Archinect - News

Navy Pier remake adds urban park elements

2013-05-20T14:53:00-04:00

Some members of Chicago's design community have said privately that the Navy Pier project's parameters, which limited the scope of changes, stifled creative possibilities, even for highly regarded designers such as Corner. "Anything that makes it more parklike is all to the good," said eclectic Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman. "It can only go up, architecturally."

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.

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.

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

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".

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.

Design Community Responds to Museum of Modern Art Decision on Folk Art Museum

2013-04-18T14:23:00-04:00

Almost as soon as the news broke last week that the Museum of Modern Art planned to demolish the former American Folk Art Museum, a movement emerged to save it. Members of the design community—including the architects who designed the building—are registering their discontent with the decision. More than one petition is now circulating to rescue the Folk Art building as a result.

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.

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.

The Story Behind the Seagram Building

2013-04-08T13:43:00-04:00

Reading this was for me an epiphany. I could see, almost in a flash, the unity of building and landscape developing throughout Mies’s building art, ultimately morphing into the podium that binds the Seagram tower to the urban landscape — plaza, platform, an oasis amid the chaos of New York. This led me to reevaluate the importance of surrounding context, in Mies’s architecture throughout his career and to understand in a new light some of his statements, drawings, and photomontages.

"What led Mies to create the union of skyscraper and plaza on Park Avenue, a binding together so profoundly important in his oeuvre?" On Places, in an excerpt from the new book Building Seagram, Phyllis Lambert recounts the evolution of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's architectural philosophy, from his early years in Berlin to the postwar American projects; in particular she explores his deep concern for the interrelationship between architecture and landscape, which culminated in his design for the Seagram Building.

Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Outdoors" Pinterest Board

2013-03-22T13:53:00-04:00

In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.

Today's top images (in no particular order) are from the board Outdoors.

↑ Brooks Residence in Venice, CA by Duvivier Architects

↑ Warren Street Townhouse in Brooklyn, NY by Resolution: 4 Architecture

↑ Amagansett House in New York, NY by Kevin O'Sullivan + Associates; Photo: Paul Raeside

↑ Unite/Unire (winner of the MAXXI Young Architects Program 2012) in Rome, Italy by Urban Movement Design New York (team member: Michael Caton); Photo by Cecilia Fiorenza

↑ DNA Model Management in New York, NY by Calvert Wright Architecture | Spatial Discipline; Photo: Bjorg Magnea

↑ Dakhleh Excavation House in Dakhleh, Egypt by Utopus Studio

↑ Private Residence in Paradise Valley, AZ by cmda design bureau inc

↑ LOW3 in Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain, a design and resear...

"Reality Check" Premiere

2013-03-07T12:29:00-05:00

In 2012, filmmaker Leon Gerskovic chronicled the journey of 16 design/buildLAB students as they conceived and realized the Masonic Amphitheatre. The project, a charitable undertaking, consisted of the complete redevelopment of a post-industrial brownfield into a public park and performance space. Reality Check is their inspirational story.

"Reality Check" a 45-minute documentary about the conception and realization of the Masonic Amphitheatre by the students in Virginia Tech's design/buildLAB will premiere on March 28th at 7PM at VT's Hancock Auditorium. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with filmmaker Leon Gerskovic.

Free and open to the public!

Go to www.realitycheckfilm.com for more information or to schedule a free screening at your own venue.

Stewart Hollenstein & Colin Stewart Architects Win Sydney’s Green Square Library Competition

2013-02-27T19:00:00-05:00

The City of Sydney has just announced the winning team in the international competition to design a new library and plaza for Green Square, one of the city's major new developments. The jury, including famed architects John Denton, George Hargreaves, and Pritzker Prize winner Glenn Murcutt, selected the entry by Stewart Hollenstein in association with Colin Stewart Architects from a field of 167 entrants from 29 countries.

Our Parks Are Not for Sale

2013-02-17T17:15:00-05:00

Community activism that simply nibbles at the edges is not enough. Small-scale rebellions can raise consciousness and help bring needed improvements to cities, but what we really need is a revolution.

In the Winter 2013 issue of Dissent (the quarterly magazine of politics and ideas), Alex Ulam follows a thread From the Gold Coast of New York to the Venice Biennale. He argues Spontaneous Interventions "was not an outlier at the Biennale" but indicative of a general movement in support of the "Right to the City". Mr. Ulam then lays out a frame, wherein, the fact that many "municipal parks agencies have become charity cases", a new awareness of POPs, plus the continued selling off of corporate naming rights, are all examples of cities "being redesigned to benefit moneyed interests".

