Archinect - News

Wang Shu bucks China’s megacity trend

2013-06-17T20:25:00-04:00

“Cities today have become far too large,” Wang said in an interview while visiting New York in April. “I’m really worried, because it’s happening too fast and we have already lost so much.” Wang, a sturdy 49-year-old, has built his small architectural practice as a riposte to this heedless destruction. With his wife, architect Lu Wenyu, he runs a 10-person firm called Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city southwest of Shanghai.

South Brisbane Welcomes Twin Tower Development

2013-02-19T20:52:00-05:00

South Brisbane’s renewal is well underway and the suburb could soon become home to a landmark $50 million twin tower development known as Arena. The contemporary 12-floor twin tower apartment buildings is slated for 9 Edmonstone Street and has been designed to allow pedestrian access to Browning Street via a dedicated cross block link.

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."

Chinese Highway builds around "Nail House" protesting development

2012-11-25T13:00:00-05:00

Luo Baogen and his wife are the lone holdouts from a neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the main thoroughfare heading to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city of Wenling in Zhejiang province. "Nail house" families occasionally have resorted to violence. Some homeowners have set themselves on fire in protests. Often, they keep 24-hour vigils because developers will shy away from bulldozing homes when people are inside.

Philadelphia dreams of a low-line too

2012-11-19T12:26:00-05:00

The idea of creating a low-line companion to Philadelphia's planned high line has so gripped imaginations that a team of top designers has volunteered to sketch ideas for a belowground trail on the west side of Broad St. Tours are now practically weekly events conducted by Paul van Meter, who first proposed a low-line park. There's one hitch: A new city plan just earmarked the low-line trench for a high-speed bus route that would connect a string of cultural venues to the heart of downtown.

New York Magazine gives an exclusive preview of Hudson Yards

2012-10-09T12:03:00-04:00

In a few weeks, construction begins on New York’s largest development ever. Hudson Yards is handsome, ambitious, and potentially full of life. Should we care that it’s also a giant slab of private property?

Gehry and Mirvish project officially unveiled in Toronto

2012-10-01T14:52:00-04:00

David Mirvish and world-renowned architect Frank Gehry formally introduced their plans for a major overhaul of King Street West this morning at the Art Gallery of Ontario — an appropriate setting considering the 2008 AGO redesign exists as Gehry's other major Canadian project.

Welcome to Ikea-land: Furniture giant begins urban planning project

2012-04-13T11:30:00-04:00

The people who run the Swedish home-furnishings behemoth are launching a bold push into the business of designing, building and operating entire urban neighbourhoods. Where once they placed a couch in a living room, the Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives. Their bold, high-concept notion of an urban ’hood could be an important solution to the housing-supply shortages...

Chicago Public Housing after Cabrini-Green

2012-02-20T13:08:00-05:00

The saga of Cabrini-Green compels us to engage some hard and fundamental questions. It is not enough to ask: who benefits from public housing redevelopment? We must also ask: how we measure such benefits and who gets to do that measuring?

When the last of the Cabrini-Green towers was demolished by the Chicago Housing Authority a year ago, where did the residents go? Urban historian Lawrence Vale looks at the politics and policies of subsidized housing in the city and interviews the developer of the mixed-income "village" that replaced the old public housing projects (and excluded many of their residents).

In a related feature, sociologist David Schalliol documents this transition in a slideshow featuring photographs of CHA projects and sites.

Dublin Ohio Plans 1000-acre Urban Development in the Heart of Suburbia

2012-02-04T15:26:00-05:00

The City of Dublin, Ohio is an affluent Columbus suburb typically known for it’s good schools, easy access to jobs, and low density housing and retail developments that have rapidly sprawled outward over the past forty years. Fast forward another forty years and things may look drastically different. Officials with the city’s planning department have been steadily working on the Bridge Street Corridor plan, which calls for the redevelopment of 1,000 acres located at the core of Dublin.

One of the largest suburbs of Columbus, Ohio is planning to give itself an urban face lift with a new long term redevelopment plan. In addition to increase residential density to over 5000 people per square mile, the plan calls for the eventual installation of light rail light to serve local and regional commuters.

Indy's Super Bowl Building Boom

2012-02-02T17:00:00-05:00

“I’m never trying to be disparaging to these other communities in any way,” says Bill Browne, a local architect on Indianapolis’ host committee who has looked at what other Super Bowl cities have done. “But we came away with the sense that they’re putting on an event. We’re certainly putting on an event here, but we are absolutely trying to transform a number of elements of our community as a part of this.”

Winner of ResilientCity.org Design Ideas Competition Announced

2011-04-20T14:56:18-04:00

Winners have been announced at this year's ResilientCity.org Design Ideas Competition. Of the twenty finalist entries, the concept "Living with the Water Paradox" by Nok Ratanavong, Sang Ok Kim, and James Kim was selected as the First-Place winner. Winner of the special prize for Best Insights was the proposal "full of fuel", and two Honourable Mentions were given to "Manifestations for a City" and "FIH in Fairview Mall".

The 2010 ResilientCity.org Design Ideas Competition invited architects, city planners, urban designers, engineers, landscape architects, and students of these fields to contribute their ideas about creating more resilient cities as we move into a century where cities will be subjected to the combined environmental and economic impacts of climate change and energy transition.

A-lab Wins Sustainable Urban Development in Oslo Suburb

2011-04-06T17:23:43-04:00

Norwegian practice A-lab won the open international ideas competition on climate efficient urban development on Furuset area in Oslo.

The project goal is to condense the suburb Furuset i Groruddalen outside Oslo with 2,500 new homes and 1,500 new workspaces, and to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2030. The project provides a district that stands for sustainable urban development.