Help save one of America’s architectural gems; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Spring House in Tallahassee, Florida. We at the Spring House Institute are trying to raise money through a crowdfunding campaign to acquire the House from the original owners - the Lewis'. The house was recently listed on the... View full entry
The hardworking Skyscraper Museum, in the belly of a condo complex on Battery Place, doesn’t have much space or much of a budget, but with admirable frequency its director, Carol Willis, stages smart shows that uncover telling moments of New York skyscraper lore and architecture history. The museum has just opened “Times Square, 1984: The Postmodern Moment,” about the battle 30 years ago for the soul of Times Square and the profession. — nytimes.com
The two were commissioned, along with other artists including Chris Burden and Cindy Sherman, to create site-specific works dealing with Charleston’s history...The pair ended up painting the outside of an old house in colors approved by the city’s Board of Architectural Review — but in a camouflage pattern, which was hardly what the preservationists had in mind. — NYT
Back in July, Frank Rose reviewed a "poignant" exhibition at Galerie Perrotin on Madison, of the work Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler. For those interested in learning more, there is exactly one more day to visit, as the exhibit runs through August 22 - 2014. View full entry
A six-story-tall floating "Rubber Duck" is making its West Coast debut at the Port of Los Angeles, where it will lead more than a dozen battleships and sailboats in the Tall Ships Festival L.A. parade [...]
Dubbed the world's largest rubber duck, the giant inflatable was created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman.
"The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties," Hofman said on the event's website. "It can relieve the world's tensions as well as define them."
— latimes.com
Adorable? Certainly. Humorous? Obviously. Architecture? Maybe.According to Hofman's website, the Rubber Duck "doesn't discriminate people and doesn't have a political connotation... The Rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!" This description accounts for all rubber duckies ever... View full entry
If you're in the Los Angeles area this fall, make sure not to miss this top notch event: the ACADIA 2014 Design Agency Conference, to be held at the USC School of Architecture October 23-25, just confirmed that Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid will join the roster of high profile keynote speakers... View full entry
Nicholas Korody penned, Shitting Architecture: the dirty practice of waste removal. Therein drawing lessons; from Slavoj Zizek on the toilet and Timothy Morton (of Object-Oriented Ontology [OOO]) on sustainability as the preservation of the status quo, he argues that "Under the weight of the... View full entry
Architecture’s largest and most public event needs to do more than just go through the motions. The Biennale, unfortunately, seemed to be driven not by passion or a desire to communicate, but by a sense of obligation. [...] Perhaps an ornamental city is simply an ill-omened venue for an event celebrating the most functional of arts. Venice may always be trapped in the past, but the Biennale should be at the forefront of a conversation about architecture’s future. — theawl.com
Olafur Eliasson has tried something else. For his latest site-specific project, which opens on 20 August, the artist has transformed the entire south wing of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark into a convincing riverbed – a messy, stony accumulation of sedimentary rock and watery channels that threatens to silt up the white space of the gallery entirely. The result is an uncanny collision of manmade and natural views, and a Sublime reminder of the slow power of nature to erode [...]. — apollo-magazine.com
In late May of 2012, my friends and I travelled up to Montreal from upstate New York for the first time, only vaguely aware of the escalating student demonstrations there. When we arrived, we found ourselves in a sea of red. The students we stayed with all had little red felt squares pinned to... View full entry
Is architecture a trade or an art?For Alvin Boyarsky, the answer was clear. As longtime chair of the Architectural Association (AA) in London, and one of the most influential figures in 20th-century design education, Boyarsky argued that architecture was not only a profession but also an artistic... View full entry
Friday, August 8:Guggenheim Bullies Journalist: Molly Crabapple reports for Vice on inhumane immigrant labor conditions on Saadiyat island in the UAE, where a new arm of the Guggenheim (and Louvre, and NYU) is being built. The Guggenheim holds its cards close and skirts responsibility when... View full entry
Materials & Applications in Los Angeles has some fun social Saturday night events lined up for the entire month of August! The four-part VIS-Á-VIS performance series will include dance, music, a video and sound installations, and a film screening. — bustler.net
Starting August 9, all events will take place in the Materials & Applications space at the La Cage aux Folles, a 346-piece metal pipe temporary playground installation designed by Warren Techentin Architecture.August 9: LA Fort Presents: Daedelus (DJ set), Lawrence Lindell, Matt McGuire and... View full entry
As residents of Toledo, Ohio, and the surrounding region recover from a weekend without access to usable tap water — the fault of a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie — the crisis has set off new calls for stricter rules on the use the fertilizers that help contribute to the blooms. The algae bloom set off alarms on Saturday, causing authorities to impose a ban on the use of the city’s tap water, which comes from Lake Erie, affecting more than 400,000 people in Toledo... — Al Jazeera
A senior U.N. official warned the Security Council at an emergency meeting Tuesday that the humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine is steadily worsening as power and water supplies are scarce, homes are destroyed and health workers flee. John Ging, director of U.N. humanitarian operations, said that violence, especially in urban areas, will put more people at risk and lead to "an increase in the numbers killed" if a political solution can't be reached. — ABC News
The recent "TALL DC: New Monumentalism" exhibition took a critical approach to how outdated urban building standards -- specifically in D.C. -- can affect the built environment and the field of architecture, even as social demands and technology progress. Graduate students of Emerging Technologies and Media at The Catholic University of America proposed three skyscrapers among D.C.'s historical monuments to further encourage the questioning of this notion and the definition of "a monument". — bustler.net
More photos and other details on Bustler. View full entry