Archinect - News

Miami begins construction on the Underline, a 10-mile urban path under the city's Metrorail

2018-11-16T15:03:00-05:00

Since opening, the High Line has become the proverbial example of how cities can transform their underutilized nooks and crannies into vibrant public spaces. Now attracting more than six million visitors a year, the railway-turned-park has inspired a host of similar projects all across the world from Seoul to London.

Whereas the High Line focused on the reuse of a historic rail line, a new project in Miami, which broke ground earlier this month, is applying the same concept to the space underneath. Designed by James Corner Field Operations, Miami's forthcoming Underline will create a 10-mile linear park beneath the city's Metrorail.

The project was first inspired when Meg Daly, who came to found the non-profit Friends of the Underline, got into a bicycling accident. Unable to drive, Daly started taking the Miami Metrorail and using the space u...

National Geographic takes a closer look at the world's great urban parks

2016-04-04T15:01:00-04:00

This is the urban park of today. Unlike the neatly drawn public spaces of an earlier age, these parks are reclaimed from the discarded parcels of our cities: Stranded patches of woods, abandoned military bases and airports, storm-water systems, rail lines and bridges, places where scraps of land are pieced together like quilts or strung together like beads. The experimentation is global.

The Underline holds Public Interest Meetings in Miami

2015-04-17T23:44:00-04:00

Our vision is to transform the underutilized land below Miami’s MetroRail, from the Miami River to Dadeland South Station, into an iconic linear park, world-class urban trail and living art destination.

The Underline is a proposal to activate the 10 mile space underneath Miami’s elevated metro rail into an urban trail. This initiative was a collaboration between the organizers of The Underline nonprofit, The University of Miami School of Architecture, and Miami Dade County. Recently, James Corner Field Operations won a proposal to develop a master plan for the area. This is a continued involvement by the firm, as they already are developing strategies for the Lincoln Road area of Miami Beach, and developed Knight Plaza between the art and science museums in Downtown Miami.

Over the course of this weekend, organizers and volunteers of The Underline are putting together public meetings to gauge ideas from the locals of what they want for the future linear park. Holding interactive presentations, members of the community were asked to vote on preselected ideas by Field Operations, write in their own ideas, draw out ideas on maps showcasing the scope of the project, and open poste...

Society of Architectural Historians Presents Public Seminar at Chicago Conference

2015-03-10T13:29:00-04:00

Leading scholars from around the world will convene in Chicago, April 15–19, to present new research on the history of the built environment at the 68th Annual International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians. But the conference isn’t just for academics. SAH aims to engage two important audiences—conference attendees and the local community—with public programs such as the SAH Chicago Seminar.

The SAH Chicago Seminar, “Magnitudes of Change: Local Sites and Global Concerns in Chicago’s Built Environment,” will take place Saturday, April 18th, at The Gratz Center at Fourth Presbyterian Church. Hear from local architects, historians, and policy makers as they discuss the history and future of Chicago’s waterways and neighborhoods. Harvard University professor Charles Waldheim will give the keynote address "Reading Chicago's Landscape as Urbanism." Alison Fisher, Harold and Margot Schiff Assistant Curator of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, will moderate ...

Flora of the Future & Projective Ecologies

2014-04-29T16:46:00-04:00

Landscape architects — and anyone else who works directly with vegetation — need to acknowledge that a wide variety of so-called novel or emergent ecosystems are developing before our eyes.

Places is featuring two chapters from the new book Projective Ecologies, edited by Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister and co-published by Actar and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In "The Flora of the Future," botanist Peter Del Tredici argues that the native plants movement has got it all wrong: “The task facing tomorrow’s landscape architects is not so much how to eliminate these novel ecosystems but rather how to manage them to increase their ecological, social and aesthetic values.” In an engaging photo survey of ecological niches in the city, Del Tredici makes the case for spontaneous urban plants as flora of the future.

In "Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies," the book's editors trace the origins and evolution of the over-extended term "ecology" and explain how contemporary ecological models of “open-endedness, flexibility, resilience and adaptation” can inform design thinking.

Editor's Picks #291

2012-11-27T01:06:00-05:00

In the latest edition of the Showcase series, Archinect highlighted House in Moreira, by Phyd Arquitectura. The house has "Patios that enable continuity between different spaces of the house and interior/exterior which behave like a sun clock, alternating solid and diffuse light". Thayer-D questioned "What's with conceptual purity at the expense of function and maybe joy?" but Vile Child chimed in "seems SupraJoyful to me"

With the latest edition of the Showcase series, Archinect highlighted House in Moreira, by Phyd Arquitectura. The house has "Patios that enable continuity between different spaces of the house and interior/exterior which behave like a sun clock, alternating solid and diffuse light".

Thayer-D questioned "What's with conceptual purity at the expense of function and maybe joy?" but Vile Child chimed in "seems SupraJoyful to me. But I like form and space and mass and light and how the colors outside reflect on the white walls. Shit like that".

Plus, Jaakko van ‘t Spijker reported in from the first findings of a studio in the Harvard GSD program, dealing with ‘the Elements of Architecture’. Which were publicly presented in a packed Dependance at the Schieblock in Rotterdam on Friday night, November 16th. The feature led glass to comment "I find OMA creates some of today's most compelling architecture using standard off-the-shelf parts in unique and exhilarating ways.... Do...

Rediscovering the deep section

2012-06-18T22:30:00-04:00

Whereas other forms of architectural representation may better communicate the formal or aesthetic concerns of a project—whether a project is “naturalistic, rectilinear, curvilinear, formal, or informal”—sectional drawings cut right past the plan aesthetic. Able to be drawn quickly and early in the design process, sections offer a powerful generative, communicative and analytical tool.

For the Winter 2011 edition of landscape urbanism Stephanie Carlisle and Nicholas Pevzner explore the performative ground and representational meaning of the deep section. They define three types of deep section—the landscape transect, the structural section and the sequential section - and their role in shaping a deep urbanism.

STREET 2020, Tallinn Vision Competition Winners

2011-08-08T15:14:08-04:00

The winning entries have been announced in the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) Vision Competition STREET 2020. Organized by the Estonian Architecture Centre and the City of Tallinn, this open international competition invited students, architects, landscape architects and planners to focus on the hybrid issue of 'Landscape Urbanism' applied to Estonia's capitol city: battling heavy traffic congestion while improving the quality of urban life for pedestrians and cyclists.