Glasgow-based Page\Park Architects have been appointed from a shortlist of five companies who bid for the role.
They will now start work on a detailed plan for restoration. Work is expected to begin in spring 2016 with hopes for academic access from 2017/2018.
The art school is continuing efforts to raise £20m to pay for the restoration of the Mackintosh and its contents. [...]
They were lead designers for the Mackintosh Conservation and Access Project from 2007-2009.
— bbc.com
If all goes to plan, the library that was damaged by a fire in May of last year will reopen for the 2017-2018 academic year. The Glasgow School of Art has provided additional information regarding Page\Park's restoration and working relationship with the School in a press release, presented here... View full entry
With their brilliant use of electric lighting – something Mendelsohn had learned from the look of American city streets at night – bold architectural graphics and photogenic forms, the Schocken stores were admired by a new generation of European architects and castigated by the Nazis, who came to power in 1933 — BBC News
Jonathan Glancey examines how from Victorian London to Soviet-era Moscow, they have changed the way we shop and have shaped global culture. View full entry
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf tossed out an idea that she admitted might sound a bit crazy: What if San Francisco housing developers could fulfill their affordable housing requirements by building some of that housing in Oakland? [...]
The idea is for San Francisco residents who qualify for below-market-rate housing to live in affordable units that would be built in Oakland. [...]
The foundation for the partnership is already being prepped in Oakland
— sfgate.com
Since opening the doors of its original William Pereira buildings in 1965, the Los Angele County Museum of Art has grown along with its home. The version of the city beloved by Reyner Banham and Pereira was alive then on the historic Miracle Mile, proselytizing megasized car-infrastructure and New... View full entry
The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the farther you travel from Moscow. [...]
A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil.
— Business Insider
India is currently the second most populated country in the world, closely following China, at 1.25 billion people. Around 30 percent of its inhabitants, roughly the population of the entire United States, live in urban areas that continue to grow. The astonishing numbers are proof of the... View full entry
Protestors against low-income housing demolition are not just fighting for their homes, but often for their ability to stay in London at all. The small amount of “affordable” housing being discussed as a replacement is really a figleaf. — citylab.com
"The public sector stopped making public space a long time ago," Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde told Wired magazine rather matter-of-factly in 1999. [...]
A little more than two decades later, there is something quaintly fatalistic about Jerde's attitude toward the frail state of public space. In Los Angeles, at least, it has returned pretty dramatically to health.
— latimes.com
[RIBA] has launched the contest to create a self-sustainable future for those living on Tristan, a tiny community “ruled by the weather”, part of the Tristan da Cunha group of islands. [...]
Tristan’s government, led by Alex Mitham, called in Riba to manage the process of finding an architect to overhaul residential property as well as carry out urgent replacement of the government buildings, currently little more than agricultural sheds which “are nearing the end of their useful life”.
— independent.co.uk
All of America’s cement consumption during the [20th] century adds up to around 4.4 gigatons (1 gigaton is roughly 1 billion metric tons).
In comparison, China used around 6.4 gigatons of cement in the three years of 2011, 2012 and 2013 [...]
The country is urbanizing at a historic rate, much faster than the U.S. did in the 20th Century. More than 20 million Chinese relocate to cities each year, which is more people than live in downtown New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined.
— washingtonpost.com
We are delighted to devote the entirety of this episode to an interview with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Our discussion spanned their nearly 30 years (and counting) working together, focusing not on individual projects but their architectural philosophy, their material explorations, and their... View full entry
When CU’s board of trustees decided last year to start charging tuition, its chair Richard S. Lincer claimed that to do so was “the only realistic source of new revenue in the near future.”
The Attorney General’s office will be looking into the decisions that left the university in such a precarious financial situation [...]
It will also investigate the decision to start charging tuition itself, which was the subject of protests, demonstrations, multiple occupations, and, currently, a lawsuit
— hyperallergic.com
Tataouine, the town in Tunisia where George Lucas filmed parts of Star Wars, has become embroiled in the country’s unrest with Isis. The town’s simple domed structures became iconic after they were used for Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine, and die-hard fans often make pilgrimages to them. But the town has become increasingly unsafe, as it is a waypoint for Isis fighters travelling to and from training bases in Libya, 60 miles to the east. — theguardian.com
The article doesn't note that the design of the set is based off the architecture of the adjacent Berber-speaking village of Matmata. Tourists are driven in old Land Rovers by guides across the sweeping dunes of the Northern Sahara to the more famous set, which isn't actually inhabited, but is... View full entry
From time to time, our Omnibus columnists check in to provide commentary on issues of design, policy, and history and their impact on the life and form of the city today. Stephen Rustow’s first column scaled the heights of New York’s skyscrapers to consider “The Privatization of Prospect.” Here, in his second installment, Rustow looks at three intangible forces that greatly influence the shape of our built environment: zoning, finance, and the building code. — urbanomnibus.net
Houston’s iconic NRG Astrodome “can and should live on” as a multi-use park that will enhance the quality of life for residents of the city, serve as a popular tourist destination, and catalyze economic development that enhances the greater NRG Park and benefits the region as a whole, according to a report released today from the Urban Land Institute (ULI). — uli.org
Read the full ULI report, The Astrodome, Harris County Texas: A Vision for a Repurposed Icon, here. View full entry