Sydney’s New Icon | Barangaroo?

2013-02-15T15:06:00-05:00

Billionaire businessman, James Packer has shortlisted four of the world’s best architects (Adrian Smith + Gill Architecture, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Renzo Piano and Wilkinson Eyre Architects) to bid to design and build the urban masterpiece that will be Crown Sydney. The proposed $1 billion six-star Crown Sydney resort will be a dramatic addition to Sydney’s skyline and be built across a giant 6,000 square metre site in Barangaroo.

Going With the Flow

2013-02-14T11:12:00-05:00

Another way to phrase it is that hard decisions need to be made to cope with rising waters and severe weather. Notwithstanding the obvious difference between a group of farmers on a Dutch polder and communities in the Rockaways or Coney Island, good government makes those decisions while giving affected residents adequate knowledge and agency: the ability to make choices, and the responsibility to live by them.

Gowanus by Design: WATER_WORKS Competition Winners

2013-02-13T18:09:00-05:00

Winning projects in three categories have been announced in Gowanus by Design's latest competition, WATER_WORKS. The brief called for solutions specific to Brooklyn's Gowanus area that simultaneously explored the role of water in recreation, quotidian uses, and in contaminated urban environments, and demonstrated how a redesigned community center and retention facility represent a more progressive view of the city's infrastructure.

UPDATE: Gowanus by Design: WATER_WORKS Competition Exhibit Opens Tomorrow

The Emergence of Container Urbanism

2013-02-13T14:33:00-05:00

In its most far-reaching aspects, container urbanism proposes to take the fundamental organic/architectural condition of containment further by exploring how a boundary might be better coordinated, even merged with the flow of material/ideas. Can containment equate more closely with transmission and, in so doing, position architecture and urbanism more in line with societal mobility and change?

The repurposed shipping container has become a fixture of urban architecture — part of a movement, as Mitchell Schwarzer argues, toward an "urban design as flexible, responsive and electric as the currents that feed it."

On Places, Schwarzer examines the rise of container urbanism from the mid 20th century to now, from Archigram and the Metabolists in the '60s to the pop-up markets and modular housing of today; and he sees in this latest phase a "landmark change" for architecture.

"By facilitating an almost instant building complex," he writes, "the containers put architectural production more in sync with the speed and transitoriness of contemporary life, forcing it to respond to a city’s many complex, adaptive systems."

MIT launches new research center on advanced urbanism

2013-02-12T18:57:00-05:00

Interdisciplinary teams will focus on the planning, design, construction and retrofitting of urban environments for the 21st century.

Already, the world is becoming predominantly urban. However, the dominant form of urban living will be very similar to our older suburban regions in the U.S. This places substantial pressure on American suburban models, the dominant model of urban development copied worldwide, to set a better example of sustainability. This is even more critical as economic development grows robust middle classes in developing countries who expect more from their living environments.

To address the urgent need for better models of urban growth, the MIT School of Architecture + Planning is launching a major new research center focused on the planning, design, construction and retrofitting of urban environments for the 21st century.

Under the leadership of center director Alexander D’Hooghe and research director Alan Berger – professors of architecture and of urban design and landscape architecture, respectively – the Center for Advanced Urbanism will coordinate collaborations among existing eff...

Fendi To Rescue Crumbling Trevi Fountain

2013-02-07T11:47:00-05:00

Luxury fashion will meet Roman architecture as Italian fashion house Fendi has pledged €2.1 million to restore five of Rome’s beloved fountains, including the iconic Trevi Fountain. Fendi, founded in Rome in the 1920s, is now part of French luxury giant LVMH. The fashion house opted to invest in restoring one of Rome’s architectural treasures due to a self-described “deep bond with the Eternal City.”

SCAPE Wins Lexington Town Branch Commons Competition

2013-02-06T18:36:00-05:00

A five-member jury has selected the winner of the Town Branch Commons Design Competition in Lexington, Kentucky. The brief calls for the creation of a long, serpentine park following the path of a historic stream in downtown Lexington. From a shortlist of five finalists, the entry "Reviving Town Branch" by SCAPE / Landscape Architecture team was chosen as the winning proposal.

Other finalists were Coen+Partners, Minneapolis; Civitas, Denver; Inside Outside: Petra Blaisse, Amsterdam; and JDS / Julien De Smedt Architects, Copenhagen.

