Over Skype from their homebase in Beijing, WAI Architecture Think Tank partners Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski spoke with Paul Petrunia, on our latest Mini-Session for the Next Up series. Their contribution to the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a rumination on manifestos, looks to the... View full entry
A purple pedestrian bridge between two terminals that link Tijuana International Airport and San Diego over the U.S.-Mexico border opened to passengers Wednesday morning.
The Cross Border Xpress is the first project to join a site in the U.S. with a foreign airport terminal. [...]
The $120-million private venture aims to serve about 2.4 million fliers each year who usually would have to queue up in busy border crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa on the California side.
— latimes.com
Health warnings have been issued this week as atmospheric pollution is set to rise to dangerously high levels on Thursday and Friday, with levels of breathable toxic particles reaching 100 micrograms per cubic meter.
In a bid to stop pollution reaching dangerous levels, the council is making the city's buses and metro free on Thursday and Friday to reduce the emissions caused by Turin's heavy traffic.
— thelocal.it
Other cities coping with mitigating air pollution:Beijing's latest "airpocalypse" is bad enough for city to issue first ever red alertCar-free events significantly improve air qualityDelhi’s air pollution is worse than Beijing's. A new app measures the air quality in real time.Giant bubbles... View full entry
On the happy and historic occasion of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi being jointly awarded the 2016 AIA Gold Medal, we speak with Brown about whether this could be a watershed moment for architecture, and the long road that she and Robert took to arriving here. We last spoke with Brown... View full entry
College officials say 1950s-era buildings that are peppered across the Costa Mesa campus — many of them designed by renowned architect Richard Neutra — are no longer able to accommodate the school's rising population. [...]
"We appreciate the Neutra buildings for what they were and what they meant to the campus, but times do change," trustee Mary Hornbuckle said. "We have to be responsive to the needs of the 21st century student."
— latimes.com
Dr. Gerald Brett Weiss ... was killed when he was hit from behind while riding his bicycle in the community of Indian Wells, CA. [...]
his family won a $5.8 million judgment against Indian Wells, claiming that the city was negligent in not providing sufficient width for bike lanes or lighting [...]
California is one of thirteen states that follows the Pure Comparative Fault Rule, meaning that even if the city is only partially at fault—even only one percent—the plaintiff can recover damages.
— ssti.us
Weiss was hit from behind by an allegedly drunk driver in June of 2012, on a road that, previous to a redesign in 2005, had been marked as a bike route and had bike lanes.More news on cycling design and safety:Senator proposes mandatory helmets for California cyclistsProtected bike lanes... View full entry
Exhibiting architecture is a notoriously difficult and contentious task. After all, how do you represent a spatial practice without neglecting the very qualities that made it worth representing in the first place? Nonetheless, it has a long history – extending at least as far back as the... View full entry
“The project is being transformed from being non-figurative architecture to an overscale figurative photo-frame. That is, from being a modern, public monument to a postmodern pastiche,” [competition-winning architect Fernando] Donis wrote in an open letter. — Design Mena
Described by an internet commenter as "the St. Louis Arch minus the beauty or finesse," the Dubai Frame project is scheduled to open this month to the public. The somewhat controversial monument, which has not only attracted a scathing load of public commentary but an objecting open letter from... View full entry
After a decade of outlandish proposals for the City, Parry has come up with a refreshingly blunt stick of a building for the centrepiece of the district’s “cluster” of office blocks. [...]
“The thing that’s most interesting in all this is urban design,” says Parry, deflecting the discussion away from the fact that he is penning the City’s tallest totem. He’s more concerned with fixing the human experience at street level: “The project is really all about public space.”
— theguardian.com
Soon to join the "great dinner party in the sky," between Rogers Strik Harbour + Partners' Cheesegrater and Foster + Partners' Gherkin, 1 Undershaft will be as tall as The Shard (the maximum height limit for the city). According to The Guardian, the building was also designed to have a triangular... View full entry
The [British] museum announced a six-month show that will tell the remarkable story of two lost cities at the mouth of the Nile – Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus – which by the 8th-century AD had been swallowed completely by the sea. [...]
the loans will range from the enormous, a 5.4-metre-high granite statue of the Nile flood god Hapi, to the domestic. [...]
It represents Egypt’s first major loan of antiquities since the country’s revolution in 2011...
— theguardian.com
Last week, UCLA’s Hammer Museum hosted the final iteration of its 2015 program "Next Wave: Quality, Quantity, and Accessibility of Water in the 21st Century," a robust discussion series that has gathered experts in various fields to explicate and consider the most pressing issues surrounding... View full entry
A red alert should go into effect if there is a prediction that the air quality index will stay above 200 for more than 72 hours. The United States government rates above 200 as “very unhealthy,” and 301 to 500 as “hazardous.” At 7 p.m. Monday, the Beijing municipal reading was 253. [...]
At international climate change talks, including the ones now underway in Paris, Chinese officials have promised to curb coal use in order to address both air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.
— nytimes.com
More from Beijing:Beijing's challenges to become the center of Jing-Jin-Ji — a supercity of 130 million peopleThe tiny village library that draws Beijingers in drovesBeijing mayor says air pollution makes his city "unlivable"China considering drastic ban on coal View full entry
archaeologists have found several recesses in rock formations in Wales that match the size and shape of Stonehenge's bluestones, leading to theories that the monument may have been erected in Wales first, before being moved to its present site in Salisbury Plain.
The researchers also discovered evidence of what they described as “a loading bay" from where the massive boulders could have been dragged away.
— artnet.com
Wales is over 130 miles / 209 kilometers from Stonehenge's current site in Salisbury Plain – a distance that would have taken Neolithic people over 500 years to transport the monoliths over, according to Professor Mike Parker Pearson, a British late prehistory professor at UCL who led the... View full entry
The developers of the 450-meter high Zifeng Tower in Nanjing have been found guilty of robbing the surrounding neighborhood of precious sunshine, and will have to compensate residents accordingly. [...]
The 89-story Zifeng Tower was designed by American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. It is the tallest building in Nanjing, fourth tallest in China and 12 tallest in the world.
— shanghaiist.com
Related news on Archinect:Crowded skies: Sunlight as the new amenity for the super richAs Manhattan grows supertaller, its shadows are getting superlongerWelcome to the permanent dusk: Sunlight in cities is an endangered species View full entry
Before coming to MIT to serve as dean of the School of Architecture + Planning in January 2015, Hashim Sarkis taught at Harvard's GSD as the Aga Khan professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies. He founded his own practice, Hashim Sarkis Studios, in Cambridge in 1998, and... View full entry
