Archinect - News

Flushing Meadows Corona Park (for now)

2013-05-06T12:14:00-04:00

If all the various proposals come to fruition, Major League Soccer will plunk a 35,000-seat stadium on top of the Pool of Industry; the Related Companies and Sterling Equities will jointly build a 1.4 million–square–foot shopping center on parkland turned parking lot next to Citi Field, and the National Tennis Center will creep beyond its current borders

Justin Davidson reviews the Bloomberg administration's recently announced plans for Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Mr. Davidson is "skeptical of the new sugarplum visions" which would transfer about 40 acres of public land into the hands of private capital for various "goodies".

Editor's Picks #238

2011-11-20T11:14:35-05:00

Finally, sameolddoctor wants to talk about architecture and the ethics of working in developing countries vs the ethics of vanity skyscraper projects. Citizen responds: We don't have to go overseas for ethical dilemmas! How about the shiny new project on theseshores... whose architect uses unpaid intern labor? with the bold, avante garde design that is opposed by all the neighbors? whose objective is to make more profit for an already-wealthy developer?......

In Part three of the Countours features, What Should Architecture Occupy?, Part Three, Sherin Wing, attempts to summarize the responses to Archinect’s OWS poll and since OWS itself is about giving people a voice, she contends "the best way to encapsulate the results is to quote some responses". VanillaBrice quotes Sherin and asks for the raw data "Now, there are many different approaches to summarizing the responses. One is to rely solely on statistics, but since many of the answers cannot be meaningfully summarized this way..." Yes, but completely ignoring the statistics changes this from a poll to an edited forum. These anecdotes are interesting but where's the data? Please publish the results" and poche backs him up with a two word comment "Statistics please”

News
Students at UC Merced are participating in an interesting, but perhaps inverse form of occupation, where thousands of college students, facing a shortage of dorm space have moved into hundreds of luxurious homes in...

Editor's Picks #236

2011-11-06T17:08:22-05:00

Gregory Walker, noted that Zaha Hadid Architects now has an app for that and thinks they may have finally jumped the shark. However, Steven Ward thought that "in a context where your business is built on maintaining your brand, this probably doesn't seem like a tough or strange decision at all." and lletdownl agreed arguing that "it makes perfect sense to me to develop a method of viewing your work targeted specifically to the fastest growing method of browsing.

In the latest Contours feature Guy Horton, asked What Should Architecture Occupy? He concluded that, "occupying is a state of mind more than anything. It’s a stance, an orientation, an outlook, a perspective. Where do you stand right now?”
EllaStelter responds “Architects certainly aren't part of the 1%, but we do generally serve their interests. From what I see, architecture is a profession that is rather resistant to change and challenging the status quo, even when it is in our best interests."

Don’t forget to participate in Archinect’s anonymous #OWS survey

William Hunter, wrote about a group of student’s, from UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit’s MSc Building and Urban Design in Development (BUDD) course, attempts at Decoding Bangkok’s Pocket-Urbanization. While in Bangkok for three weeks the students worked closely with two local organizations CODI and BMP. William argued that the main reason for this teamup was the fact that "truly participatory design arguably req...