LOS ANGELES — What can be built for almost nothing, usually can't find a buyer and may soon put a dent — a small one, anyway — in the United States trade deficit with China?
All this has taken place on the property where Steinway pianos have been built for almost 130 years, ever since Henry Engelhard Steinway, a German immigrant, moved his factory and headquarters there from Manhattan between 1870 and 1872.
In a 21st-century architectural zeitgeist of controversial bigness, Spaceport America, built for Richard Branson, is almost beyond criticism.
The no 15 bus winds up past the lavish villas and palaces of the exclusive Cimiez neighbourhood, including a sumptuous residence built for Queen Victoria, arriving almost at the door of the conservatory's modern auditorium.
/>By then, private contractors had built for the Pentagon almost 300 military bases in Iraq, ranging from tiny combat outposts to massive "American towns" holding tens of thousands of troops and private contractors, with multiple bus lines, PX's, fast-food "boardwalks," massage parlors, water treatment and power plants, barracks, and airfields.
Some tracks sound built for meditation; others are almost religiously beautiful.
Nearby, rows of sheet metal housing built for Chinese miners are almost empty.
Sprawling over 25,000 square feet, and built for $18 million, it's almost unsettlingly clean, shiny and inoffensive.
Large engineering works, devoted to either flood protection or water resources utilization, have been independently built for many centuries with almost exclusive attention to the hydraulic and structural behavior of each single plant.
The city was almost built for technology startups on purpose.
But while many make open reference to a variety of sex toys targeted at women and built for the female anatomy, almost none make reference to sex toys targeted at men or built for the male anatomy save for sex dolls, cartoonish inflatables like Bud Bundy's "Isis" on Married… With Children or uncanny valley fleshy imitations like Bianca in Lars and the Real Girl.
