demolish any portion of it.
China’s Futuristic Straddling Bus Becomes a Reality, Begins Testing Period
via Xinhua News Agency
A few years ago, Chinese company Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment envisioned a unique solution to address congestion issues spurred by rapid population growth in many of China’s cities: a straddling bus that would bypass traffic by simply driving over top of it. The design captured the attention of people worldwide, though many were skeptical the idea could ever come to fruition. But now, that pipe dream has become a reality.
World's first transit elevated bus, TEB-1 on its launching test Tuesday in Qinhuangdao, N China's Hebei http://pic.twitter.com/yMepYWD1kD
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) August 2, 2016
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A real life version of the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) has began testing in Qinhuangdao, China. The bus, measuring 72 feet long by 25 feet wide (22 meters x 7.8 meters), has the potential to carry up to 1,200 passenger at a time at estimated speeds of 40 miles per hour (60 kilometers per hour), increasing transportation turnover at a fraction of the cost of installing a new subway or elevated train line.
via Xinhua News Agency
But the TEB isn’t ready to deal with competing traffic just yet. For now, the TEB is limited to a 300 meter long test track that will evaluate the braking system, drag and power consumption. Once complete, the straddling bus will move on to further testing stages.
Despite it still being an unproven system, the TEB has already attracted interest from countries from around the world including Brazil, France, India and Indonesia.
News via Shanghaiist and Xinhuanet. H/T Gizmodo.
via Xinhua News Agency
via Xinhua News Agency
Straddling Bus / Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment
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Gígjökull Glacier Outlet of Eyjafjallajökull by Extreme Iceland…
Gígjökull Glacier Outlet of Eyjafjallajökull by Extreme Iceland During the volcanic eruption of 2010, an immense jökulhlaup – an outburst flood of meltwater – came out of this hole under the glacier. Hundreds of people needed to be evacuated from the area.
This is the largest outlet of Eyjafjallajökull. It’s on the way to Þórsmörk (Thorsmork).
Central Park, New York Cityphoto via christina
Sig Nordal 