This post is brought to you by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning & written by Eric Gallippo The University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning is offering a new post-professional degree focused on cutting-edge research in advanced fabrication... View full entry
It's back to work time, and unless you've thought ahead and booked off the first few days, then you'll be part of the over-indulged masses returning to the city this week. Ease yourself in with some exhibitions and walks around the city before 2018 kicks off. Check back regularly to... View full entry
Plastic building blocks are once again reaching for the sky.
This time, it was the city of Tel Aviv that made an attempt to build the tallest Lego tower — or, officially, the tallest structure built with interlocking plastic bricks, not all of them made by the Danish toy giant.
[...] a joint effort between Tel Aviv City Hall and Young Engineers, an organization that promotes learning with toy bricks. The tower is intended to honor a child who died from cancer.
— The New York Times
"Omer Tower" was built in memory of Omer Sayag, himself an avid fan of the colorful plastic blocks, who lost his battle with cancer in 2014 at the age of 8. Clocking in at a height of 35.85 meters (117 feet and 7 inches), the structure on Tel Aviv's Rabin Square beat previous world records... View full entry
2018 is off to a high note for the winners of the 2017 Laka Competition! Every year, the highly anticipated competition challenges participants around the world to submit their most innovative ideas of “Architecture that Reacts”, meaning architecture that... View full entry
The Bonaventure has become a focal point for the debate on Postmodernism, ever since its discovery as a Postmodern hyperspace by [cultural theorist] Fredric Jameson some years ago…It’s a landscape that’s highly fragmented. It’s a space that de-centers you, makes you feel lost. And in this feeling of being lost and dislocated, you feel that your only recourse is to submit to authority. You’re helpless, you’re made helpless, you’re peripheralized, you’re lost in these spaces. — Ed Soja, eastofborneo.org
In light of John Portman's passing, here is a 6 minute clip with urban theorist Ed Soja discussing the postmodern nature of the infamous architect's Bonaventure Hotel located in downtown Los Angeles. h/t to Orhan from this thread. View full entry
A 156m (511ft) skyscraper in northern Shanxi province has been listed on Taobao, China's largest e-commerce website, by a local court. [...]
Construction on the building first began in 2006 and was due to be completed by 2011, according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua.
However, the developer ran into funding troubles. The building was eventually seized by the Shanxi Provincial Higher People's Court.
— BBC
Fresh coat of paint, some shiplap here and there, and this puppy can be open for business in no time.If a 511-ft fixer upper in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan has been on your real estate wishlist for some time, and you happen to have at least 553m yuan ($84 million) sitting idly by, then... View full entry
But the building has proven controversial for other reasons. The 50-storey portal may be the tallest picture frame in the world, but its architect wants to add another title to the stats: for him, it is the biggest stolen building of all time.
“They took my project, changed the design and built it without me,” says Fernando Donis, the Mexican architect whose frame proposal won an international competition in 2008 for a “tall emblem structure to promote the new face of Dubai”.
— The Guardian
The controversial Dubai Frame opened to the public yesterday, finally offering tourists a 360-degree view of the city. While construction only began in 2013, the new 150 meter landmark has been a decade in the making, blighted by controversy surrounding its stolen design. Beginning with a... View full entry
Gavin Stamp, the architectural historian, who has died aged 69, was “Piloti” who wrote the “Nooks and Corners” column in Private Eye magazine; a television presenter of great charm and humour; a conservationist who personally saved one of the finest Arts and Crafts buildings in London; a photographer, draughtsman and writer of prodigious talent. — telegraph.co.uk
The architecture community lost historian, writer and broadcaster Gavin Stamp on December 30 2017 due to prostate cancer. Stamp had an immense impact on British architecture and authored several important architectural history books. He was also a television series presenter, co-founder of... View full entry
While 2017 saw developer Related Midwest remain tight-lipped on its plans for the site of the defunct 2,000-foot-tall Chicago Spire project, a rendering showing a pair of very tall skyscrapers rising at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive recently reignited speculation regarding the site’s future redevelopment. The rather slender image surfaced online, credited to Britain’s Zaha Hadid Architects. — chicago.curbed.com
Another rendering for the vacant Chicago Spire site recently surfaced online. The image was confirmed as a proposal from Zaha Hadid Architects; however, the developer Related Midwest will not be pursuing the design. While the project will not be built, the organic towers are certainly a... View full entry
Soon after the news, an Indian architect posted an image of [Foster's] design juxtaposed next to a stainless-steel idli maker—the kind used to steam idlis for breakfast in countless households across southern India—on an architecture-focused Facebook group. While some made fun of the resemblance—”How on earth will they cook in this?”—others praised the design for not being derivative of colonial-era architecture. — Quartz
Foster + Partners was invited to design the state assembly building in Amaravati, the new capital of the Indian state Andhra Pradesh. Since it was released, Foster's proposed design has drawn mixed reactions from the public. Some people compared the building's spiked design to an idli maker... View full entry
The goal with it is simple, says architect James Law: to utilize “leftover space” between buildings in Hong Kong, a city with limited land and a constant housing shortage. — Quartz
The city of Hong Kong has retained the title of the world's most expensive real estate market for the past seven years. As housing prices continue to soar, many residents are finding themselves with inadequate shelter, including over 200,000 people living in what has come to be referred to as... View full entry
Harvard University recently celebrated the topping out ceremony of its new John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Designed by Behnisch Architekten's Boston office, the 497,000-square-foot, six-story complex at Harvard’s Allston campus will house teaching and research... View full entry
Gilles Retsin, Program Director of Architectural Design MArch, has won an international competition at the Tallinn Architectural Biennale 2017 with his experimental pavilion. His adaptable, lego-like design proposes a series of discrete building blocks that can be... View full entry
Architect John Portman, often credited as the father of the massive hotel atrium, has passed away in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. No cause of death has been announced. His firm, John Portman & Associates, has released the following statement, along with a website celebrating his... View full entry
The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively. — New York Times
Against the back drop of the New York subway system's massive delays, the New York Times looks into why project costs for a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road ballooned to nearly $3.5 million for each new mile of track. View full entry