Previously: Five teams shortlisted for Town Branch Commons in Lexington, Kentucky

Richardson-Olmsted Complex Reuse to Include Boutique Hotel

2013-01-28T15:29:00-05:00

The redevelopment of the Richardson Olmsted Complex will...transform the former Buffalo State Hospital from a place of healing to one of hospitality. The design builds upon Olmsted's original intent while conserving existing resources, preserving the fabric of the space, and creating connections and purpose.

West 8 wins Fort Mason ideas competition

2013-01-25T19:55:00-05:00

The design competition to bring fresh life to San Francisco's Fort Mason Center has been won by a team that proposes such twists as a floating pool and a pedestrian bridge to Marina Green.

Competition for a Toronto High Line

2013-01-24T13:04:00-05:00

In New York City, an elevated freight rail lane in west Manhattan became the High Line, a celebrated linear park running through a busy part of the borough. Design firm Workshop Architecture hopes that one of Toronto’s hydro corridors can be similarly transformed into a continuous recreation area for Toronto’s pedestrians and cyclists, and that an international contest soliciting ideas for the space will help hasten the process.

In Buffalo, One Man's Living Museum

2013-01-24T00:16:00-05:00

In 2009, Dennis Maher... bought an abandoned property from D’Youville College for $10,000...After he sorted through the junk he found inside, he began to build, reconfiguring the pieces of things like a home entertainment center...and dollhouse furniture... He attached the structures he created to the floors, walls and ceilings, like Joseph Cornell sculptures run amok...You can sense dust bunnies everywhere swelling with importance.

L.A. imagined: The city that isn't

2013-01-23T20:12:00-05:00

It all leads one to ponder the what-if Los Angeles, to imagine the city that would exist today if the best proposals for remedying its ailments had been realized. Los Angeles would now include a ring of thousands of acres of urban and regional parks, a bold, space-age airport, a winged nature center for Griffith Park and hillside housing developments sculpted to the contours of the landscape rather than sitting on graded and terraced scars. We would be living in a very different city.

Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell talk about their co-curated show, Never Built: Los Angeles, which is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

How Will the Lowline Make the Leap From Idea to Reality?

2013-01-23T20:01:00-05:00

... calling the Lowline a "park" isn't totally accurate. It would be a culture park that hosts art shows, performances, and events, and it would be tied to the neighborhood gallery scene. Preliminary designs call for a densely planted "ramble," but this would be accompanied by a gallery, plaza, and connecting grassy common. The whole site is currently dotted with support columns, and the design would remove ten of these to created a 5,000-square-foot column-free plaza.

Phase 1 of The Wharf Underway in DC; Perkins Eastman Leads as Master Planner

2013-01-21T15:31:00-05:00

Hoffman-Madison Waterfront, the master developer of the 3.2 million square foot Southwest Waterfront project (“The Wharf”), announced today the approval of its Phase 1 Planned Unit Development (PUD) by the District of Columbia Zoning Commission. The Zoning Commission’s action approves all of the architectural designs and specific plans for each parcel of the project’s first phase encompassing 1.5 million square feet of residential, hotel, office and retail uses along with three piers, numerous open spaces, gathering places and a 3-acre waterfront park.

“The unanimous approval last night by the commissioners participating in the hearings is exhilarating. It creates momentum for ground breaking later this year,” said Monty Hoffman, Managing Member of Hoffman-Madison Waterfront. “After more than six years of planning and substantial investment, we are preparing to launch one of the highest profile redevelopments in the country. We are ready to put shovels in the ground for this $...

Bristol's architect mayor wants the city to be a 'laboratory for change'

2013-01-21T14:11:00-05:00

"I'm going to be intolerant of bad architecture," he says, describing how the former head of planning was a highways engineer who "let anything and everything through – including office blocks stacked on top of multistorey car parks. "My idea of good architecture is about creating place. It's not about providing glitzy iconic buildings, competing one against the other, but how we use the best of what we've got."

Copenhagen’s Superkilen Urban Park by BIG + Topotek1 + Superflex

2013-01-16T14:00:00-05:00

Earlier this week, we published the winners of the 2013 AIA Institute Honor Awards with eight projects from around the world being recognized in the category "Regional and Urban Design." One of the lucky award winners is Superkilen, an urban park master plan in Copenhagen designed by BIG in collaboration with landscape architects Topotek1 and artists' group Superflex.