Archinect - News

Labor and funding disputes are impelling repair work on the Eiffel Tower

2024-04-18T18:20:00-04:00

To date, only 30% of the tower has been repainted. Adding more than 100 weekly operations to monitor the lead increased annual running costs from €50m to €92m—and may reach a staggering €130m. The unions have also denounced the state of infrastructure, which sees tourists with tickets still queuing for up to three hours.

In February, the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel (or SETE), which operates the tower announced losses nearing $2 million as a result of the weeklong strike. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has sparred openly with both France’s culture and tourism ministers about the tower’s lacking historical monument status and security situation on the Champ de Mars. The presence of lead paint and the pandemic have also combined to frustrate repair work efforts. The landmark’s last official full paint job, the nineteenth since it opened, was completed in 2010.

David Lynch discusses his scenographic installation at Salone del Mobile with curator Antonio Monda

2024-04-18T12:11:00-04:00

David Lynch is participating in this year's Salone del Mobile with an installation titled ‘Interiors by David Lynch. Thinking Room’ he designed to offer visitors of the fair a respite while serving tribute to the lurid scenography fans of his classic films Blue Velvet and Lost Highway will find pleasingly familiar.

The centerpiece of the installation is an oversized wooden armchair, designed by Lynch himself, with intricate brass tubes positioned overhead, creating a striking visual and tactile experience. Lynch's approach to design reflects his cinematic vision, where every element is imbued with meaning and emotion.

"Interiors by David Lynch. A Thinking Room," interior view. Image: courtesy Lombardini22

As part of the special weeklong exhibition, Salone curator Antonio Monda interviewed Lynch (who has also tried his hand at the visual arts, furniture making, and nightlife space design) about his contribution and the central role his advocacy for transcendental meditation plays in ...

Coachella debuts 2024 art installations, its ‘largest immersive and architectural works yet’

2024-04-16T11:43:00-04:00

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has completed work on the 2024 edition of its on-site art program. The acclaimed event is taking place across two weekends: April 12–14 and 19–21.

The three artistic works are described by the festival as "redefining the boundaries of large-scale art, inviting festival-goers to engage with visionary works that ask viewers to question their definition of self, explore the boundaries between reality and imagination & take part in creating a new future together."

"Monarchs: A House in Six Parts" by HANNAH. Image credit: Lance Gerber

"Monarchs: A House in Six Parts" by HANNAH explores the fusion of 3D printing with traditional craftsmanship, comprising a series of pavilions that “invite interaction and contemplation.” A collaboration between Cornell University professors Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic, the piece reimagines architectural design through the lens of digital fabri...

Influential 1970s women architects exhibition revisited in new Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation series

2024-04-15T14:03:00-04:00

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) has launched a new audio documentary on an influential 1970s exhibition on women in architecture. Part of the BWAF series ‘New Angle: Voice,’ the episode will profile the Brooklyn Museum’s 1977 exhibition ‘Women in American Architecture.’

Curated by architect Susana Torre and sponsored by the Architectural League of New York, the exhibition received significant coverage across national and architectural media, including a review by Ada Louise Huxtable in The New York Times. The new audio episode, ‘Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture, Spring 1977,’ debuts the first program of New Angle: Voice’s third and conclusive season, with later episodes to continue exploring the influences of women in architecture.

Image courtesy: Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation

Last year, we reported on the series’ profiling of Huxtable, the New York Times’ first-ever architectural critic, and Amaza Lee Meredith, a Black woman born in 18...

MoMA exhibition on 20th-century Latin American design is a 'gem' says Michael Kimmelman

2024-04-05T13:31:00-04:00

The show is a gem. It focuses on domestic design from six countries (Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Venezuela), produced between 1940 and 1980. Latin America had entered a period of transformation, industrial expansion and creativity. Across the region, design was becoming institutionalized as a profession, opening up new avenues, especially for women.

