Archinect - News

Buildings Speak: NPR special will explore the impacts of women on American architecture for International Women’s Day

2024-03-06T13:57:00-05:00

For this year's International Women’s Day on March 8, NPR is airing a special one-hour documentary produced with help from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF). The piece aims to shed light on the overlooked contributions of women in architecture to an American mass audience for the first time.

Narrated by the great Oscar-winning actor and producer Frances McDormand, ‘Buildings Speak: Stories of Pioneering Women Architects’ is a collaboration with producers The Kitchen Sisters. The special draws three of the figures (Julia Morgan, Amaza Lee Meredith, and Natalie de Blois) featured in the BWAF’s unmissable New Angle: Voice podcast series, the third season of which also premiers on International Women’s Day with a special focus on the architecture of the 1970s.

Tizziana Baldenebro, the new executive director of the BWAF, commented: “They are trailblazers, groundbreakers, skyscraper visionaries — women who changed the skyline and the built environment that surrounds us tod...

The Eiffel Tower has grown a bit taller for the second time this century

2022-03-16T13:52:00-04:00

The Eiffel Tower grew by six meters (nearly 20 feet) on Tuesday after engineers hoisted a new communications antenna at the very top of France’s most iconic landmark. With the new antenna, the Eiffel Tower grew from 324 meters (1,063 feet) tall to 330 meters (1,083 feet).

The Iron Lady’s first such extension was installed in 1957 and followed in 2000 by the installation of a UHF display, which brought the official height to the just-surmounted total of 324 meters (1,063 feet). Tuesday’s addition of the new DAB+ antenna now brings the structure even further away from its original height of 312 meters (1,023 feet) at construction.

A helicopter was used to transport the antenna to the technicians in charge of installing it at a height of 324m A rare and spectacular technical feat! #tourEiffel330M @TDFgroupe pic.twitter.com/9qytcpAeiT
— La tour Eiffel (@LaTourEiffel) March 15, 2022

Owing to its height, Gustave Eiffel’s iconic structure has long served Paris and the Île-de-France region as a transmitting beacon beginning with its first broadcast in 1898. The radio itself is said to have in part saved the tower from its original 20-year hard cap, gaining a 70-year extension in 1910 thanks to its inventor's self-financed adaptation of then-new TSF technol...

RIBA is launching a new diversity and inclusion radio show

2021-11-11T13:19:00-05:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced that its second annual Inclusion Festival will take the form of a dedicated radio station that will be broadcast live from the bookshop at RIBA’s headquarters in London.

RIBA Radio will run from November 18 through the 26th and will be hosted by former BBC journalist and RIBA’s Director of Inclusion and Diversity, Marsha Ramroop. The show will focus on promoting diversity and inclusion within the field of architecture. Content will include a mixture of music, live and pre-recorded interviews, discussions, and debates, featuring guests from across the worlds of architecture, design, arts, culture, and sport, as well as key leaders from the worlds of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion).

Guests will include architects Adam Furman, Chris Hildrey, Farshid Moussavi, Clare Nash, Sumita Singha OBE, Head of School and CEO of the London School of Architecture Dr. Neal Shasore, architectural historian Josh Mardell, Bristol May...

DnA: Design and Architecture, KCRW radio show hosted by Frances Anderton, to go off the air

2020-09-18T12:11:00-04:00

Amid a dramatic staff downsizing at leading Southern California public radio station KCRW, it was reported that the popular show and podcast DnA: Design and Architecture hosted by Frances Anderton will be discontinued from mid-December after being on the air for 18 years.

The Los Angeles Times writes that the cuts "represent a loss of 18% of the NPR affiliate’s staff, reducing it to 127 full- and part-time employees. It comes less than two years after the station began moving into its $38-million media center on the campus of Santa Monica Community College."

In a Sep-15 tweet, Anderton stated: "It's official: 24 of us are taking buyouts from @KCRW, mine effective mid-Dec. Working there w/ huge talents has been the gift of a lifetime. So has the chance to spread the word about LA design + arch. I'll keep on doing so (unless I go start my fantasy goat farm). Stay tuned!"

It's official: 24 of us are taking buyouts from @KCRW, mine effective mid-Dec. Working there w/ huge talents has b...

