Built on the flint-rich fields of the countryside Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Flint House was recently announced as the winner of RIBA's coveted House of the Year award during a TV broadcast on Britain's Channel 4. Formerly called the Manser Medal, House of the Year still holds the... View full entry
The developer behind the Kingdom Tower, set to become the world’s tallest building, has secured new funding to complete its construction. [...]
The company said that 26 of the planned 252 floors of the tower had been completed by contractor Saudi Binladin Group (SBL).
The tower would overtake the 828-metre Burj Khalifa in Dubai as the world’s tallest building when it is expected to be completed in 2018.
— thenational.ae
Related news on Archinect:Work to start next month on 1km Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaAS+GG Designs Kingdom Tower, to Be the World’s Tallest BuildingSaudi Arabia's uneasy relationship with its cultural heritage of Mecca and Medina View full entry
Santa Ana is the latest to embrace the granny flat; earlier this month, its city council directed staff to rewrite city code to make it easier to have granny flats, and to allow them to be larger. [...]
"It really is meant to expand people’s ability to help their families and to reduce the overcrowding" [...]
Berkeley city officials relaxed regulations to encourage granny flats in March. Pasadena and Los Angeles have also flirted with the idea of loosening restrictions on such units.
— scpr.org
More on "granny flats", aka accessory dwelling units (ADUs):Accessory Dwelling Units / Granny Flats / Mother-in-law SuitesFinding "Shelter" in Los Angeles' housing chaosLos Angeles: Small Lot Subdivsion Ordinance View full entry
more of them were built in the former Czechoslovakia — in a boom that stretched from 1959 to 1995 — than any place else on what was once Soviet earth. Today, about a third of all Czechs and Slovaks, from all income brackets, still call their panelaks home — NYT
Lisa Schwarzbaum traveled to Bratislava to explore its ubiquitous panelaks (aka "panel house"), Soviet era concrete high-rise housing units. The city is also the home of monuments to new capitalism, such as the Aupark shopping center and corporate complexes like Digital Park.On a related... View full entry
A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.
As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.
— The Guardian
"Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: 'Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels.'"Related coverage:Unchecked climate change... View full entry
‘El mejor anuncio de la historia’, or ‘the best ad in history’ is a picture taken in February 2008, which neatly encapsulates several aspects of the city’s urban landscape: the formal, the informal and the promotional.
'[...]Around and in between the super bloques a carpet of slums has grown, an organism that now seems to bind the blocks together in some symbiotic relationship. These are the kind of hybrid forms that are developing in Latin American cities [...]’
— failedarchitecture.com
Related in the Archinect news:Venezuelan Government Evicts Residents From World's Tallest SlumWithout Housing Reform, is a "Tower of David" Coming to Your City?Housing mobility vs. America's growing slum problem View full entry
For our final live Mini-Session, recorded during our Next Up event at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, we present a festival of Pauls. Archinect founder/publisher Paul Petrunia interviews Paul Andersen (Independent Architecture) and Paul Preissner (Paul Preissner Architects), who designed the... View full entry
Many in the west too often think of Beirut as a city scarred by war and terror. But the capital of Lebanon is a beautiful, modern city, one utterly remade after the country’s civil war ended in 1990. Gleaming skyscrapers tower over historic and pre-war modernist architecture, drenched in color and bathed in sunlight. It provides no end of inspiration for Serge Najjar, whose gorgeous photos of the city fill his Instagram. — Wired
Candy Chan, an architect living in New York City, has what she describes as a "love-hate relationship" with her subway system. Fascinated in particular by the mechanisms of the MTA's stations – their navigation and placemaking methods, their circulation patterns – Chan was surprised to learn... View full entry
There’s the legacy of Brutalism being such a negative term. It begins the conversation with negativity about these buildings, and this falls into the misreading of them as harsh, Stalinist, or some other kind of monstrous, mean architecture. The name plays into that mischaracterization that’s grown around a lot of them. I think “Heroic’” is a better title for what their actual aspirations were. The architects had a real sense of optimism. They were developing architecture for the civic realm. — citylab.com
Related news on Archinect:Brutalism: the great architectural polarizerArt college professor suggests makeover for brutalist Boston City HallFuture of Paul Rudolph's brutalist Orange County building still uncertain View full entry
Here’s our first peek at Simon Baron Development, Quadrum Global and CRE Development’s three-tower Long Island City development slated to rise alongside the former Paragon Paint factory building at 45-40 Vernon Boulevard. Permits for the first tower were filed with the DOB back in June and detail a 28-story, 296-unit rental tower designed by SHoP Architects. — 6sqft.com
You wait years for a new bridge across the Thames then three come along at once. Joining the controversial garden bridge and a plan for a crossing between Nine Elms and Pimlico, both of which have fierce opponents, comes a proposal unveiled today for a new pedestrian and cycle bridge between Rotherhithe and the Isle of Dogs in east London that hasn’t aroused a single objection – yet.
There’s a good reason why: of the three plans, it makes by far the most sense.
— Oliver Wainwright
Waze sometimes sends drivers through little-used side streets such as Cody Road [in Sherman Oaks, Calif]...Some people try to beat Waze at its own game by sending misinformation about traffic jams and accidents so it will steer commuters elsewhere. Others log in and leave their devices in their cars, hoping Waze will interpret that as a traffic standstill and suggest alternate routes. — The Wall Street Journal
More about Waze on Archinect:Throwback Throughway: when GPS fails, these gorgeous "mental maps" help you navigateWaze takes on the ride-sharing market with new carpooling appArnold Schwarzenegger voices Waze appWaze and its new uneasy bedfellows View full entry
'We’re expecting at least 10,000 applications this time,' said Ryohei Miyata, head of the selection committee.
Only 104 applications were accepted for the previous competition.
Applicants this time only have to be 18 or older and a resident of Japan. The committee will accept an entry by a group if the leader of the group meets the age and resident criteria, meaning that people younger than 18 can still take part.
— The Japan Times
After the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee ran into accusations of plagiarism with their first logo for the Games, the committee is at it again with a second call for submissions. But this time around, they're inviting virtually all residents of Japan to submit their ideas for a new logo... View full entry
The systematic destruction of Saudi Arabia is under way—in silence. Historic mosques, tombs, mausoleums, monuments and houses: more than 90% of the old quarters of the holiest cities of Islam has been razed to make room for a new urban landscape of hotels, shopping centres and apartment blocks. [...]
Construction works have already transformed Mecca and Medina into cities without a past, dominated by skyscrapers.
— theartnewspaper.com
Built in 1780 and leveled in 2002 for the construction of the Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel complex, the Ottoman Ajyad Fortress is just one of many historic sites that are being destroyed and replaced by hotel towers, condo skyscrapers and parking lots. Related news on Archinect:More than... View full entry