Critic Michael Kimmelman has heaped praise on the 'Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, 1940–1980' MoMA exhibition in a new piece for The New York Times. As we reported in December of last year, the show looks at the growth of modernism through an industrial and entrepreneurial lens, using a selection of examples from well-known and revered architects and designers such as Joaquim Tenreiro, Lina Bo Bardi, and Oscar Niemeyer.

"The role that women and immigrants played in shaping professional design and developing a national design vocabulary in Latin America will be emphasized, including the work of designers such as Clara Porset in Mexico, Cornelis Zitman in Venezuela, and Susi Aczel in Argentina," MoMA said about their exhibition at the time.

The Broad taps Diller Scofidio + Renfro again for major expansion

2024-03-27T18:33:00-04:00

Big news for architecture and art fans alike coming out of Los Angeles today, where The Broad just announced plans for a major expansion project to the tune of $100 million.

The reveal of the new proposal, which will reportedly increase the available gallery space by 70%, comes nearly ten years after the existing building opened to much fanfare on Downtown LA's Grand Avenue arts and culture corridor in 2015 to allow free public access to the vast art collection of philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad.

For the design of the expansion, the museum has commissioned the original architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) again, whose initial renderings hint at a continuation of their "veil and vault" concept.

"The exterior of the expansion echoes the surface appearance of the vault — as if this core had been exposed and 'unveiled' — symbolically expressing The Broad’s commitment to access while playfully inverting the visual vocabulary of the current building," the architects describe...

Peterson Rich Office transforms former church into an inviting new cultural center in Detroit's East Village

2024-03-12T18:18:00-04:00

The adaptive reuse design for the Shepherd Gallery and Art Center inside the new Little Village in Detroit has been revealed ahead of its public opening on May 18th.

The project from Peterson Rich Office (PRO) transformed a 110-year-old former church into a new cultural center for the local Library Street Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to presenting art in the city's revitalized heritage spaces. It was executed at 16,000 square feet and culminates in two new galleries with a small library, classrooms, and workshop included for local community endeavors.

View of the Charles McGee Legacy Park and the Shepherd. Photo by Jason Keen. Courtesy of Library Street Collective.

In terms of its interior redesign, the architects chose to place an exhibition area in the transept mezzanine while making the altar below into another gallery open for performance and public gatherings. The church's other transept now houses a curated Little Village Arts Library space from Asmaa Walton. A landscaped...

Iconic American interior designer, businesswoman, and fashion icon Iris Apfel dies at 102

2024-03-06T11:18:00-05:00

Iris Apfel, an iconoclast interior designer who drew praise for her style and fashion collection, passed away last week at the age of 102. The New York Times is reporting on her influence in the design world this week following her death on March 1st.

Through the work of her label Old World Weavers, the Queens native became a commercial success designing the White House's interiors and remained an influence in that realm for many subsequent generations. Apfel picked up her famous eye from her father, who designed and installed mirrors during New York City’s first skyscraper boom. Throughout her lucky turn at celebrity, she remained a vocal advocate for quality. She also taught a textile design course at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011.

“There’s very little creativity left. Everybody copies everybody else,” she said to AnOther magazine in 2018. “I don’t know whether everybody wants the same or the designers give it to them – I have no idea, I’ve been out of it for too long ...

Weiss/Manfredi, Hood Design Studio, and Moody Nolan to design new Amsterdam Avenue enhancements at Lincoln Center

2024-03-04T16:32:00-05:00

The new Amsterdam Avenue face of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will be designed by a team that includes Weiss/Manfredi, Hood Design Studio, and Moody Nolan, the beloved New York City cultural institution announced Monday.

The revitalization plan entails first a radical overhaul of Damrosch Park, which will be transformed into a dynamic new outdoor area for artistic performance and public gatherings. All three firms will impart their extensive experience in public realm designs that has recently included work on the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina and master plan of the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, respectively.

East side of Amsterdam Avenue, north of 62nd Street. Photo by Lawrence Sumulong

The design will take shape in response to a participatory planning process that drew the opinions of over 3,400 New Yorkers and surviving former residents of San Juan Hill, the neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the 14-y...

