With this tumultuous year finally coming to an end, let's take a look back and dig through some of the most exciting and stand-out news and feature stories on Archinect during the month of February.
↑ Tiny homes are fitting symbols of economic precarity
We didn't expect "tiny-houser millennials" to be a thing one day either, but in 2019, they just seemed to be everywhere. The scope of motivations behind the movement is anything but tiny though.
Black Panther, released in 2018 and Oscar-awarded in the following year, moved the cultural needle in so many regards. Contributing to the Academy Award-winning costume design by Ruth E. Carter was Austrian-born and LA-based architectural educator and designer Julia Koerner. Archinect's Katherine Guimapang had the chance to sit down with Koerner and chat about Wakanda, Zulu attire, parametric design, and 3D printing.
↑ Fuhgeddaboudit: Amazon drops NYC Headquarters plans
While the breaking news announcement of Amazon's New York rejection seems like an eternity ago, the online retailer has meanwhile reversed, or at least adjusted, course and made its intent to lease NYC office spaces for more than 1,500 employees public earlier this month.
↑ AIA issues statement of support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal
Ah yes, the Green New Deal. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey introduced the ambitious proposal in early February because, well, you gotta start somewhere, right? As expected, the comment section flared up fervidly, just like our planet has been doing since the beginning of the industrial age.
↑ Why is Florida's coastal real estate still booming despite rising levels?
Optimism: good. Optimism paired with lots of investor money and climate-change denial in flood-prone coastal regions: less than good. So what's driving South Florida's condominium-building boom?
↑ Is it a Museum? An Up Close and Personal Review of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Broad Museum
In the second installment of Archinect's Under the Skin series on significant buildings in Los Angeles, writer Patrick Geske visits and reviews the DS+R/Gensler-designed The Broad...art gallery? Public art storage? Art museum even? All things considered, the building earns, in Geske's critical view, a solid meh.
Another LA structure made the headlines that month: the nation's second largest city is finally getting a state-of-the-art NFL stadium (haven't you heard?). At a budget of $5,000,000,000, those hot dog stands better be good.
If you thought Singapore's Marina Bay Sands connected triple towers were cool, check out the eight-tower ensemble Raffles City Chongqing with its record-setting 300-meter sky bridge, also designed by Safdie Architects. After announcing structural completion in February, the behemoth development in China's heartland already celebrated the soft opening of its first phase, an enormous five-story shopping mall, in September, reportedly attracting a crowd of 900,000 shoppers in one weekend.
↑ What will be the fate of Jon Jerde's iconic Horton Plaza?
While PoMo chic is enjoying some sort of a revival among the younger crowds who may have missed its original rise, the future of Jon Jerde's spectacular Horton Plaza in San Diego looks rather bleak. While a recent law suit may or may not have any impact on the planned redevelopment of the iconic shopping mall canyon, interior demolition is reportedly already underway.
↑ First photos of Kengo Kuma-designed Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo
Ever sipped on your venti decaf soy frappuccino blended caramel crème eight-pump mo' whip and thought: "This would be so much better if the place was designed by a Japanese star architect?" — Enter Kengo Kuma's new Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo.
"For me and for my colleagues, you were responsible for liberating us, liberating architecture…As if architecture was rock ‘n roll, you were the Woodstock for us." — Orhan Ayyüce in conversation with the man himself, Frank Owen Gehry.
↑ A Conversation with Theaster Gates; Archinect Sessions Episode #136
Chicago's Renaissance man Theaster Gates joined us for a delightful conversation on the Archinect Sessions podcast. Topics covered span from the reuse of the city's diseased ash trees for the new University of Chicago Keller Center, to hand skills, black labor, neighborhood communities, all the way to socio-cultural readings of beauty.
↑ London's third Design Biennial to be directed by Es Devlin and will explore the theme of 'Resonance'
Award-winning British artist and stage designer Es Devlin has been making a splash for years now with her unique blend of technology, light, sound, and poetry. (Take a look at her country's Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai here.)
↑ Throughout his legendary career, Karl Lagerfeld fused fashion and architecture
In February, we said adieu and auf Wiedersehen to a multifaceted and larger-than-life icon: fashion designer, photographer, director, curator, interior decorator, and furniture designer Karl Lagerfeld died at age 85.
Robots envisioning and building their own home. What could possibly go wrong. Human responses in the comment section are 0 and 1 on this one.
Ah snap, did the best architecture job board just get better? February saw the arrival of our Archinect Jobs Visualizer, allowing job seekers to discover new career opportunities with a special focus on the work of firms currently hiring on Archinect Jobs.
↑ Render vs Reality: Mecanoo nails it. Take a look.
The good folks at Mecanoo were showing off their sense of humor—and commitment to quality—with their "Render vs Reality" Pinterest board. Yeah, that's gonna be a yes from us dawg.
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^^ "Woodstock Gehry" ;)))))
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