As the person in charge of design for Ford's entire vehicle porfolio, Mays looks at architecture a lot. And he's ever mindful of buildings and how they're designed whenever he sets about creating a new car or truck for Ford.
What he's learned — and what he likes— about architecture, and Chicago architecture in particular, will be his focus when he joins the panel discussion "Big Ideas in Small Places" on Thursday at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
— bizjournals.com
Occupying some 350 square-metres of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Sou Fujimoto's delicate, latticed structure of 20mm steel poles will have a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that will allow it to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape and against the classical backdrop of the Gallery's colonnaded East wing. Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space - with a café sited inside - visitors will be encouraged to enter and interact with the Pavilion... — serpentinegallery.org
The company will be moving all of its teams from its current office near Grand Central to two floors at the new office, the interior of which architect Frank Gehry has agreed to design.
Gehry is already leading the expansion of Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, CA. A source familiar with Facebook's plans said the company is "extraordinarily pleased with [Gehry's] ability to delivery an incredible quality of design at a remarkably efficient price"...
— mashable.com
A historian might spend decades undertaking research in archives and writing up discoveries in scholarly journals, but if the work does not have a presence online — and, specifically, a presence that is not behind a paywall — it is all but invisible outside academia. As Ridge states, “If it’s not Googleable, it doesn’t exist.” — Places Journal
Over the decades women architects have received scant attention from historians and prize juries. On Places, Despina Stratigakos writes, "The painful cancellation of Denise Scott Brown in the awarding of the Pritzker Prize solely to her husband and collaborator, Robert Venturi, is an important... View full entry »
"Bracingly forward-looking, Zumthor's design for LACMA would give the city a much-needed jolt of architectural energy." — Los Angeles Times
Zumthor's design, which obliterates the original campus of LACMA, would cost an estimated $450M to construct, with another $200M in soft and operating costs built in. A few questions abound: is this really any different (in overall approach) than OMA's ill-fated masterplan from roughly 10 years... View full entry »
... we have turned the Gherkin into the worlds tallest penis. A penis that is being gratified by our parliament with a sexual act. A 180m high erection for deregulation and global capitalism. We have created this art work for all those that are suffering cuts to their budgets, benefits, working hours, rights, freedoms and quality of life as Parliament perpetuates the age old practice of taxing the poor for the mistakes of the rich. — vimeo.com
Donald Judd bought 101 Spring Street, an 1870 cast-iron building, in 1968 for $68,000.
He stripped the dilapidated building down to its plaster walls and wood floors, illegally removing distractions like fire sprinklers.
Then Judd (1928-1994) spent decades turning the spaces into a showcase for his art and a place to rest his head on a bed made of wood planks. It’s carefully related to the colored tubes by Dan Flavin that march across the room, echoing the rhythm of a gorgeous row of windows.
— bloomberg.com
Last few days Istanbul has been the site of mass protests and battles raging for the Gezi Park (translating as stroll park) in Taksim District where the prime minister Erdogan's government wants to build a "Shopping Mall," a kitschy copy of a 19th. century building, Taksim Military... View full entry »
After dabbling at the edges for political discourse for several years, the AIA's New York chapter has jumped in with both feet by releasing this week its first-ever mayoral platform.
"We just felt these issues were too important to stand on the sidelines anymore," said Jill Lerner, a principal KPF and the chapter's president. "Whether it's zoning and building codes or sustainability issues or climate change and Sandy, politicians set the agenda for how the city gets built."
— crainsnewyork.com
The August Smart Lock is the secure, simple, and social way to manage your home’s lock. Now you can control who can enter and who can’t—without the need for keys or codes. And you can do it all from your smartphone or computer. — august.com
Key-less entry has been available for cars for ages. It's about time buildings adopt this new technology. Fortunately, this new product is designed by master product designer Yves Behar, of Fuseproject. View full entry »
In Makoko, a sprawling slum on the waterfront of Lagos, Nigeria, tens of thousands of people live in rickety wood houses teetering above the fetid lagoon. It’s an old fishing village on stilts, increasingly battered by floods from heavy rains and rising seas. Because the settlement was becoming dangerous, the government forcibly cleared part of it last year. — NYT
Kunle Adeyemi, a Nigerian architect, had a better idea. He and his team asked what the community wanted, and with its help and money from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the United Nations, he devised a floating school: a low-cost three-story A-frame, buoyed by about 250 plastic barrels... View full entry »
By cannibalizing the material and spatial remains of the post-industrial city, a new idea of domesticity is born. The survivalist architecture must address utilities (water, heat), security, varying climatic conditions, food storage, and mental comfort, always adapting itself according to what it has on hand. This method of design and the restriction of material palette remove the extraneous from the work. It addresses economy and sustainability through adaptive reuse of material and space. — dwellingonwaste2.blogspot.com
Last year two University at Buffalo students, Matthieu Bain and Andrew Perkins, purchased a house for $800, moved in, and lived there for a year while fixing it as best they could with only the city's discards and forgotten items. They recorded their experience in this blog. View full entry »
Never before have we had a technology where we can so freely translate our ideas into a tangible object with little regard to the machinery or skills available. Yet just as the microwave didn’t replace all other forms of cooking as initially predicted, 3-D printing will not replace other manufacturing technologies let alone industrial-scale ones for a variety of reasons. It will complement them. — wired.com
Increasingly it's been cities that have taken the lead on critical issues, from gun control to immigration reform to economic stimulus to climate change. Given the migration of people into cities worldwide, this trend is sure to continue. We might even be in a de facto transition to a society dominated by economically and politically powerful cities — a contemporary version of the great city-states that arose in the 13th century and ruled Europe until the consolidation of modern nation-states. — Places
For almost a decade David Burney has been Commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction in New York City. In an interview with Places editor Nancy Levinson, he reflects on the urban design record of the Bloomberg years, focusing especially on PlaNYC, the ongoing post-Sandy recovery... View full entry »
The modernist five-story glass and steel structure was an attempt by city leaders to shake off the city’s image as a retirement destination. Even more radical was its inverted pyramid shape, chosen by architect William B. Harvard to make the most use of the limited space at the pierhead without blocking views of the city and Tampa Bay. — tbo.com
Current category:
SUBMIT NEWS: submit in 60 seconds!