Archinect - News

Editor's Picks #310

2013-04-09T12:04:00-04:00

For the latest entry in the ShowCase series Archinect published the Shrine of the Virgin of "La Antigua" by Otxotorena Arquitectos. The project is located in Alberite, La Rioja, Spain and the architects main constraint was the need to "incorporate a preexisting stone archway in the design. This archway was rescued from a previous demolition in the town and it was preserved by the locals".

Donna Sink exclaimed "Wow, wow. I love it. Love the multiple arcade forms and multiple striations and similar but different textures...Would love to see a floorplan if there is one?".

News

The LA Times reported that the Watts Towers in South Los Angeles will be the subject of a new study conducted by experts from UCLA to determine the stability of the historic sculptures.

Orhan Ayyüce shared these words "In my opinion it is the most beautiful and meaningful public art in Los Angeles that people neglected for decades" and a photo.

The Plain Dealer /Cleveland.com announced th...

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...

SFMOMA: Reimagining the Civic

2012-12-03T11:47:00-05:00

RE-IMAGINING THE CIVIC
A profound breakdown in trust between publics and institutions is one of the defining hallmarks of our time. Cultural organizations can respond to this crisis by acting as mediating agencies and imaginatively bridging and building interfaces across divided constituencies. In making public this graphic analysis of our internal thinking process at Slought, we offer suggestions as to how small and large organizations alike can respond to this challenge.

In our activities at Slought, we continually reflect on and draw insight from the variety of economies employed in our communities, ranging from the formal to the informal. We also foreground conversation and consensus as methodologies of engagement, as well as collaboration and partnership across cultural, intellectual, and advocacy-based communities. These strategies have enabled us and our collaborators to survive and flourish over these past 10 years, despite the socio-political tenor of many of our proje...

WAI Think Tank Video "Généalogie d'un collage"

2012-12-02T13:07:00-05:00

WAI Architecture Think Tank has released the video narrative “Généalogie d'un collage”. The video displays the creation of the collage ‘Cities of the Avant-Garde’ as well as one of the poems that were developed with the iconic image.

Music:
Asap Rocky “Peso” (2011)
Jan Garbarek & Agnes Buen Garnas “Rosensfole” (1988)
www.wai-architecture.com
www.waithinktank.com

Cities Without Ground

2012-11-26T11:37:00-05:00

Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook is a new book that maps 32 networks of interconnected above- and below-ground pedestrian walkways in Hong Kong. Written by a team of architects (Jonathan D Solomon, Clara Wong, and Adam Frampton) and recently published by ORO Editions, the book consists of a series of intricate drawings that display the variety and extent of Hong Kong's public space.

Dead End on Shakin’ Street

2012-10-18T14:43:00-04:00

because they (NPR) always seem to believe they are saying something really fresh and profound about a place or a “scene” when they tag it thus. But the real force behind our mania for the vibrant is the nation’s charitable foundations. For organized philanthropy, “vibrant” seems to have become the one-stop solution for all that ails the American polis.

Thomas Frank comments on "vibrant cities" and on their fallacy in an article for the Baffler. The role of arts and creative class in most recent euphoric city makings are closely analyzed and exposed. "Vibrant" equaling to "thriving" and hollow?

Somewhat related "Gin Fizz Urbanism"

Why cities want parks in the sky

2012-10-11T16:35:00-04:00

It has been so popular that other cities are following suit, with plans to replicate the formula in London. What is the secret of its success?

Following the success of NYC High Line park/project, cities around the world from: London, Chicago, Philadelphia and Rotterdam are looking to replicate their own versions. Robin Banerji reports that some are even hoping to use "more besides disused railways". She also touches on some of the value added results of the park's success.

Photo via the http://www.thehighline.org/galleries/images/high-line-flickr-pool

Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities And Stack Them Sideways

2012-09-13T16:12:00-04:00

It's not that I'm disappointed in New York, not at all. I love walking Manhattan's grid system, but now that I've seen Armelle Caron's bottom-up version of Istanbul, all those crooked, lopsided, curvaceous streets, going off in so many directions, I can't help wondering, what would it be like to wander there? Would I be constantly lost? Would every turn be an adventure? Suddenly I can't help it. I want to go.