AI models predict the 2024 Pritzker Winner

2024-03-04T08:10:00-05:00

As the architecture community anticipates the official Pritzker Prize announcement this Tuesday, our team at Archinect has been fully immersed in the whirlwind of predictions and speculations. A few days ago we published a roundup of forecasts from the Archinect community, highlighting potential winners such as Moshe Safdie, Barclay Crousse, Eyal Weizman/Forensic Architecture, Thomas Heatherwick, H arquitectes, and Johnston Marklee, to name just a few. This curiosity led to an idea for a fun experiment: consult with various Artificial Intelligence models to gauge their insights on the prestigious award's 2024 recipient. Initiating conversations with four leading LLM models—ChatGPT 4, Google Gemini, Anthropic's Claude 2, and Perplexity—I navigated the sometimes hilariously clumsy, but mostly very interesting "thoughts" from our AI frenemies. Each of the models ended up predicting different winners, but there's a common theme with all of the selections that you'll notice.

I conducted...

In an Ontario plaza, interactive pavements play music ‘as if by magic’

2024-02-28T13:28:00-05:00

Montreal-based studio Daily tous les jours has completed a public space design in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Titled 'River Lines,' the project saw the creation of an interactive stage in an urban plaza for big impromptu musical ensembles.

Video credit: doublespace photography

Part of the studio’s wider Musical Pavement series, the interactive wave-patterned pavement is embedded with 62 sensing light rings that “get people moving through musical collaboration exercises.” The infrastructure is formed of twelve in-house tailored audio tiles that have no visible hardware and blend with the wider pavement pattern, meaning “music emanates from the ground as if by magic.”

Image credit: doublespace photography

Located on the site of a 19th-century foundry, the artwork is “a response to the historical nature of the site” and “an exemplar of how investment in the public realm is essential to reimagine and activate places and encourage collective interacti...

Preserving the legacy of William Sidney Pittman, the 'first Black architect of Texas'

2024-02-28T12:23:00-05:00

Many of his designs sit within historic Black neighborhoods with African American historical and cultural institutions. At the Glen Oaks Cemetery in South Dallas, Pittman’s grave marker reminds visitors why his buildings are significant points of interest—after all, he was the “first Black architect of Texas.”

The building legacy of William Sidney Pittman, who arrived in Dallas from Washington, D.C., right before World War I, stands at only seven surviving structures. UT Austin School of Architecture assistant professor Tara A. Dudley says: “His arrival provided African Americans in Texas access to a professional architect within the race — as opposed to relying on white architects as most did — and who, as a Black man, understood the needs and requirements of the African American community.”

Pittman, who was also a tremendously incisive polemic writer and early inspiration for Paul Revere Williams, died in March of 1958 with a portfolio of fifteen completed buildings in the state. Dudley and others are now ardently at work preserving his legacy there and in D.C. (where his 1912 Anthony Bowen YMCA design still stands). As she tells Texas Highways, “[His] work needs to be preserved for future generations as a testament to his significance in the profession of architecture in the U.S. in th...

Historic civil rights-era church in Memphis to undergo $25 million renovation

2024-02-19T12:02:00-05:00

Memphis’ Clayborn Temple, a historic civil rights landmark, is set to undergo a $25 million renovation. The five-year-long project hopes to “not only preserve its historic significance but also usher in a new era of vitality for this cultural gem and the surrounding community,” as seen in new renderings by Self+Tucker Architects.

Image credit: Self+Tucker Architects

The building was originally constructed in 1892 as Second Presbyterian Church, where it served an all-white congregation. In 1949, the building was sold to an African Methodist Episcopal congregation for $100,000 and renamed Clayborn Temple.

Image credit: Self+Tucker Architects

Throughout the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the church served as an important node for social, cultural, spiritual, and political expressions for the city’s African American communities, ultimately becoming the organizing headquarters for The Sanitation Workers’ Strike of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last campaign.

Image credit: Self+Tu...

