This post is brought to you by AA Istanbul Visiting School. AA ISTANBUL VISITING SCHOOL – ROBOTIC MEDIATIONS Monday June 25 – Friday 6 July 6, 2018 AA Istanbul Visiting School, in collaboration with Istanbul Bilgi University, is a unique learning and making experience. The program continues... View full entry
Oscar Niemeyer's Communist party headquarters in Paris was recently captured by photographer Denis Esakov. Take a new look at the Brazilian architect's concrete achievement, one of his first in Europe. View full entry
Back in March, the Architectural Association in London announced Eva Franch i Gilabert would become the school's new Director after a competitive international search. Franch, who is the first woman to be elected director of the AA, is coming from the Storefront for Art & Architecture in... View full entry
And now he’s going to float a 150-tonne sculpture on a lake on London.
Is it an allegory of the west’s oil dependency, an indictment of how we’re polluting the planet, or both? Christo shakes his locks and smiles. “I have no reason to justify myself as an artist. I cannot explain my art. Everything I do professionally is irrational and useless.” This, he thinks, is exactly as it should be. “I make things that have no function – except maybe to make pleasure.”
— The Guardian
Artist Christo chats about his new Mastaba sculpture coming to London this summer: a giant trapezoidal prism of 7,506 stacked steel barrels to float on the Serpentine Lake. It will be his first large artwork in Britain. Christo, The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake), Collage... View full entry
Though Harris County Judge Ed Emmett is the public official most closely tied to the salvation of the Astrodome, many private citizens have played important roles, too.
Without their many letters, petitions, documents and road trips – the tools of architectural preservation – Houston might have lost its most iconic building.
— Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle editor Allyn West retells the long and twisting tale of how the Astrodome went from designated wrecking-ball fodder to National Historic Landmark and the activism behind it. View full entry
This is a painful period of reckoning for our community. While we don’t presume to have all the answers, we believe achieving a more just and accountable professional culture moving forward begins with open dialogue and, above all, an unwavering commitment to respecting the human rights of all individuals. — The Architectural League of New York, via Architect Magazine
In a statement published on Architect Magazine yesterday, The Architectural League of New York announced that they have revoked Richard Meier's status as a Life Trustee of the League, a month after the architect was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. In the following weeks after news... View full entry
American Institute of Architects CEO and EVP Robert Ivy will be honored with the Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Given to currently active Mississippi-connected artists and art patrons, Ivy is the first architect to receive the Polk Award. The... View full entry
This post is brought to you by BQE Core. You’re probably all too familiar with budget overruns. Whichever professional services field you work in, they seem almost inevitable. Indeed, the Project Management Institute (PMI) reports that last year, 43% of projects went over budget. So, what... View full entry
New renderings have been unveiled for an 11,000-square-foot outdoor terrace at 3 World Trade Center, expected to open when the skyscraper does so in June. Designed by Ken Smith Workshop, the space will be fully landscaped and feature a lush garden. Slated to open this June, 3 WTC, designed by... View full entry
As much as design impacts our everyday sensory experiences, our own senses can also shape new ways of designing. Opening on April 13, “The Senses: Design Beyond Vision” is a new exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York that invites visitors to encounter design... View full entry
Hassell was recently appointed as a design partner to develop Qianhai Mawan Mile, a new mixed-use precinct in Shenzhen's new Qianhai business district. The masterplan, which is still a work in progress, comprises above- and below-ground neighborhood zones, a continuous park, and pavilion buildings... View full entry
Can design keep you safe from crime? Architects and urbanists have been making that claim since urban crime — or the threat of it — reached crisis proportions in the 1960s. [...] But with scant evidence to support those claims, at what cost do we build “defensible space”? Architectural historian Joy Knoblauch looks back at sixty years of attempts to secure space and asks whether safety lies in the design of the built environment, in our social structures, or in our heads. — Urban Omnibus
Geography is getting stranger: the map is breaking up. Now we need to attend to the unnatural places, the escape zones and gap spaces, the places that are sites of surprise but also of bewilderment and unease. — Places Journal
Negotiating the hostile architectures of the modern city — from the anti-pedestrian cobbles of a median strip to the unloved landscape of a traffic island — geographer Alistair Bonnett reflects on the increasingly disciplinarian nature of public space, and by crossing roads and planting... View full entry
In March, the Bank of Canada unveiled a new $10 bank note [...] The laurel leaf signifies justice, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights building, designed by New Mexico architect Antoine Predock, is featured prominently. To contrast its striking modernism, the Library of Parliament’s vaulted ceiling is reproduced with a metallic sheen, as is the Arms of Canada insignia. — azuremagazine.com
Canada's new $10 note depicting Antoine Predock's Canadian Museum for Human Rights building on the back of the bill, along with an eagle feather and the laurel leaf. Canadian Museum for Human designed by Antoine Predock, located in Winnipeg, CA. RightsImage: Bob Linsdell/Wiki Commons. The front... View full entry
Zaha Hadid Design, PiM.studio, Chris Dyson Architects, SPARK Architects, and FT Architects are among the numerous designers and artists who created some fancy "barkitecture" for BowWow Haus London, a public exhibition that will support UK-based charity Blue Cross for Pets and the Outdoor Arts... View full entry
