Archinect - News

Security trumps urban planning at WTC site

2013-05-17T13:56:00-04:00

With the blank slate offered by a catastrophic attack, planners, soon joined by the mayor himself, saw a chance to re-establish a great crossroads: Fulton and Greenwich Streets, tying the second World Trade Center into New York — north, south, east and west. Now, however, they see that vision slipping away, as security concerns trump urban planning.

Ed Mazria announces his 2030 Palette design tool

2013-05-16T14:35:00-04:00

The 2030 Palette is an interactive online tool that puts the principles behind low-carbon and resilient built environments at the fingertips of architects, planners and designers worldwide. Our goal is to inform the planning and design process at the point of inspiration. By curating the best information... highly complex ideas are made intuitive and accessible. Guiding principles are presented as individual “Swatches”, which together make up the larger fabric of sustainable built environments.

The site - www.2030palette.org - looks like a very useful resource. Could be useful for designers but even more so for client to get by in when trying "new" strategies.

El Paso, laser scanned in 3D

2013-05-16T14:23:00-04:00

Robert González wants to create a 3D digital replica of Downtown El Paso, using lasers. The director of Texas Tech’s fledgling architecture program in El Paso says the student project would be part of a new historic preservation program he is developing here. The project would create a permanent record, in 3D, of El Paso’s most historic and endangered buildings.

An exhibition of 3D captured border cities from around the world projected onto giant scrims filling an abandoned maquilladora, might be an interesting project.

Fix Penn Station Now; Raze $1 Billion Knicks Garden Later

2013-05-15T12:12:00-04:00

It’s perched atop the depressing, low-ceilinged maze known as Penn Station, daily hive for 600,000 scuttling commuters. The Garden’s presence is one major impediment to the 25-year-old dream of turning the decrepit and overcrowded Penn station into a smoothly operating city gateway.

NEW CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU #19 - GREATER URBANISM

2013-05-15T11:36:00-04:00

Are cities becoming "greater" these days? (Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, May 2013)

Are cities becoming "greater" these days? When two years ago, in our 14th issue of MONU Magazine entitled "Editing Urbanism", we claimed that in the Western world, the need for new buildings and city districts was decreasing or even ceasing to exist altogether due to demographic changes and financially difficult times, we did not believe in all those new, big-scale, and long-term urban development strategies for the metropolitan areas of certain European cities that were being proposed at the time. The growth numbers that plans such as "Greater Helsinki" envisioned for the year 2050, trying to brand the city as one of the most dynamic metropolises in Europe, predicting a population growth from 1.3 million to 2 million, were too exuberant and too vast. However, other European cities, such as Paris, seem to be changing substantially within their metropolitan areas, their "greater" areas. Paris needs to build 70.000 new housing units per year. Mainly because of such requirements, but...

BIG & Design Partners Propose Miami Beach Square as Massive Convention Center Redevelopment

2013-05-14T19:09:00-04:00

BIG together with West 8, Fentress Architects, John Portman & Associates (JPA), Revuelta Architecture International and developers Portman-CMC have unveiled the urban planning proposal Miami Beach Square, the centerpiece of a 52-acre Miami Beach Convention Center District development. Portman-CMC is one of two development teams currently in the race for the project.

Eric Owen Moss will be a guest on HuffPost Live today at 3:30 PST to discuss cities

2013-05-14T17:59:00-04:00

Eric Moss gets to play a real-life game of Sim City. The architect's 1986 master plan for Culver City proposed 43 buildings and half are completed today. Eric joins us along with others from across the country to discuss urban revitalization.

Anywhere but Here: Deserted Banking Empire turned Skyscraper Slum

2013-05-13T14:04:00-04:00

It was built for stockbrokers and bankers in their thousand dollar suits to make million dollar deals, but for nearly two decades it has held the less impressive title of the world’s tallest squat. Welcome to the Centro Financiero Confinanzas, more commonly known as the Torre David (the Tower of David) in Caracas, Venezuela, an unfinished skyscraper which has now been colonised by an ad hoc community of over 700 families.

Growing "Fruit Activists" and "social art"

2013-05-13T13:44:00-04:00

The decision to go with “edible art” as part of a larger park renovation, rather than a standard mural, was seen as a way to foster residents’ participation, said Karly Katona, a deputy to Mark Ridley-Thomas, the local county supervisor.

