Archinect - News

Editor's Picks #306

2013-03-12T12:30:00-04:00

For the latest edition of the ShowCase feature, Archinect published the Hotel Wiesergut a complex renovation and extension by by GOGL ARCHITEKTEN, located in Hinterglemm/Salzburger Land, Austria. FRaC thought "those cold roofs are hot!"

News
Over at the financial times Emma Jacobs chatted with Zaha Hadid an "Unlikely ‘pushover’ who doesn’t play safe". In response Donna Sink commented "I wouldn't work for free, but I'd be happy to be bullied by Zaha for a short term. Like a wilderness survival camp-type vacation" but GiaCarbello replied "Diplomacy aside. Donna Sink. Wow. Your comment is as low as Hadids and Schumachers lame comments regarding their inexcusable behavior. They have an idea in their heads that ‘uncompromising standards’ is the reasons being for such behaviour. Hadid had to fight her way to the top because of a male dominated industry and forgot along the way to find a balance. Self integrity and self respect at lost".

However Apurimac argued "For christ's sa...

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.

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.

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.

Endeavour's voyage into Los Angeles' public space

2012-10-16T12:46:00-04:00

In a city whose residents are accused of disdaining public space, the orbiter's tour led Angelenos to crowd sidewalks 10 or 12 deep as well as drawing thousands of people who live north of the 10 Freeway to boulevards south of it. It packed gas stations and strip-mall parking lots with crowds.

Beyond Zuccotti Park: Making the Public

2012-09-24T19:08:00-04:00

The root cause of diminishing public resources and the privatization of urban public space today is precisely the privatization of our political system — a crisis that cannot be addressed simply by creating more public spaces or by making these public spaces more inclusive and accessible. This deeper crisis requires the attention and intervention of a much more active and engaged public, a public willing and capable of speaking up and mobilizing politically to change the system.

The recent wave of citizen protests — from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park to the streets of Athens — has brought renewed attention to the role of public space in democratic society. In an essay on Places (excerpted from the new book Beyond Zuccotti Park, by New Village Press) Jeffrey Hou shifts the emphasis from physical space to citizen action. We need to focus not just on ensuring the right to public assembly, he writes, but also on "the making and mobilization of the public as an actively engaged citizenry."

DUNE Street Furniture System by FERPECT Collective

2012-07-06T17:56:00-04:00

French design collective FERPECT has shared with us their project DUNE, winner of Forme Publique 2011, the Biennale of Street Furniture Design at the futuristic business district La Défense near Paris. DUNE is being exhibited from March 28 until December 31 on the La Défense square.

What Could The Los Angeles High Line Be?

2012-06-12T21:05:00-04:00

The High Line in New York succeeds because it unites neighborhoods and gets people outside, building a community in a space that was planned to be demolished: it brought life from rehabilitation. As we all know, Los Angeles has many places that need rehabilitating and that could serve as a point of unification. The problem though is that unlike the High Line we don’t have an area that stretches between neighborhoods without feeling forced or unantural.

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.

When a Parking Lot Is So Much More

2012-03-26T12:05:00-04:00

We need to redefine what we mean by “parking lot” to include something that not only allows a driver to park his car, but also offers a variety of other public uses, mitigates its effect on the environment and gives greater consideration to aesthetics and architectural context.

Swiss Architect Takes First Prize at Bab Al Bahrain Competition

2012-02-20T16:13:00-05:00

Winners have been announced at the Bab Al Bahrain Open Ideas Competition with the proposal "Pearl Dive" by Swiss architect Lukas Lenherr taking home the $15,000 First Prize. [...] Significance was added to this competition by the recent political events that have taken place across the region, encouraging questions about social representation, public identity, urban integration, sense of place, and historic importance.

Competition may determine future of Egypt's Tahrir Square

2011-12-13T20:08:38-05:00

One of the largest plots in the square, in front of the Egyptian museum and Ritz Carlton hotel, has been fenced off for more than a decade by a company linked to former members of the regime. "My question is what is the intention of any urban intervention by the government or by a competition," said Nasser Rabbat, the Aga Khan professor of Islamic architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. "Is there a movement to make the square more controllable?"

Occupy: The Day After

2011-12-08T16:02:26-05:00

For if there is one abiding historical certainty it is that, eventually, things change. And they can be made to change. There is no such thing, however, as a revolutionary architecture. Nor does history ever simply start from scratch. Instead, post-revolutionary questions can be posed in advance to infrastructures that already exist.... to reinvent what used to be called housing, schools, hospitals, factories, and farms in a way that asks: What else must change for these changes to be possible?

Reinhold Martin argues that architects must plan for post-revolutionary conditions. A follow-up to his earlier essay for Places, "Occupy: What Architecture Can Do."

Treasuring Urban Oases

2011-12-04T22:45:19-05:00

...the city should reverse its approach, zoning neighborhoods like Midtown, Lower Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by thinking first about the shape of public space instead of private development.

Open Letter by Bryan Bell: PUBLIC SPACE FOR THE PUBLIC – OR 99% OF IT

2011-11-25T14:57:23-05:00

The message of the 99% movement is even more fundamental -- that the 99% should have representative voice in the decisions made for this country. I feel aligned with their message and ours. We support their message and their tactics 100%. As designers, we should respect the rights of the 99% to gather in public spaces.

Open Letter by Bryan Bell, founder of Design Corps, sends this open letter in support of #OWS

PUBLIC SPACE FOR THE PUBLIC – OR 99% OF IT

In a time when the Supreme Court grants the constitutional rights of free speech to corporations, for corporations to have the same rights as individuals to shape the political process through unlimited financial gifts, it is bitter to see the same rights being denied to the individuals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 08-205, 2010).

Daily, protesters are being removed from public spaces all across the country. Their primary message could not be of more relevance to the public, that the voice of the 99% is not being heard in the decisions that are shaping our country. What irony that this message is being physically moved from our public spaces. Who is public space for? Whose resources paid for public space? Whose resources pay the mayors and police who are removing this democrat...

The Occupy Movement and the New Public Space

2011-11-23T18:33:19-05:00

Occupy Wall Street Protests is testing Public Spaces not meant as campgrounds. But when the public chooses to use its public space in ways it wasn’t intended to be used, who’s right? The public or the public space?

Whatever the response [to Occupy Wall Street], the fact that these protests have persisted for weeks and months in parks has put a spotlight on public spaces in general. But that fact has also complicated the response. These spaces are part of our cities so they can be used by the public. They’re also explicitly not intended to play campground for extended amounts of time. But when the public chooses to use its public space in ways it wasn’t intended to be used, who’s right? The public or the public space?