Archinect - News

NBBJ designs biospheres for Amazon's Seattle headquarters

2013-05-21T18:44:00-04:00

Reminiscent of a greenhouse or conservatory, the three intersecting biodomes replace an earlier plan for a six-story office building and would establish a visual focus and “heart” for the three-block project, according to plans filed with the city. The spheres will offer “a plant-rich environment” filled with species from mountainous ecologies around the globe, chosen for their “ability to coexist in a microclimate that also suits people,” according to the plans.

Houston court awards home design firm $1.3 million in architectural copyright case

2013-05-21T17:11:00-04:00

The jury in the United States District Court in Houston found that Frontier committed copyright infringement by constructing and marketing nineteen houses that infringed Hewlett’s copyrighted designs. Frontier’s owner, Ronald Wayne Bopp, was also held personally liable for Frontier’s activities. The amount of the judgment was based on the amount of profits Frontier earned from the sales of houses that infringed Hewlett’s copyrights.

Coming this June: James Turrell Reimagines FLW’s Guggenheim Rotunda

2013-05-20T17:45:00-04:00

In his first solo exhibition in a New York museum since 1980, American artist James Turrell sets out to reimagine the iconic rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in a dramatic transformation. The luminous and immersive site-specific work, Aten Reign, will be part of the upcoming exhibition James Turrell at NYC's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum which opens on June 21, 2013.

Why Is China Stealing Cities, Towns, and Buildings?

2013-05-20T17:37:00-04:00

A lot of Chinese people look up to the West as an ideal, so the construction of these towns could be seen as a way of accelerating their progress; a quick way of achieving through emulation.

POST+CAPITALIST CITY 4#Move - Winning Projects

2013-05-20T14:30:00-04:00

The international ideas competition series POST+CAPITALIST CITY has announced the winners of its last quarter, 4#Move. Previous installments focused on the issues of 1#Shop, 2#Work, and 3#Live.

Previously:

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.

What is the future of the library?

2013-05-16T18:36:00-04:00

For the first time since Henri Labrouste (1801-1875), currently the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, formulated the conception of the new, democratic library, the central library is fighting for survival. The relevance of these gloriously inflated book boxes is being questioned in an age that looks to the Internet for its intellectual resources.

Life-size Barbie Dreamhouse opens in Berlin

2013-05-16T18:27:00-04:00

The first life-size Barbie Dreamhouse opened in Berlin on Thursday and is being guarded by police after feminist groups and left-wing activists said they would picket the plastic villa.

Previously on Archinect:

Hirshhorn ‘Bubble’ risks operating at a loss, internal Smithsonian report says

2013-05-16T13:13:00-04:00

The Hirshhorn Museum’s proposed Seasonal Inflatable Structure, also known as “the Bubble,” a project announced in 2009 and intended as an architecturally and culturally transformative space on the Mall, would operate at a loss in each of three scenarios examined in an assessment done by the Smithsonian.

“We’ve said from the beginning, and the secretary [G. Wayne Clough] has said it, this is a bold project,” said Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for history, art and culture. “We’ve encouraged this, but it has to be raised by private money. In terms of doing that, we’re still trying to raise money for construction of the Inflatable Structure. We’ve been at this for some years. We hope its time has come now, but if not, we look forward to a better time.”

She may favor Brutalist forms...

2013-05-15T11:37:00-04:00

the 40-year-old architect has emerged as one of the country’s major creative voices, building an eclectic portfolio of work that includes a 10,000-square-foot neo-Brutalist palazzo, the master plan for an art-filled botanical garden and a spiritual refuge in the Jalisco Mountains. The projects vary wildly in attitude and style

Nicolai Ouroussoff profiled the Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao, for the NYT, T Magazine "Hot Summer" travel edition.

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...

The Roman Catholic Church is coming to the Venice Biennale

2013-05-14T20:44:00-04:00

The Vatican’s presence at the Biennale is the brainchild of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an exuberant polymath who as president of the Pontifical Council for Culture since 2009 has tried to build bridges between the church and contemporary culture, two worlds that have often clashed.

China's 'ghost mall'

2013-05-14T20:15:00-04:00

The New South China Mall was once promoted as the world's biggest mall, but it's now pretty much deserted.