Patricia Brown highlights the work of the group Fallen Fruit, particularly their recent installation of California's first public fruit park in Del Aire, outside Los Angeles. She also outlines a growing fruit-activist movement, who use urban agriculture as a way to explore issues of public health, public space and civic engagement.

Cities Of The Future, Built By Drones, Bacteria, And 3-D Printers

2013-05-08T12:43:00-04:00

*This screed is awesomely entertaining and full of cool links, even though it’s almost entirely implausible..There’s also the occasional built-from-scratch Brasilia. So, some people might build a city like this in some central-planned, high-tech rush, before realizing that urban drones, bacteria, and 3DPrinters are fated to become as old-fashioned and pokey as swoopy, Space Age Brasilia is right now. - Bruce Sterling

As part of the Futurist Forum series, Chris Arkenberg composed some vignettes, suggestive of how urban architecture(s) could transform from than the rigid construction methodologies of today, the result being that "Architecture will lose its formal rigidity, softening and flexing and getting closer to the life we see in plants".

h/t Bruce Sterling here

Cartography Made Public

2013-05-07T14:24:00-04:00

"OpenStreetMap is not about crowdsourcing, OpenStreetMap is about community collaboration. This is not you being a mindless crowd adding data to some big company’s map. This is about you putting in data in your own neighborhood, working with your neighbors, working with a larger community to refine and make a really cohesive map. That's the kind of experience that was so successful with Wikipedia."

Get to know your world and not just the restaurants.

Somewhat related: Constellations of Los Angeles

To Resurrect Penn Station, NYC Urges MSG to Move

2013-05-07T12:29:00-04:00

"While Madison Square Garden maintains that the arena special permit should continue in perpetuity, we believe the term is warranted due to the uniqueness of the site and the importance of Penn Station to the city," said Amanda Burden, the head of City Planning Department who also chairs the City Planning Commission.

The New York City Planning Commission has laid out a case for restricting a special permit to 15 years that allows Madison Square Garden to operate in the heart of Midtown. The move would hopefully restart negotiations to get "the world's most famous arena" to relocate, freeing up space to rebuild Penn Station and undo half a century of dismal train travel into New York. Jane Jacobs would be proud.

Previously:

Flushing Meadows Corona Park (for now)

2013-05-06T12:14:00-04:00

If all the various proposals come to fruition, Major League Soccer will plunk a 35,000-seat stadium on top of the Pool of Industry; the Related Companies and Sterling Equities will jointly build a 1.4 million–square–foot shopping center on parkland turned parking lot next to Citi Field, and the National Tennis Center will creep beyond its current borders

Justin Davidson reviews the Bloomberg administration's recently announced plans for Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Mr. Davidson is "skeptical of the new sugarplum visions" which would transfer about 40 acres of public land into the hands of private capital for various "goodies".

Historic Los Angeles Union Station facing renovation plans

2013-05-02T13:14:00-04:00

While high-speed rail remains an uncertain prospect in California, it is the centerpiece of four design concepts unveiled Wednesday for modernizing Union Station. Architects commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to upgrade the 77-year-old transit hub in downtown Los Angeles showed preliminary plans that put a high-speed rail system atop, beneath or alongside existing subways without compromising the character of the historic landmark.

Metro will hold a community workshop on the Union Station Master Plan at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, May 2, 2013, at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.

Previously:

Rooftop Farms to Deal with Growing Food Crisis

2013-05-01T10:34:00-04:00

Some of the most densely populated cities across the globe are tackling population growth and food shortages by establishing more rooftop farms. Vertical farms are popping up on unused rooftops in cities across the globe and the outcome is extremely positive.

Ideas and Inspiration from Ancient Rome

2013-04-30T11:12:00-04:00

In Australia, we tend to think of green building as ‘high tech’ and ‘high spec.’ However, if we take a look at ancient Roman structures, it is clear that green building was on display even then, and without all of the high tech innovations we have available to us in the 21st century.

Sunflowers, pocket parks and other ideas aim to beautify vacant lots

2013-04-29T14:44:00-04:00

If you live in any large ‘rustbelt’ city in the Midwest, and St. Louis in particular, you’re probably all too familiar with the site of vacant lots. Empty land where homes and businesses used to be present a tough challenge for cities. This weekend, ground will be broken on several projects which aim to change the way neighborhoods and cities deal with vacant property. The Washington University Sustainable Land Lab Competition chose five winning designs from 48 design submissions.

