Archinect - News

Editor's Picks #429

2015-09-18T12:46:00-04:00

Today's Editor's Picks is a special themed "place based" edition - highlighting content (old/newish) from the archives/site - about Denver and Colorado. Partly as an apology for the brief/unexpected lull in the Picks. Also, inspired by my own recent relocation to The Mile High City. Just one part of an ongoing attempt to learn about my new home.

While MArch students at the University of Colorado, Denver, Patrick Beseda and Lacy Williams realized a design/build project for a micro-dwelling. FOUNDhouse inspired by the WikiHouse project, was an exploration of digital fabrication, the possibilities of DIY and the democratization of housing/shelter.

News
Back in the 1990s the Denver area was site of an extreme makeover (aka environmental remediation) for the 6,500 acre Rocky Flats DOE nuclear industrial site.

Archinect ex-Editor in Chief | Staff Editor John Jourden coined Bil(Denver)bao in response to the news that David Adjaye, Steven Holl, and Daniel Libeskind, all had active projects in the same city - Denver. Similarly in a post on how cities across America are gambling on architecture to revitalize aging downtowns, Orhan Ayyüce criticized "i hate the new 'ready made culture' trend. new museums=starbucks".

Richard Florida used occupational data from the labor market data and research firm EMSI to map America's Leading Design Cit...

A Motor City Missionary

2013-04-26T17:38:00-04:00

According to academics like Brent D. Ryan, author of “Design After Decline: How America Rebuilds Shrinking Cities," it is one of the most ambitious privately financed urban reclamation projects in American history.

Earlier this month David Segal traveled to Detroit to look into the efforts/urban boosterim of Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans. Using his real estate company, Bedrock Real Estate Services, Mr. Segal is renovating properties, building apartments and wooing corporate tenants. The goal is to remake Detroit (or at least some of it's downtown) into a high-tech hub, full of the 'creative class', high culture and young entrepreneurs. Mr. Segal also explored the context and cause for the current crisis and interviewed some locals who worry about the creation of "two Detroits".

Editor's Picks #216

2011-06-19T12:56:26-04:00

Bryan explores the differences between the entries by MASS Design Group and Formlessfinder "The good news is that underpinning these two manifestations of architectural ambition is a singular hopefulness. The differences arise when these teams attempt to connect their own aspirations for an architecture capable of making an impact with more specific thoughts about where that impact is most likely to happen, why it needs to happen, and how it might be best accomplished."

Bryan Boyer catches up with Formlessfinder, winner of the Peoples' Choice Award, to talk about the how and the why of innovative architecture. He writes "Archinect is excited to begin this experiment in extending the contribution of the PS1 YAP competition: more ideas, more discourse, more visibility for the competitors, and ultimately more meaning. We’re interested in a very basic question: how might the spread of entries to the PS1 competition be used as a way to better understand the state of American architecture at this moment?"