Eames' radical plywood radio from 1946 to be reissued by Vitra

2018-09-21T12:57:00-04:00

Better known for their iconic lounge chairs, the mid-century designers Charles and Ray Eames spent a good portion of the post-war period applying their revolutionizing plywood-modeling process to radio housings. Dubbed "Design's Best-Kept Secret" by the Wall Street Journal, an estimated 200,000 of these radios were manufactured at the time and are now enjoying an afterlife on the auction circuit as a more affordable way of owning one of the couples masterful designs.

Eames Radio by Charles and Ray Eames reissued by Vitra.

One of these radios, however, considered too modern looking for the time, never saw production. That is now changing thanks to Vitra; the Swiss furniture company that owns the license to many of the Eames's work has decided to revive this compact radio. Limited to just 999 units, the reissued radio comes encased in a walnut cabinet and equipped with up-to-date technology by the British manufacturer REVO. Priced at $999, the radio does not come cheap, especially whe...

Looking into the White House's “much longer history” of slave labor

2016-07-28T15:17:00-04:00

I think it was a wonderful moment in American history. I thought what Michelle Obama was attempting to do was to draw that link to show that it isn't just what's going on in the White House now and isn't it great that there's a black family there, but there's a much longer history that needs to be appreciated... [It was] just grueling, grueling kind of work. And nobody was really willing ... to do it. So slave labor played a massive role in getting this city built.

During her speech at the DNC on Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama alluded to the White House's history of slave labor during the 1790s. NPR interviews Clarence Lusane, chairperson of Howard University's political science department and author of “The Black History of the White House”, who gives his two cents on the historically significant topic.

Diana Agrest gets profiled as one of NPR's "50 Great Teachers"

2015-04-22T13:36:00-04:00

Architecture is both expansive and specific, artistic and technical. Agrest says that even after teaching and practicing the discipline for over 40 years, she still marvels at how much there is to learn. 'Architecture is really difficult. I realized that only very recently,' she says. 'It's like music. You can enjoy it but — to know it — it's a different story.' Another bit of wisdom she shares with her students: The career of an architect blossoms late.

Now at 70 years old, Diana Agrest reflects on some of her teaching and design approaches in her illustrious career, with those approaches having influenced both former and current students and fellow educators alike.

KCRW radio station breaks ground on new Media Center in Santa Monica

2014-06-12T17:33:00-04:00

KCRW, the NPR-affiliated public radio darling of Southern California, broke ground yesterday on its new 35,000 square-foot Media Center, located on Santa Monica College's Academy of Entertainment & Technology campus. For the past thirty years, KCRW was run out of a basement underneath the campus, while producing top-notch music and journalism programming that balances local flavor with international news. Now they'll have much more room to breathe, with spaces devoted to community socializing and performance alongside expanded operations.

Home to such popular podcasts as "DnA: Design and Architecture" and news digest "To the Point", KCRW also produces content outside of the studio, by hosting events around Los Angeles. With the Media Center, the station will have a homespace for its own events, to concretize its role in the local culture.

Designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects, the Media Center also meets LEED Silver Certification standards, and is slated to open by early 2016.

Will Today’s Ugly Buildings Be Tomorrow’s Historic Architecture?

2013-12-23T15:47:00-05:00

Its style is “brutalist,” which looks exactly like it sounds: big, blockish, hulking. Basically, a fortress of concrete... But what if these homely structures are actually tomorrow’s historic architecture? What if we just don’t appreciate them yet, and later generations will embrace them even though we think they’re monstrosities?

"Homes of Tomorrow" radio program explores Ernö Goldfinger's utopia

2013-09-03T21:33:00-04:00

"Homes of Tomorrow", a new radio program from London's "radical alternative" radio station, Resonance 104.4 fm, will explore the atmosphere and legacy of modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger’s utopian visions. Broadcasting Wednesdays at 10pm (BST) through September, the program features discussions with architects, artists, historians and residents of Goldfinger's buildings. Each show will also include site-specific sound-collages, recorded around Goldfinger's four major London structures.

Visit Resonance 104.4 fm to listen from anywhere.