A Motor City Missionary

2013-04-26T17:38:00-04:00

According to academics like Brent D. Ryan, author of “Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities," it is one of the most ambitious privately financed urban reclamation projects in American history.

Earlier this month David Segal traveled to Detroit to look into the efforts/urban boosterim of Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans. Using his real estate company, Bedrock Real Estate Services, Mr. Segal is renovating properties, building apartments and wooing corporate tenants. The goal is to remake Detroit (or at least some of it's downtown) into a high-tech hub, full of the 'creative class', high culture and young entrepreneurs. Mr. Segal also explored the context and cause for the current crisis and interviewed some locals who worry about the creation of "two Detroits".

IABR 2014 Urban By Nature: Call for Projects

2013-04-24T12:33:00-04:00

The sixth edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, IABR–2014–URBAN BY NATURE–, opens in May 2014 in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. The Dutch landscape architect Dirk Sijmons is the curator and the theme is Urban by Nature.

The IABR calls for best practices from all over the world to support and substantiate the Biennale’s main exhibition’s narrative. Prospective participants who have designed or are designing concrete projects that deal with the relationship between man, nature and city, are invited to respond to the IABR–2014– Call for Projects–, and submit their applications by June 9, 2013.

Apply Here

Previously on Archinect:

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 1, Making City

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 2, Arnavutköy, Istanbul

Archinect Interviews George Brugmans, IABR - Part 3, São Paulo, Rotterdam and Beyond

MONU #18 ON COMMUNAL URBANISM RELEASED

2013-04-23T16:51:00-04:00

How should we live together? is the central question of this 18th issue of MONU on the topic of "Communal Urbanism", focusing on contemporary communal living in cities. (Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2013)

How should we live together? is the central question of this 18th issue of MONU on the topic of "Communal Urbanism", focusing on contemporary communal living in cities. According to Martin Abbott's contribution "Learning to Live Together", this is a question often discussed among the housemates of Berlin's 40 year old communal "Hausprojekt Walde". Rainer Langhans, one of the early members of the legendary "Kommune 1", founded in Berlin in 1967, is convinced that in the future we will live increasingly communally. He sees a growing demand for, and interest in, communal life and shared experiences as he explains in our interview with him entitled "Privacy and Ecstasy". But in contrast to his own experiences in Kommune 1, where he experienced an uninterrupted, 24/7, spiritual communal ecstasy of love, the communal life of the future will instead be characterized by temporary communities, where people meet and share spaces, facilities and experiences occasionally, similar to his own c...

What If We, Oh, Didn't Tear Down the Folk Museum Building?

2013-04-18T14:32:00-04:00

Over the last week, the architectural community has been all aflutter over the fate of the former American Folk Museum Building. A 12-year-old building that was opened just after 9/11, MoMA snatched it up for $23 million in 2011 and is planning to raze its critically acclaimed sculptural bronze facade. It's inevitable, the modern art juggernaut shrugs, because the floors of the adjacent buildings, plus the rest of MoMA uses lots of glass as its primary material rather than metal.

Over the last week, the architectural community has been all aflutter—and, okay, intensely divided—over the fate of the former American Folk Museum Building. A 12-year-old building that was opened just after 9/11 at 45 West 53rd Street, MoMA snatched it up for $23 million in 2011 and is planning to raze its critically acclaimed sculptural bronze facade (designed by Tod WIlliams Billie Tsien, who have also publicly shared their sadness). It's inevitable, the modern art juggernaut shrugs, because the floors of the adjacent buildings don't align and it will have to start from the ground-up to create a cohesive addition, plus the rest of MoMA uses lots of glass as its primary material rather than metal.

BIG Wins EuropaCity Competition

2013-04-17T17:56:00-04:00

BIG, along with fellow team members Tess, Transsolar, Base, Transitec, and Michel Forgue, has been selected to design EuropaCity, an 80-hectare cultural and commercial destination in the heart of France.

DawnTown Design/Build Competition Winner on View in Miami

2013-04-15T19:44:00-04:00

If you're in Miami these days, make sure to visit the exhibit of Up-Downtown, the winning entry of DawnTown’s inaugural Design/Build competition [...]. Up-Downtown, the successful collaboration between Jacob Brillhart (Miami, FL) and Manuel Clavel-Rojo (Murcia, Spain), interactively presents the rapid rise of downtown Miami over an extended period of time.

