1.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
Oscar Niemeyer
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Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho —known as Oscar Niemeyer —was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. His exploration of the possibilities of reinforced concrete was highly influential in the late 20th. Both lauded and criticized for being a sculptor of monuments, Niemeyer was hailed as a great artist and he said his architecture was strongly influenced by Le Corbusier, but in an interview, assured that this didnt prevent architecture from going in a different direction. Niemeyer was most famous for his use of forms and curves and wrote in his memoirs, I am not attracted to straight angles or to the straight line, hard and inflexible. I am attracted to free-flowing, sensual curves, the curves that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuousness of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, and on the body of the beloved woman. Curves make up the entire Universe, the curved Universe of Einstein, in the 1930s, he interned with Lúcio Costa, with the pair collaborating on the design for the Palácio Gustavo Capanema in Rio de Janeiro. Niemeyers first major project was a series of buildings for Pampulha and his work, especially on the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, received critical acclaim and drew international attention. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Niemeyer became one of Brazils most prolific architects and this work led to his appointment as inaugural head of architecture at the University of Brasília, as well as honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects. Due to his largely leftist ideology, and involvement with the Brazilian Communist Party, Niemeyer left the country after the 1964 military coup and he returned to Brazil in 1985, and was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988. A socialist and atheist from an age, Niemeyer had spent time in both Cuba and the Soviet Union during his exile, and on his return served as the PCBs president from 1992 to 1996. Niemeyer continued working at the end of the 20th and early 21st century, notably designing the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, over a career of 78 years he designed approximately 600 projects. Niemeyer died in Rio de Janeiro on December 5,2012, at the age of 104, Niemeyer was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro on December 15,1907. The great grandfather of Oscar Niemeyer was a Portuguese immigrant who and he spent his youth as a typical young Carioca of the time, bohemian and relatively unconcerned with his future. In 1928, at age 21, Niemeyer left school and married Annita Baldo and he pursued his passion at the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro and graduated with a BA in architecture in 1934. After graduating, he worked in his fathers typography house, even though he was not financially stable, he insisted on working in the architecture studio of Lucio Costa, Gregori Warchavchik and Carlos Leão, even though they could not pay him. Niemeyer joined them as a draftsman, an art that he mastered, the contact with Costa would be extremely important to Niemeyers maturation. Costa, after a flirtation with the Neocolonial movement, realized that the advances of the international style in Europe were the way forward for architecture. In 1936, at 29, Lucio Costa was appointed by Education Minister Gustavo Capanema to design the new headquarters of the Ministry of Education, Costa himself, although open to change, was unsure of how to proceed
4.
Le Corbusier
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Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930 and his career spanned five decades, he constructed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America. Le Corbusier prepared the plan for the city of Chandigarh in India. On July 17,2016, seventeen projects by Le Corbusier in seven countries were inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites as an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement and it was an industrial town, devoted to the manufacture of watches. His father was an artisan who enameled boxes and watches, while his mother gave piano lessons and his elder brother Albert was an amateur violinist. He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian methods, like his contemporaries Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier did not have formal academic training as an architect. He was attracted to the arts and at the age of fifteen he entered the municipal art school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds which taught the applied arts connected with watchmaking. Three years later he attended the course of decoration, founded by the painter Charles LEplattenier. Le Corbusier wrote later that LEplattenier had made him a man of the woods and his father took him frequently into the mountains around the town. He wrote later, we were constantly on mountaintops, we grew accustomed to a vast horizon and his architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusiers earliest house designs. However, he reported later that it was the art teacher LEplattenier who made him choose architecture, I had a horror of architecture and architects, he wrote. I was sixteen, I accepted the verdict and I obeyed. Le Corbusier began teaching himself by going to the library to read about architecture and philosophy, by visiting museums, by sketching buildings, located on the forested hillside near Chaux-de-fonds. It was a chalet with a steep roof in the local alpine style. The success of this led to his construction of two similar houses, the Villas Jacquemet and Stotzer, in the same area. In Florence, he visited the Florence Charterhouse in Galluzzo, which made an impression on him. I would have liked to live in one of what they called their cells and it was the solution for a unique kind of workers housing, or rather for a terrestrial paradise. In 1911, he traveled again for five months, this time he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, as well as Pompeii and Rome. Filling nearly 80 sketchbooks with renderings of what he saw—including many sketches of the Parthenon and he spoke of what he saw during this trip in many of his books, and it was the subject of his last book, Le Voyage dOrient
5.