Banksy murals to be digitally preserved as part of new UK art database

2024-02-09T14:28:00-05:00

Art by the famous artist Banksy is to be included in a new initiative to document the UK’s murals. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the project will see more than 5,000 murals from across the UK digitally recorded for access in a free public database.

The project is being overseen by the educational charity Art UK with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The three-year initiative will see public works recorded by a network of volunteer researchers and photographers, alongside documenting the stories behind the pieces.

“The location of murals, the circumstances behind their creation, and the materials used to create them can result in this type of artwork being ephemeral in nature,” Art UK says about the project. “Buildings and housing estates are demolished to make way for new developments meaning that many murals have been lost. We will record the murals as they look now, to provide a record if they are removed, defaced, or suffer environmental damage.”

Related on Arc...

New digital guide documents African American cultural landscapes

2024-02-07T15:19:00-05:00

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) just launched a brand new initiative called the What’s Out There Guide to African American Cultural Landscapes. So far, the digital guide documents over 140 sites associated with African American culture lifeways as well as nearly 30 biographies and is part of the foundation's four-year-old Race and Space program.

The TCLF says the production of the guide required some rethinking of its four existing categorizations of cultural landscapes. Nine themes (Enslavement, Impacts of African Cultures on the American Landscape, The Underground Railroad, Reconstruction, The Civil Rights Movement, Education, Public Accommodations, Commemoration and Healing, and Elevating Designers and Shapers) were created to reconstrue them into their proper contexts.

This will be of value to future research endeavors, the TCLF says, while equally helpful in promoting the stewardship of the sites, both of which are related to its organizational mission to "connect peop...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund: Another $4 million will go toward preserving Black churches

2024-02-02T12:20:00-05:00

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced another round of funding totaling $4 million that will be put towards preserving Black churches in 22 states across the country.

The program’s second round of funding for the two-year-old Preserving Black Churches initiative will help maintain the legacies of 31 churches.

Black churches in the United States are at the center of the country's lifelong fight for democratic reforms and are a key character in the story of African American's survival and resilience in America. As the historian and advisor to the Action Fund, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explained, “Black churches have been at the forefront of meaningful democratic reform since this nation’s founding. They’re a living testament to the resilience of our ancestors in the face of unimaginably daunting challenges.”

“The heart of our spiritual world is the Black church. These places of worship, these sacred cultural ...

Lana Del Rey is right: There is a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard

2024-02-01T13:10:00-05:00

With days to go until the 2024 Grammy Awards, one nominee in the running for Album of the Year contains an unexpected architectural overture.

Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, nominated in three categories, contains a song of the same name that dwells on an abandoned piece of infrastructure in Long Beach, California.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by lanadelreyInfo (@lanadelreylnfo)

In the song “Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” Del Rey draws on themes of being forgotten and underappreciated in the future despite current fame. The lyrics draw a parallel between Long Beach's Jergins Tunnel under Ocean Boulevard which was closed to the public in 1967 and has since been largely forgotten, a historical fact Del Rey entwines with her own foreboding of one day being unappreciated and overlooked.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Emily B (@chimesatmidnight)

Constructed in 1927, the su...

AMO design for the Prada 2024 FW Men's Show stages nature against an invasive interior environment

2024-01-21T08:00:00-05:00

AMO’s latest collaboration with the fashion industry went on display recently as part of the 2024 FW Prada Men's Show, held on January 14th at the Fondazione Prada for Milan Fashion Week.

For the presentation, AMO and partner in charge Rem Koolhaas created a scenographic imitation of an outmoded office environment set against an outer landscape that appears to audience members from beneath a transparent platform stage as though an “analogue projection among the many digital images that saturate one’s life today.”

This theatrical blending of nature and its opposite keys to the brand’s stated desire to produce clothes that reflect the spaces and seasons surrounding them. It, of course, also pays homage to design trends apparent in the latest examples of corporate architecture.

“In the space of the Deposito an improbable encounter takes place: chaos and order, reality and fiction, predictability and spontaneity – seemingly opposite elements – engage in a game of collaboration, a syne...