Isotopes v.02 Is An Audiovisual Cage

2013-05-14T20:01:00-04:00

Design studio Nonotak—Noémi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto—have created an installation, called Isotopes v.02, which is a reaction to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that happened back in 2011. The piece featured at Geneva's 2013 Mapping Festival and consists of projected light which entices the viewer to investigate further. But, once the unsuspecting visitor has headed towards the light like a moth to the flame, they become trapped in this beguiling maze...

Eclectic Revisited: Preserving Venice's Architectural Context

2013-05-14T18:35:00-04:00

In Venice, Sandmeier wanted to tell the story of a whole neighborhood, not just emphasize the architectural merits of any one structure, and in doing so build a history of architects and artists working together. "Buildings are important for different reasons. Sometimes it's the architecture, sometimes it is the history, and sometimes it is the context," she explains. "Venice is a place with such rich cultural context that underlies the whole community, there is a lot to talk about."

Mimi Zeiger reports from the self-guided tour "Venice Eclectic: Modern Architecture from the '70s and '80s", part of "Curating the City Modern Architecture in L.A.," the Conservancy's ongoing contribution to Pacific Standard Time: Modern Architecture in Los Angeles.

A classroom for the 21st century: where are the best places for learning?

2013-05-14T18:21:00-04:00

... how does using a different physical space have an impact on learning? Bosch argued that changing the environment helps teachers and students to break free from old habits: "One of the things you can do is create an environment where you cannot function the same way as you used to. What happens when you go out of the school into a theatre, you have to improvise. When you improvise, you start learning and developing."

Fred Bernstein reviews "Phyllis Lambert’s Building Seagram"

2013-05-13T18:37:00-04:00

As Seagram’s director of planning, Lambert visited the site daily. “I had intended to go back to Paris, but I stayed in New York, convinced that if the one person who really cared about the building was not there, Mies would not build Seagram,” she says. With Lambert as his protector and Johnson as his assistant, Mies went on to create in 1958 the Seagram building, a landmark of 20th-century architecture.

Flatpack homes offer Dutch first-time buyers chance to get on housing ladder

2013-05-13T18:36:00-04:00

Choosing your dream home has become as simple as picking furniture from the Ikea catalogue for residents of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where a neighbourhood of affordable architect-designed kit houses has just been launched. Aimed at first-time buyers, the city's "I build affordable in Nijmegen" initiative has paired 20 architects with building companies to produce about 30 designs – from detached timber cabins to redbrick terraced houses – with a construction cost of as little as €115,000.

From 8A Architecten, the archtiects, "8A designed houses for first time buyers for the IbbN-program in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. ‘IbbN’ stands for ‘Ik bouw betaalbaar in Nijmegen’, translated in English as ‘I build affordable in Nijmegen’. This is a special program for first time buyers on the housing market who like to build their own house. With this program everyone with an income between € 30.000,- and € 47.000,- a year, gets a chance to build their own house."

More information about the project can be seen here, at it's dedicated website: www.ikbouwbetaalbaarmet8a.nl

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.

Architectural Photography without Architecture

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

Slowly it dawned on me that this was not a photograph of a real building but a total digital fabrication. I was shocked, not in a moralistic way but, rather, with amazement at the masterful deception and amused pique at being fooled.

The technologies of representing architecture have advanced steadily over the years, from drawing to photography to digital rendering — and have lately taken a new leap.

On Places, Belmont Freeman argues, "the crafts of architectural rendering and photography have now merged into a common activity of digital image-making — so completely that one can conceive a work of architecture and produce a 'photograph' of it without having to go through the expensive, tedious and corrupting intermediate step of actually building the building. Welcome to the world of architectural photography without architecture."

He discusses the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibitions "After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age" and "Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop"; the MoMA exhibition "9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design," and recent books of photography by Frédéric Chauban and Ezra Stoller.

...

BERLIN SOLIDARITY! FREE COOPER UNION!

2013-05-12T19:51:00-04:00

As alumni living abroad in Berlin, we stand In solidarity with the students occupying the presidents office. We are moved by the actions of the occupying students, enraged by the actions of the Board of Trustees, President Bharucha, and former President Campbell. We are demonstrating outside of John Hejduk's Kreuzberg Tower to symbolize the legacy of Cooper Union and the global reach of free education. Long live Cooper Union, demand free education!

On May 12th Cooper Union alumni in Berlin gathered in front of the Kreuzberg Tower, designed by John Hejduk to show solidarity with Free Cooper Union. This action is in correlation with a student occupation of 50+ students who have currently been occupying the president of Cooper Union, Jamshed Bharuch’s office, since May 8th. The recent string of protests, and petition of no confidence in the president, is in reaction to Cooper’s Board of Trustees decision to charge tuition for the first time in the historically free school, and a variety of other community grievances with the administration and Board of Trustees.