The Ideology of Publication / Conversation with Bernd Upmeyer

2012-08-14T13:09:00-04:00

Urbanism is one of those malleable concepts that defy definition. A flexible subject where, by trying to lock it within a specific scope, its validity sometimes gets undermined and its potential spoiled.

But when a magazine develops and maintains its own way to portray the multiple faces, forms, shapes, relationships, arguments, contradictions, images, consequences, and messages of the discipline that is supposed to carry the unbearable load of thinking the city, then the exercise of defining urbanism becomes an enriching intellectual journey.

MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) was born in 2004 in Rotterdam. What was originally an almost underground magazine made available through a pdf dossier and a stapled black and white print has evolved into one of the main independent publications, a reference for the collective intelligence of urbanism, and an icon of exquisite aesthetics.

Set to satisfy a growing urbanophilic hunger, MONU has thrown into the mix an intoxicating mixture o...

The Architecture of Photography - Conversation with Simona Rota

2012-07-30T15:04:00-04:00

From the eroded optimism of the heroic building-monuments in east-Europe, to the monochromatic banality of housing developments in the Canary Islands, the photographs of Simona Rota appear to be talking to us about the aspirations and shortcomings of architecture in both its megalomaniac and its quotidian streams.
Often lacking human presence, the photographs tell a tale of evaporated intentions, and failed dreams, making through the images a visual statement about the power of humanity to create, alter, and transform our environment.

Images of architecture about topics that transcend architecture, projects like Ostalgia, Instant Village, and Placelessness take us to a personal journey through some of the faces of modernity in Europe, while revealing simultaneously the seducing beauty of its ugliness, and the vulnerability of its invincible architectures.
We are drawn towards the fantastic journey of an upcoming visual story teller that equally dazzles us with an image of the ...

How Thomas Jefferson Made L.A.

2012-07-09T15:48:00-04:00

Another bigger picture repercussion of the Act is the cognitive and cartographic dissonance that occurs in Los Angeles where the Jeffersonian city grid abuts a pre-existing Spanish or French grid.

KCET's Jeremy Rosenberg continues his column Departures with a running theme "Laws That Shaped LA" with Rhett Beavers, ASLA, who elaborates on the conjunction of several grid types as they have influenced the way Los Angeles constructed and experienced.

Nations first high speed rail approved in California State Senate

2012-07-07T00:14:00-04:00

California has grabbed a golden opportunity to build the nation’s first high-speed rail system, create the backbone of a new, clean 21st century transportation system and support our future economic growth.

After a tough quarrels and special interest maneuvers, the State of California cleared the hurdles to lead the nation for a faster and more connected future. The high speed rail will have major impact on California's economy and its future urban developments. It could very well be the end of architecture's dry decade. Employers; gear up. Employees; apply.

The first segment of the line will run from Madera to Bakersfield. The final cost of the completed project from Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $68 billion.

Dark realities lurking in Vancouver

2012-06-22T12:47:00-04:00

What people said concerned them the most was a growing sense of isolation and disconnection. They said we live increasingly in silos, separated by ethnicity, culture, language, income, age and even geography. They lamented what they saw as a deepening civic malaise that has resulted in more people retreating from community activities. They said this corrosion of caring and social isolation hurts them personally and hurts their community.

Regardless of its textbook urban success with its new buildings, neighborhoods, geography and living standards, Vancouver also faces some disturbing truths about creeping isolation, loneliness, racial and ethnic intolerance and other psychosocial urban perils. Perhaps these are due to over gentrification and other actions, but recent survey by the Vancouver Foundation focuses on some tough issues in the community and raises critical questions most other economically developed cities are also facing.

Did hi-end urbanization become a socially divisive trend? Sort of walled living for the individuals with their own kind? And what would the long term effects of these new problems be?

Somethings to ponder as we call this "an urban century" and most urbanisms these days are associated with "upgrading" the neighborhoods.