Coachella announces lineup for 2024 installation designers

2024-01-17T11:44:00-05:00

The art and design lineup has been announced for the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The acclaimed event is set to take place across two weekends: April 12–14 and 19–21.

Besides major musical acts, this year’s festival will include installations by HANNAH, Morag Myerscough, Nebbia, Do LaB, NEWSUBSTANCE, Robert Bose, and Raices Cultura.

While HANNAH describes its work as “inherently derived from materiality, digital construction protocols, robotic routines, new technologies, odd construction techniques, and bottom-up design logics,” Morag Myerscough summarizes her mantra as “make happy those who are near and those who are far will come.” Nebbia Works is “fundamentally driven by a curiosity of all the idiosyncrasies, contradictions and undefined boundaries of our world,” while NEWSUBSTANCE, Do LaB, Robert Bose, and Raices Cultura are returning to the festival where they constructed installations in 2023.

Previously featured Coachella installations

Photo by Lance Gerber,...

Janet Echelman completes rippling sculpture in Riyadh informed by earthquake and tsunami data

2024-01-12T13:52:00-05:00

Janet Echelman has completed a sculpture in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of the artist’s Earthtime series.

Named Earthtime 1.26 Riyadh, and installed in the city’s Wadi Namar in December 2023 for the Noor Riyadh light art festival, the sculpture “celebrates the interconnection of sky and earth, flexibility and strength, humans and our physical world, bridging opposites with bold colors and soft curves,” according to the artist.

Image credit: Janet Echelman

Image credit: Ahmed Hasan

The sculpture is composed of knotted fibers, and designed so that as a single knot moves in the wind, the location of every other knot in the sculpture’s surface is changed in what the artist describes as “an ever-unfolding dance of human-made creation with the forces of nature beyond our control.” The custom-engineered fibers are fifteen times stronger than steel by weight and were knotted and spliced with the help of centuries-old craft techniques.

Image credit: Janet Echelman

Image credit: Janet Echelma...

Oana Stănescu named curator for the Beta 2024 Timișoara Architecture Biennial

2024-01-11T13:00:00-05:00

Romanian architect Oana Stănescu has been named as the curator for the Beta 2024 Timișoara Architecture Biennial. In a career spanning two decades, the architect, designer, writer, and educator has offered a “profound reading of contemporary architecture and design,” according to the biennial organizers.

“I am deeply honored, excited and nervous, thrilled and moved all at the same time,” Stănescu said about the appointment. “We live our lives within the confines of architecture, which makes it the perfect excuse for urgent socio-cultural conversations, especially in Romania’s unique position, with its simultaneous proximity and distance to the West.”

Having completed her architectural studies at FAUT (The Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism from Timișoara), Stănescu ultimately established her studio in New York and Berlin, with notable projects including retail designs for Virgil Abloh’s Off White stores, large-scale installations at MoMA and Coachella, and a co-founding of the col...

UVA architecture students present ideas for rebuilding a war-torn Ukrainian city to the U.S. Department of State

2024-01-08T14:25:00-05:00

The culmination of the 2023 Fall semester at the University of Virginia saw a contingent of students from UVA’s School of Architecture travel to Washington, D.C., to discuss ideas for rebuilding the war-torn eastern Ukrainian city of Izium upon a special invite from the U.S. Department of State.

Together with Professor Suzanne Moomaw, the cohort of 23 students who participated in the school’s Ukraine Green Recovery Lab were delegated to the National Museum of American Diplomacy in order to present their research to State Department officials, other government representatives, and the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova.

Highlighting topography and other similarities between Izium and Charlottesville, the students presented six phases of a proposed redevelopment to those assembled. What they took away from it was a rewarding experience delivering findings that will, in turn, be presented to the people of Izium for feedback. All in attendance report to have en...