Skyscraper
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A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building having multiple floors. When the term was used in the 1880s it described a building of 10 to 20 floors. Mostly designed for office, commercial and residential uses, a skyscraper can also be called a high-rise, for buildings above a height of 300 m, the term supertall can be used, while skyscrapers reaching beyond 600 m are classified as megatall. One common feature of skyscrapers is having a steel framework that supports curtain walls and these curtain walls either bear on the framework below or are suspended from the framework above, rather than resting on load-bearing walls of conventional construction. Some early skyscrapers have a frame that enables the construction of load-bearing walls taller than of those made of reinforced concrete. Modern skyscrapers walls are not load-bearing, and most skyscrapers are characterized by surface areas of windows made possible by steel frames. However, skyscrapers can have curtain walls that mimic conventional walls with a surface area of windows. Modern skyscrapers often have a structure, and are designed to act like a hollow cylinder to resist wind, seismic. To appear more slender, allow less wind exposure, and transmit more daylight to the ground, many skyscrapers have a design with setbacks, a relatively big building may be considered a skyscraper if it protrudes well above its built environment and changes the overall skyline. The maximum height of structures has progressed historically with building methods and technologies, the Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world. High-rise buildings are considered shorter than skyscrapers, the first steel-frame skyscraper was the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, Illinois in 1885. Even the scholars making the argument find it to be purely academic and this definition was based on the steel skeleton—as opposed to constructions of load-bearing masonry, which passed their practical limit in 1891 with Chicagos Monadnock Building. What is the characteristic of the tall office building. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and it must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line. Some structural engineers define a highrise as any vertical construction for which wind is a significant load factor than earthquake or weight. Note that this criterion fits not only high-rises but some other tall structures, the word skyscraper often carries a connotation of pride and achievement. A loose convention of some in the United States and Europe draws the limit of a skyscraper at 150 m or 490 ft. The tallest building in ancient times was the 146 m Great Pyramid of Giza in ancient Egypt and it was not surpassed in height for thousands of years, the 14th century AD Lincoln Cathedral being conjectured by many to have exceeded it
6.
Turtle Bay, Manhattan
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Turtle Bay is a neighborhood in New York City, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. It extends from either 41st or 43rd Streets to 53rd Street, the neighborhood is the site of the headquarters of the United Nations and the Chrysler Building. The Tudor City apartment complex is considered to be within Turtle Bay. Turtle Bay, a cove of the East River, received its name in the 17th century by its resemblance in shape to that of a knife, deutal being Dutch for knife. The cove, which was filled in after the Civil War, was a shelter from the often harsh weather on the river. The Turtle Bay neighborhood was originally a 40-acre land grant given to two Englishmen by the Dutch colonial governor of New Amsterdam in 1639, and named Turtle Bay Farm. The farm extended roughly from what is now 43rd Street to 48th Street, Turtle Creek, or DeVoors Mill Creek as it was known, emptied into the cove at what is now 47th Street. To the south lay Kips Bay farm, to the north, on a bluff, stood James Beekmans Mount Pleasant, the first of a series of houses and villas with water views stretching away up the shoreline. After the street system was initiated in Manhattan, the hilly landscape of the Turtle Bay Farm was graded to create cross-streets. An army enrollment office was established at Third Avenue and 46th Street, on July 13,1863, an angry mob burned the office to the ground and proceeded to riot through the surrounding neighborhood, destroying entire blocks. The New York Draft Riots continued for three days before troops managed to contain the mob, which had burned and looted much of the city. After the war ended, the formerly pastoral neighborhood was developed with brownstones, by 1868 the bay had been entirely filled in by commercial overdevelopment, packed with breweries, gasworks, slaughterhouses, cattle pens, coal yards, and railroad piers. The numerous plants shower this district with the heaviest sootfall in the city—150 tons to the square mile annually, there were also 18 acres of slaughterhouses along First Avenue. Many tenements were restored in the 1920s, and a communal garden was established. Having married Walton Martin, she sold the houses to friends at cost. Among the first purchasers was Maria Bowen Chapin, founder of the Chapin School, white, who wrote Charlottes Web when living on 48th Street. It was designated the Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District in 1966, an area between First and Second Avenues, and 41st and 43rd Streets was known as Goat Hill – goats and squatters ruled the area – and later renamed Prospect Hill. From 1927 to 1932, the 2, 800-unit Tudor City was built on this site, concurrent with the UN headquarters construction, the Ralph Bunche Park staircase was constructed, connecting Tudor City to the rest of Turtle Bay
7.