Olympic Displacement: Atlanta 1996 to Rio 2016

2013-04-15T17:35:00-04:00

Atlanta and Rio are but two chapters in the long history of displacement that has accompanied mega-events like the Olympics. Similar dynamics reshaped London’s Clays Lane Estate, Beijing’s hutongs, the Marousi Roma settlement in Athens, Barcelona’s Poblenou and Seoul’s hanoks. . . . Today the people of Vila Autódromo are struggling for what housing scholar-activist Chester Hartman has aptly called “the right to stay put.”

As plans unfold for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, MIT's Lawrence Vale and Annemarie Gray consider the case of Vila Autódromo, a former fishing colony on the Olympic site whose residents have organized to resist displacement. They compare ongoing events in Rio to the demolition of Atlanta's Techwood Homes, the first public housing in America, prior to the 1996 Olympics.

Too Big to Flood?

2013-04-15T12:10:00-04:00

over the next half-century these coastal megacities may grow “too big to flood.” But flood they will unless they dramatically revise their growth strategies and undertake major infrastructure projects

Bruce Stutz explores how as economic activity and populations continue to expand in coastal urban areas, particularly in Asia, hundreds of trillions of dollars of infrastructure, industrial and office buildings, and homes are increasingly at risk from intensifying storms and rising sea levels.

h/t Bruce Sterling

Melbourne Certified As A Carbon Neutral City

2013-04-08T21:05:00-04:00

The City of Melbourne has been certified carbon neutral, an important step toward its goal of becoming one of the world’s most sustainable cities. In a carbon constrained economy, councillor Arron Wood said the certification by Low Carbon Australia against the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) “was a solid demonstration of the City of Melbourne’s commitment to a more sustainable Melbourne.”

The specter of ghost buildings in London

2013-04-06T11:33:00-04:00

The salesclerk at a Belgravia clothing boutique, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want to get in trouble, said that at some times of the year the area was virtually abandoned. “We’ll shut for the whole of August,” she said.

Earlier this week Sarah Lyall explored how some neighborhoods in London have become "So Exclusive Even the Owners Are Visitors". This is because the owners are increasingly, superwealthy foreigners from places like Russia, Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and India, who are purchasing a residence either as an investment or as Yolande Barnes of the real estate firm Savills explains "It’s more like buying their own private hotel" for their occasional visit to London.

As Bruce Sterling (h/t) commented over at his blog "the Gothic High-Tech soulless barns of the offshored ultra-wealthy. A city that once thrived by financialization is seeing its citizens replaced by money. It would be even more interesting if the entities owning these structures were themselves financial instruments, and never human to begin with. Maybe these 'ultraprime' structures could be purchased and owned by quant algorithms, stockmarket style"

Building a better big box

2013-04-03T16:41:00-04:00

D’Hooghe, a Belgian-born architect and director of the Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT, cares deeply about urban form and the large-scale issues cities face in achieving more efficient energy use, better transportation and less congestion. One of his main concerns is better integrating suburbs with the larger metropolitan areas in which they exist.

Shedding its Fusty Architectural Past, Philly Welcomes Nordic Starchitect Snøhetta

2013-03-28T19:40:00-04:00

The latest evidence of Philadelphia’s architectural comeback? The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta is coming to town for a project at Temple University. “We have a fantastic tradition of quality architeture and urbanism in Philadelphia, but we do go through low ebbs in that tradition,” says Harris Steinberg, the executive director of PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.

The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta has designed some of the most notable buildings and public spaces in the world over the last 15 years. The new Oslo Opera House. Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina. A reconfigured Times Square in New York, and a massive expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Next up? Temple University’s library, on a still-gritty stretch of Broad Street between Montgomery and Norris in North Philadelphia. Snøhetta director and co-founder Craig Dykers is delivering a lecture on campus next week, sharing some of his firm’s work with Temple students and a general audience of designers, architects and urbanists.

Dykers might shed some light on Snøhetta’s early stage thinking for the library project, but design work has not yet begun, so don’t expect any renderings.

Even so, Dykers is likely to address a full house. The Oslo-based firm, which was featured in a glowing 5,400-word New Yorker profile in January, is very much in vogue. Plenty of its...

World’s Largest Solar Towers Take to the Sun

2013-03-27T20:38:00-04:00

California will soon be home to the world’s two largest solar towers through an ambitious project known as The Palen Solar Electrical Generating System. The announcement was made shortly after the US Department of Interior announced the country was to add 1.1 gigawatts to its clean energy capacity. California has also committed to have a third of their power must be derived from renewable sources by the year 2030.