Dirk Sijmons To Curate 6Th IABR

2012-06-13T20:55:00-04:00

Looking at the city through the lens of landscape architecture allows us a clear view of the situation. There is just one course of action available to us: if we are to resolve the world’s ecological problems we first need to resolve the problems facing our cities. And the only way we can reach these solutions is by naming and researching them in terms of the metabolism of the city.

-Dirk Sijmons, renowned landscape architect and former Governmental Advisor on Landscape, has been appointed curator of the next edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. The 6th IABR has the working title “URBAN by NATURE” and opens in May 2014.

It focuses on the ‘natural’ character of the city as human biotope. By examining the metabolism of the urban organism, the 6th IABR explores the relationship between city and nature whilst also reflecting on city as nature. The city as nature, as a metabolism, not only comprises the built environment, but the broader context: the landscape that is the material condition for our urban society.-

A Field Guide to AC Units

2012-05-04T19:31:00-04:00

Though it pervades the landscape of many of our cities, we rarely appreciate how window units continue to shape our homes and street walls. The basic design of a window unit has remained mostly the same since it appeared on the market in 1935 – that is to say, functional and bland. But instead of designing a more elegant object, we have allowed AC units to become visual background noise.

European Prize for Urban Public Space 2012 Announces Joint Winners

2012-04-30T17:58:00-04:00

The Jury of the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2012, chaired by Spanish architect Josep Llinàs, has announced two joint First Prize winners [...]. The European Prize for Urban Public Space is an award created by the CCCB in 2000 to acknowledge and encourage the creation and recovery of public spaces in European cities, and to highlight urbanistic interventions that promote the public dimension of urban space and its role in social integration.

Imploding the Pruitt-Igoe Myth

2012-01-20T21:22:00-05:00

Nearly 40 years after its destruction, the people interviewed for the film continue to wrestle with Pruitt-Igoe's legacy and its place in their lives. They love it and hate it, but don't resent it. Despite the piles of trash, mountains of drugs, and preponderance of crime, this was their home. For some, it was their first proper dwelling.

IKEA Urbanism: A New Era In Urban Design?

2011-12-19T20:29:59-05:00

IKEA has proposed to build a complete neighborhood in East London. The Swedish furniture giant tries to implement its ideas and concepts in new fields of knowledge and urbanism. After its injection of each single family’s interior with cheap design furniture and the introduction of the IKEA standard house by daughter company BoKlok, it seems to be time for a complete IKEA neighborhood...

And the Winner of the 2012 TED Prize is…City 2.0

2011-12-07T15:06:01-05:00

The winner of the 2012 TED Prize has just been announced, and being awarded is not a single person, but - for the first time in the history of the prize - a collaborative idea: the City 2.0. TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz: "This year, we’re challenging everyone in the TED Community to embrace radical collaboration on one of the most pressing issues we face: how to build sustainable, vibrant, working cities."

Post(card) Ideological Icons

2011-11-28T05:14:00-05:00

What about revisiting the hardcore shapes of the avant-garde?

It has been almost a century since the air was heavily saturated with the combustible gas of ideology. Almost a hundred years have passed since everything from film, through art and architecture, to urbanism was susceptible to the slightest friction in the atmosphere sparking endless manifestoes and multiple visions of the perennial “new beginning”. But what happens when the ideological fire that fuels urbanism is extinguished, and in its place just smoke remains? What is left after the idealistic energy of the avant-garde has vanished and we are left with necrophilic icons of dead ideologies? Why aren’t we able to see the striking similarities and contrasting disparities between the avatars of yesterday’s ideological urbanism and today’s pop-architectural icons?

In the twenties imaginary taut wires, steel trusses, and structural concrete gave form to the muscular monuments of a Potemkinesque avant-garde. Utopia had...

Owen Hatherley's Viewpoint: Why does regeneration create so many ugly buildings?

2011-08-18T18:18:30-04:00

This was the city of the 20th Century, but surely nobody, neither utopians or dystopians, imagined that it would look like this. It was nobody's dream and at least in theory, nobody's nightmare. How did we get here?

In his colorful article, Owen Hatherley, architecture critic and occasional Archinect editor, confronts the ugliness and its legacy 20th century post modern style buildings left the cities with.