Midtown Manhattan
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Midtown Manhattan, or Midtown, represents the central lengthwise portion of the borough and island of Manhattan in New York City. Along Manhattans north-south long axis, Midtown Manhattan separates Lower Manhattan from Upper Manhattan, the majority of New York Citys skyscrapers, including its tallest hotels and apartment towers, lie within Midtown. Midtown spans the island of Manhattan along an east-west axis, being bounded by the East River on its east. The Encyclopedia of New York City defines Midtown as being from 34th Street to 59th Street and it is sometimes broken into Midtown East and Midtown West, or north and south as in the New York City Police Departments Midtown North and Midtown South precincts. Midtown South can refer to the part of Midtown between 23rd Street and around 42nd Street, Midtown West can refer to the area between 34th and 59th Streets, and between 5th and 12th Avenues. Midtown East can refer to the area between 42nd and 59th Streets, and between 5th Avenue and the East River, in other sources these districts are referred to as separate central business districts. Midtown Manhattan, along with Lower Manhattan, is one of the leading financial centers. Midtown Manhattan is the countrys largest central business district and it has the headquarters of major companies, including 4Kids Entertainment, Barnes & Noble, Bloomberg L. P. The New York Institute of Finance is located in Midtown Manhattan, Haier operates its United States offices in the Haier Building at 1356 Broadway, the building used to be a building of the Greenwich Savings Bank. Haier held the ceremony on March 4,2002. Sumitomo Corporation operates its New York Office, the headquarters of the corporations United States operations, el Als North American headquarters are in Midtown. The Air France USA regional headquarters are in 125 West 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan, hachette Book Group USA has its headquarters in 237 Park Avenue. In 1994 Alitalia considered moving its USA headquarters from Midtown to Lower Manhattan, global Infrastructure Partners has an office in Midtown Manhattan. Biotechnology is emerging in Midtown Manhattan, bolstered by the strength in academic scientific research and public. Aer Lingus had its United States offices in Midtown, in 1997, Aer Lingus announced that it was moving its North American headquarters to Melville, New York, in Suffolk County. New York City Department of Education public schools in Midtown Manhattan include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School, private schools include The Beekman School, Rebecca School, and a number of private language and music centers. The La Scuola dItalia Guglielmo Marconi Italian international school will move to West Midtown in 2016, in addition to its well-known Main Branch research library—now known as the Stephen A. Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal are major railroad stations located in Midtown Manhattan, the Port Authority Bus Terminal is also in Midtown
8.
United Nations
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The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict, at its founding, the UN had 51 member states, there are now 193. The headquarters of the UN is in Manhattan, New York City, further main offices are situated in Geneva, Nairobi, and Vienna. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states, the UNs mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union and their respective allies. The organization participated in actions in Korea and the Congo. After the end of the Cold War, the UN took on major military, the UN has six principal organs, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Secretariat, the International Court of Justice, and the UN Trusteeship Council. UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, the UNs most prominent officer is the Secretary-General, an office held by Portuguese António Guterres since 2017. Non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UNs work, the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, and a number of its officers and agencies have also been awarded the prize. Other evaluations of the UNs effectiveness have been mixed, some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called the organization ineffective, corrupt, or biased. Following the catastrophic loss of life in the First World War, the earliest concrete plan for a new world organization began under the aegis of the US State Department in 1939. It incorporated Soviet suggestions, but left no role for France, four Policemen was coined to refer to four major Allied countries, United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China, which emerged in the Declaration by United Nations. Roosevelt first coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries, the term United Nations was first officially used when 26 governments signed this Declaration. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, by 1 March 1945,21 additional states had signed. Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto, the foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism. During the war, the United Nations became the term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis, at the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Mr. Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Mr Gromyko for Mr. Molotov. The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented, the General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, and the facility was completed in 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General
9.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
10.
Curtain wall (architecture)
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A curtain wall system is an outer covering of a building in which the outer walls are non-structural, but merely keep the weather out and the occupants in. As the curtain wall is non-structural it can be made of a lightweight material, when glass is used as the curtain wall, a great advantage is that natural light can penetrate deeper within the building. The curtain wall façade does not carry any dead load weight from the other than its own dead load weight. The wall transfers horizontal wind loads that are incident upon it to the building structure through connections at floors or columns of the building. A curtain wall is designed to resist air and water infiltration, sway induced by wind and seismic forces acting on the building, curtain-wall systems are typically designed with extruded aluminum members, although the first curtain walls were made of steel. The aluminium frame is infilled with glass, which provides an architecturally pleasing building. However, parameters related to solar gain control such as thermal comfort, other common infills include, stone veneer, metal panels, louvres, and operable windows or vents. Buildings were constructed with the walls of the building supporting the load of the entire structure. The exterior walls could be non-load-bearing and thus much lighter and more open than the masonry load-bearing walls of the past and this gave way to increased use of glass as an exterior façade, and the modern-day curtain wall was born. Oriel Chambers and 16 Cook Street, both built in Liverpool, England, by architect and civil engineer Peter Ellis, are characterised by their extensive use of glass in their facades. Towards the courtyards they even boasted metal-framed glass curtain walls, which makes two of the worlds first buildings to include this structural feature. The extensive glass walls allowed light to penetrate further into the building, utilizing more floor space, oriel Chambers comprises 43,000 sq ft set over five floors without an elevator which had only recently been invented and was not yet widespread. An early example of a curtain wall used in the classical style is the Kaufhaus Tietz department store on Leipziger Straße, Berlin. Some of the first curtain walls were made with steel mullions, eventually silicone sealants or glazing tape were substituted, using a glass mullion system. Some designs included a cap to hold the glass in place. The first curtain wall installed in New York City, in the Lever House building, was this type of construction, earlier modernist examples are the Bauhaus in Dessau and the Hallidie Building in San Francisco. During the 1970s began the use of aluminium extrusions for mullions. Aluminum offers the advantage of being able to be easily extruded into nearly any shape required for design
11.