The Kreuzberg Tower was part of the Inernational BauAfstellung Program in 1987, and is one of John Hejduk’s very few built works. The founder and first Dean of Cooper’s Architecture school, John Hejduk viewed the Cooper Union as a spiritual space, “A place that believes one of society's prime social responsibilities is towards learning and education in the deepest se...

MoMA reconsiders razing of Folk Art Museum, hands decision over to newly selected architects DS+R

2013-05-09T17:12:00-04:00

AFTER impassioned protests from prominent architects, preservationists and design critics, the Museum of Modern Art said on Thursday that it would reconsider its decision to demolish its next-door neighbor, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum, to make room for an expansion.

In a board meeting on Thursday morning, the directors were told that a board committee had selected the design firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro to handle the expansion and to help determine whether to keep any of the existing structure.

Prison Architect and the moral dilemmas of a prison simulator

2013-05-09T11:38:00-04:00

“Part of the research I did for that game is I went around to Alcatraz in San Francisco because I wanted to have a level where you break into a prison,” Chris Delay, one of Introversion’s co-founders said in an interview. “I started working on how to simulate a prison and how it was going to work. It was then that it occurred to me that building a prison was quite good fun, and that it shouldn’t be, but it is.”

Libeskind's design selected for Columbus Holocaust memorial

2013-05-08T17:58:00-04:00

The specially appointed Holocaust Memorial Artist Selection Committee overwhelmingly favored Daniel Libeskind’s design for an 18-foot tall brushed stainless-steel memorial accompanied by a 40-foot walkway and memorial words etched in limestone.

After a daylong meeting in which the panel heard extensive presentations from all three artists, Richard H. Finan, chairman of the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board, which will make the final decision on the design, strongly opposed Libeskind’s proposal. He said a memorial with a Jewish religious symbol would immediately open the state to legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations because of the separation of church and state.

The physical architecture of the Internet Archive

2013-05-08T15:08:00-04:00

This film was shot in October last year when the Internet Archive celebrated a landmark --10 petabytes of stored media. Tour the space, which still looks more like a church than a library and see where millions of books are digitized and stored in a facility in Richmond, CA.

How zoning affects the wealth gap

2013-05-08T12:40:00-04:00

A "snob zone" is a place that uses restrictive zoning in a residential area to keep certain types of housing -- and therefore people -- out, says Lisa Prevost. Prevost’s book, Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate, comes out today and focuses on several towns in the Northeast [...]. For instance, one zoning law considered by the town would require people to have a minimum lot size of four acres in the town.

Richard Meier Reflects on His Last 50 Years, With Retrospective Opening in Italy

2013-05-08T12:39:00-04:00

I’m very happy to see all the works on display, and we’re busier now than we were then. We’re looking at things that we’re doing in the future. I think it’s good to be able to share so much of the work we have done that people wouldn’t otherwise come in contact with it. The exhibitions are good in that respect. We have all this stuff. Why keep it in the office? Send it out.

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

A journalist remembers Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez

2013-05-07T13:33:00-04:00

Architecture and journalism, like politics, sometimes make strange bedfellows.

"Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, the great Mexican builder who died April 16 at age 94, was responsible for many of the monumental public works that defined the Modernist look and aspirations of his country in the post-World War II era. Among his projects were the stunning Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec Park, the Azteca stadium, the Basilica de Guadalupe (all in Mexico City), the Museo Amparo in Puebla and the Centro Cultural de Tijuana."

Elena Poniatowska interview in La Jornada.

On the Folk Art Museum: Save Modernism from the Modern

2013-05-07T13:20:00-04:00

The Modernism worth pursuing — worth protecting — is the one where Gregor Samsa wakes up transformed into a large insect, and ends up with an apple embedded in his carapace, which is exactly what the Folk Art Museum is to the Museum of Modern Art, right now, right where it is.

On Places, David Heymann presents an incisive critique of MoMA's decision to raze the Folk Art Museum building, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

From a quiet beginning — "Here is why I think the American Folk Art Museum is a great Modernist building" — Heymann works his way to a pointed conclusion: "Modernism in the architecture of the Modern is just another sad Historical Revival Style, the very thing Modernism as an ideology set out so intently to destroy."