Neil Denari is the latest Guest DJ on KCRW

2013-06-20T13:45:00-04:00

This was the first time where a musician, Eno -- who said I'm not a musician, by the way, I really construct ideas in a studio -- I felt connected to the idea of music, let's say, as sort of an intellectual project but at the same time it was still music that you wanted to dance to. So this is the architectural song and Eno as a kind of designer. Totally opened my eyes to new things.

Track List:

Theme From Shaft – Isaac Hayes
Kurt’s Rejoinder – Brian Eno
2nd Movement, Symphony No. 5 – Glenn Branca
The Bridge – Lee Ranaldo
Keep Your Dreams – Suicide (from the First Album)

Michael Maltzan Guest DJ's on Santa Monica's KCRW

2013-04-10T18:29:00-04:00

Architect Michael Maltzan has designed prestigious museums, luxurious private residences and social housing in Downtown LA. Music has been a factor in his life since he first started to discover architecture and he ruminates on the connection between the two art forms while sharing songs from Big Star, Talking Heads and more.

Track list:

The Bad Plus - Long Distance Runaround
Talking Heads - The Big Country
Big Star - The Ballad Of El Goodo
PJ Harvey - We Float
Glen Campbell - There's No Me Without You

NPR talks to McGill professor about China's architectural knock-off of Zaha's Wangjing Soho

2013-01-04T13:07:00-05:00

China is also the land of the knock-off: knock-off designer handbags, knock-off blockbuster movies on DVDs, etc. But now, it seems the knock-off has gone off the charts in terms of proportion: entire buildings.

As we have previously mentioned, Zaha Hadid is the latest victim of piracy in China, with a upcoming copy of her Wangjing Soho complex... scheduled to be completed before the original. NPR explores this issue with McGill architecture prof Avi Friedman.

FRANCES ANDERTON - Architectural Critic

2012-03-24T11:28:37-04:00

Frances Anderton came to Los Angeles via Bath, England in 1991 and like her compatriot Reyner Banham, fell in love with the city. As a longtime producer and host of radio shows Which Way, LA? and DnA: Design and Architecture respectively, Anderton has spent the last 25 years of her professional and personal life exploring the relationship between L.A.'s architecture, politics and design.

KCRW's DNA interviews Moby on LA architecture

2012-03-23T18:44:00-04:00

Chances are, you know Moby best for his electronic dance music. But it turns out the eclectic-minded musician has another life, as an architecture buff who recently moved to LA and now writes a blog about buildings here he loves. The blog is called, simply, Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog, and features his photos of local architecture. Frances Anderton talks to Moby about his love of architecture.

And, on that note, I promise this will be the last we refer to Moby's over-hyped move into the world of architecture blogging.

Craig Hodgetts at KCRW Guest DJ Project

2012-03-07T18:54:00-05:00

Craig Hodgetts credits the “unencumbered and exceedingly emotional” style of Miles Davis for shaping the direction of his architectural work. He also names the sounds of Vangelis and Terry Riley as inspirations in a guest DJ set that is a tribute to all kinds of creative work.

Architect Craig Hodgetts, of LA design firm Hodgetts + Fung, is being featured today at KCRW's Guest DJ Project.

American Icons: Monticello

2012-02-17T14:46:00-05:00

Monticello is home renovation run amok. Thomas Jefferson was as passionate about building his house as he was about founding the United States; he designed Monticello to the fraction of an inch and never stopped changing it. Yet Monticello was also a plantation worked by slaves, some of them Jefferson’s own children. Today his white and black descendants still battle over who can be buried at Monticello. It was trashed by college students, saved by a Jewish family, and celebrated by FDR.

Is Steve Jobs the Model for a Revived Economy?

2011-08-30T18:22:19-04:00

Steve Jobs has the right name for what's missing in America's economy. Does he also represent the way back to prosperity? We look at his record at Apple and its influence in the US and around the world.

KCRW's "To the Point" addresses Steve Jobs' attention to innovation and integration of design into Apple's business model, and how that can improve the state of today's horrible job market.

Architecture of the Absurd

2011-07-22T19:07:53-04:00

Star architects such as Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Leibiskind have created sensations with singular, unconventional designs that look (and sometimes are) unbuildable. John Silber thinks that’s a problem. He’d like to see our buildings showing less individualism, more standards. Silber is the former president of Boston University and the author of Architecture of the Absurd: How “Genius” Disfigured a Practical Art.