Secretary-General of the United Nations
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The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General serves as the administrative officer of the United Nations. The role of the United Nations Secretariat, and of the Secretary-General in particular, is out by Chapter XV of the United Nations Charter. As of 2017, the Secretary-General is António Guterres, appointed by the General Assembly on 13 October 2016, according to the UN website, their roles are further defined as diplomat and advocate, civil servant, and CEO. Nevertheless, this more abstract description has not prevented the office holders from speaking out, responsibilities of the Secretary-General are further outlined in Articles 98 through 100. They are also responsible for making a report to the General Assembly. According to Article 99, they may notify the Security Council on matters which in their opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace, other than these few guidelines, little else is dictated by the Charter. Interpretation of the Charter has varied between Secretaries-General, with some being more active than others. The Secretary-General is highly dependent upon the support of the states of the UN. The personal skills of the Secretary-General and their staff are crucial to their function, the central position of the UN headquarters in the international diplomatic network is also an important asset. The Secretary-General has the right to place any dispute on the agenda of the Security Council. However, they work mostly behind the scenes if the members of the council are unwilling to discuss a dispute. Most of their time is spent on good offices missions and mediation, sometimes at the request of deliberative organs of the UN and their function may be replaced or supplemented by mediation efforts by the major powers. UN peacekeeping missions are often linked to mediation. The recent improvement in relations between the permanent members of the Security Council has strengthened the role of the Secretary-General as the worlds most reputable intermediary, in the early 1960s, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev led an effort to abolish the Secretary-General position. Khrushchev proposed to replace the Secretary-General with a three-person leading council, one member from the West, one from the Eastern Bloc and this idea failed because the neutral powers failed to back the Soviet proposal. Article 97 of the United Nations Charter determines that the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, as the recommendation must come from the Security Council, any of the five permanent members of the Council can veto a nomination. Most Secretaries-General are compromise candidates from middle powers and have little prior fame, unofficial qualifications for the job have been set by precedent in previous selections
12.
United Nations General Assembly
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The United Nations General Assembly is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation. The General Assembly is the deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the UN. It has also established a number of subsidiary organs. It can also reconvene for special and emergency special sessions and its composition, functions, powers, voting, and procedures are set out in Chapter IV of the United Nations Charter. The first session was convened on 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall in London, other questions are decided by a straightforward majority. Each member country has one vote, apart from approval of budgetary matters, including adoption of a scale of assessment, Assembly resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace, the one state, one vote power structure potentially allows states comprising just five percent of the world population to pass a resolution by a two-thirds vote. During the 1980s, the Assembly became a forum for the North-South dialogue and these issues came to the fore because of the phenomenal growth and changing makeup of the UN membership. In 1945, the UN had 51 members and it now has 193, of which more than two-thirds are developing countries. Because of their numbers, developing countries are able to determine the agenda of the Assembly, the character of its debates. For many developing countries, the UN is the source of much of their diplomatic influence, the Assembly can consider the matter immediately with a view to making recommendations to Members for collective measures to maintain or restore international peace and security. The first session of the UN General Assembly was convened on 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall in London, the next few annual sessions were held in different cities, the second session in New York, and the third session was in Paris. It moved to the permanent United Nations Headquarters in New York at the start of its seventh regular annual session, on 14 October 1952. In December 1988, in order to hear Yasser Arafat, the General Assembly organised its 29th session in the Palace of Nations, all 193 members states of the United Nations are members of the General Assembly. The agenda for each session is planned up to seven months in advance and this is refined into a provisional agenda 60 days before the opening of the session. Items on the agenda are numbered, the General Assembly votes on many resolutions brought forth by sponsoring states. These are generally statements symbolizing the sense of the community about an array of world issues. Most General Assembly resolutions are not enforceable as a legal or practical matter, the General Assembly has authority to make final decisions in some areas such as the United Nations budget