An animated high-rise reminisces about its life in the city in "The Secret Diary of a High Rise"

2024-01-05T15:48:00-05:00

A new animated short film titled The Secret Diary of a High Rise by UK-based animator and artist Stephen Ong uniquely depicts the life of a high-rise building told from the perspective of the building itself.

We follow the experience of the high-rise via its narration, by Sasha Goguel, as it reminisces about its life in the city, including an early romantic love affair with another high-rise and the growth and transformation it experiences as years pass.

The short culminates in a get-together between our protagonist and their friends, who catch up on their own journeys, from new functions to rehabilitation.

Warm, vivid colors create an exciting urban, nightlife atmosphere, which is complimented by the film’s jazzy soundtrack, composed by Jon Hugo Ungar. The Secret Diary of a High Rise has been screened at several British animation festivals.

MAD designs Chinese waterfront arts center as a ‘gentle ripple by the lake’

2024-01-04T11:35:00-05:00

MAD Architects has designed a waterfront arts center in China’s Foshan City described as a “gentle ripple by the lake.” When completed in 2029, the Nanhai Art Center will cover an area of 640,000 square feet, housing a grand theater, a museum, and a sports center.

Image credit: MAD Architects

The scheme has been conceived as a “continuous wave of water,” with the three main buildings sitting underneath a floating canopy comprised of a white, translucent ETFE membrane. The resulting blurring of outdoor and indoor spaces seeks to emphasize the prominence of the nearby lake in the scheme, encouraging the local community to embrace the waterfront as a part of the scheme’s cultural function.

Image credit: MAD Architects

“The traditional culture of Nanhai is in the drum beat and boat drift during the dragon festival boat race and in the kung-fu in the lion dance,” MAD founder Ma Yansong about the site’s context. “Watching them, you can feel the dynamic vibrant, and innovative spirit from an...

The once-lost Luna Luna amusement park is back up and running in Los Angeles

2023-12-29T14:55:00-05:00

News on the revival of the once-lost Luna Luna arts amusement park appeared in the Los Angeles Times earlier this month after the attraction was relegated to storage for over thirty years following its 1987 debut in Hamburg, Germany.

The memorable park was re-staged this month in the city thanks to rap impresario Drake’s entertainment venture DreamCrew, which purchased the unassembled lot from the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation at an undisclosed price.

Image shows Sonia Delaunay's iconic entrance archway and Luna Luna sign. To the left is Salvador Dalí's "Dalídom" and to the right Roy Lichtenstein's Luna Luna Pavilion. Image © Jeff McLane courtesy of Luna Luna.

An arched entryway design from Sonia Delaunay welcomes visitors to the fairgrounds. George Baselitz, Roy Lichtenstein, Günter Brus, and Hubert Arayram are among the artists who created special experience rooms or pavilions for the park. A Ferris wheel designed by Jean-Michel Basquiat joins Kenny Scharf’s painted merry-go-r...

Plans for new LACMA-backed Las Vegas art museum emerge

2023-12-27T08:00:00-05:00

Around three years after the Nevada Museum of Art (NMA) in Reno suspended its plans to move forward with a Las Vegas branch of the museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the foundation of the philanthropist Elaine P. Wynn have announced an unprecedented partnership to launch a new museum in the city called the Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA).

As The Art Newspaper reported, plans for a new Las Vegas Museum of Art have the approximately 60,000-90,000-square-foot cultural facility commence in 2028 and cost around $150 million to construct in five-acre Symphony Park. LACMA is supporting the effort, which will (hopefully) fill the void left after the first Las Vegas Museum of Art closed its doors in 2009 over a lack of funding. Backers now have until 2025 to submit a design proposal and project timeline to the city.

“Our efforts to work with local and regional museums to share our collections and programs to larger and more diverse audiences are a priority in this joint effort,” a spokesperson for LACMA told TAN. “Las Vegas is currently the only city among the 30 largest in the U.S. to lack a standalone art museum [that is not a member of American Alliance of Museums]. It promises to be a valuable addition to the city and the cultural landscape of the region.”

No architects have been named to the project at this time.

...

Bologna unveils plan to reinforce 12th-century leaning tower

2023-12-08T18:30:00-05:00

Work to prevent the collapse of a leaning medieval tower in the heart of the northern Italian city of Bologna will cost €20m ($21.5m) and take 10 years at least, its mayor has said. Last weekend, the city unveiled a €4.3m (£3.7m) project to shore up the Garisenda tower – one of the city’s two towers that look out over central Bologna, providing inspiration over the centuries to painters and poets and a lookout spot during conflicts.

The Garisenda Tower, like the Tower of Pisa, has leaned for centuries as the ground on which it was built gave way soon after its construction. It slants at four degrees compared to 3.9 degrees the Tower of Pisa leans at. Last month, the area around the Garisenda Tower was cordoned off due to increasing concerns about its potential to collapse. Bologna’s mayor, Matteo Lepore, claims that the time to restore the structure will match the 10 years it took to reinforce the Tower of Pisa.

Built in the 12th century, the Garisenda Tower, which stands at approximately 157 feet, sits alongside the taller, and also leaning, Asinelli Tower. As reported by The Guardian, Italy’s civil protection agency has issued a “yellow” alert for the area around the two towers indicating the space is under watch. However, they aren’t believed to pose any immediate risks to people’s safety. The mayor has also urged the government to work to make the towers UNESCO World Heritage sites. Work to reinforce the to...

Better Block Foundation, a nonprofit for open-source neighborhood design and ‘wikiblock’ urbanism, is hiring

2023-12-07T12:42:00-05:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for an Architect/Designer at Build Block, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for a Landscape Designer at the Better Block Foundation.

The role, based in Dallas, TX, “goes beyond the conventional office setting, requiring a genuine commitment to hands-on, physical work in the field,” according to the company. Among the responsibilities will be delivering site design and presentation materials, material sourcing and ordering, construction documents, and potential public speaking and development roles. “The Landscape Designer should be passionate about new urbanism and willing to swing a hammer, get paint on his/her clothing, answer volunteers’ questions, etc.,” the company adds. “This position is very hands-on.”

Before/After: Collaborative neighborhood placemaking. Image credit: The Better Block Foundation

Why the role interests us

The role at the Better Block Foundation offer...

Are you an architecture student prepping for finals? Archinect Tips will help get you through!

2023-12-05T19:22:00-05:00

Final reviews for this semester are right around the corner. Are you a first-year undergraduate student embarking on your first presentation as an architecture student? Or are you a seasoned graduate student balancing school work, internships, and everything else in between? Regardless of where you are in your academic journey, don't let the stressors of finals overtake you.

Explore these seven Archinect Tips articles to help you find clarity and confidence as you prepare.

Facing a Jury and Presenting Your Work

You know your project better than anyone else, but is speaking in public holding you back from feeling confident in your project? Are you worried if your pinned-up work or model is missing something? Whether you're stressed about presenting your work, having a cohesive project to present, or facing a design jury, Archinect has you covered.

Architectural Foundations studio review. Image courtesy of Yale Architecture via @yalearchitecture.

Archinect's tips for students preparing...

Over 100 Gaza heritage sites damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes, report says

2023-12-05T13:30:00-05:00

The Spanish NGO Heritage for Peace has published a report on the impact of recent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s cultural heritage. The report, released on November 7th, claims that over 100 cultural heritage landmarks have been damaged or destroyed as of publishing. Reports of subsequent damage since November 7th are not yet available.

The Heritage for Peace report lists 104 pieces of built heritage impacted by the latest war, of which 4 have been completely destroyed, 11 have been partially destroyed by direct shelling, and 89 have been partially destroyed by indirect shelling. The list of sites spans mosques, churches, archaeological sites, historical houses, shrines, cemeteries, and museums.

Among the sites completely destroyed by direct shelling is the Omari Mosque, described by NPR as “one of the most important and ancient mosques in historical Palestine.” Meanwhile, the Church of Saint Porphyrius was partially destroyed, described by NPR as “the third oldest church in the entir...