"We're working with the other owners of the property and with Metro," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. "There's good reason to build a major development there. You've got subway access and density on Wilshire. My dream is some beautiful piece of architecture with an architecture and design museum at the base, which would add to Museum Row."
If built, the tower would offer a dramatic vertical complement to the relentlessly horizontal LACMA gallery building by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor
— latimes.com
How's this for a yin-yang in the new Los Angeles: if this goes through, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) would be responsible for two majorly different impositions on Wilshire Blvd., the city's foremost thoroughfare and itself an icon. One: a street-straddling horizontal art... View full entry
Buildings perform a variety of functions: They shelter, illuminate, and obscure surrounding people and landscapes. The fundamentally pragmatic purpose of architecture endows edifices with a wide range of functions, but rarely does architecture speak. Curator Joanna Warsza, however, organizes performances and interventions that implore architecture to speak back. — blouinartinfo.com
"Buildings in paintings have too often been viewed as background or as space fillers which play a passive or at best supporting role, propping up the figures that carry the main message of the picture. By looking afresh at buildings within paintings, treating them as active protagonists, it becomes clear that they performed a series of crucial roles." — online.wsj.com
Inspired by the 2014 Venice Biennale curated by Rem Koolhaas, Esther Sperber penned the Op-Ed in which she argues that contemporary architecture must shift From (EX)CITE to (IN)CITE. In response Thayer-D wrote "There's no rule that says architects can't stimulate both the senses and the... View full entry
Dubai is already home to the biggest shopping mall in the world, but that apparently isn't enough.
The emirate is planning an even bigger mall, one so massive it's already being described as a temperature-controlled city. It's going to be called Mall of the World, and will stretch for 48 million square feet.
The plan may seem curious to Americans watching their neighborhood shopping malls start to fade.
— cbsnews.com
Looking eastward from the canyon's popular South Rim, visitors could soon see a hive of construction as workers build restaurants, hotels and shops on a distant mesa on the Navajo Indian reservation.
The developers also plan a gondola ride from those attractions to whisk tourists to the canyon floor, where they would stroll along an elevated riverside walkway to a restaurant at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers.
— latimes.com
225 West 57th Street‘s facade will top-out 1,479′ above street level, while a surprise spire on top will cap the tower at 1,775 feet. Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill are designing the building.
The new height details will result in several superlatives: Manhattan will finally retake the ‘tallest roof’ in the United States from Chicago’s Willis Tower, which stands 1,451′, and 225 West 57th Street will become the tallest residential building in the entire world [...].
— newyorkyimby.com
Photos have emerged of what looks like the first facade piece for Apple's new mega HQ.While civil engineering is now well underway at the site in Cupertino, California, the facade element was spotted thousands of miles away in the tiny Bavarian town of Gundelfingen. Josef Gartner GmbH, a Germany... View full entry
The big catharsis for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design comes by way of RUMBLE, an all-school expo held at the end of the academic year, that includes student work, final reviews, program installations, and lectures. Mixing content from students, practitioners, critics and faculty, the event... View full entry
As Okinawa and Kyushu prepare to take the brunt of what was until Monday categorized as a “super typhoon,” local infrastructure will be pushed to its limits, especially in Kyushu, where the area is saturated from heavy rains last week. — The Diplomat
Typhoon Neoguri is the strongest typhoon of the 2014 season, thus far. As it barrels through the Ryukyu island chain and towards mainland Japan, the storm is already taking its toll. Reports claim 25 people have been injured, thousands are without electricity, and 540,000 have been ordered to... View full entry
This report explores the historical castles and fortresses in Saudi Arabia’s al-Medina Al-Munawwarah, the Islamic faith’s second holy city. Al-Medina holds Prophet Mohammad’s Mosque and is 450 kilometers north of Makkah. Al Arabiya’s correspondent Khamis Al-Zahrani went on a mission to explore the city and discussed how urban expansions are posing a threat to its unique architecture. — Al-Arabiya
One of Spain’s largest bullrings could soon start an unlikely new life as a mosque. That might sound like a strange metamorphosis, but the city of Barcelona is currently considering plans suggested last month by the Emir of Qatar to convert Barcelona’s Plaza Monumental into a place of prayer for up to 4,000 worshippers. [...] With a projected cost of €2.2 billion, the Qataris are presumably planning something rather lavish for this already grand shell. — citylab.com
Zaha Hadid Architects has admitted it has made changes to its design for the stadium that will be the centrepiece of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
The firm has faced hostility in Japan with critics complaining that the proposed 80,000-seat stadium is too big, too costly and clashes with Tokyo’s urban planning.
At the weekend, 500 protestors marched around the existing National Stadium to demonstrate over plans to replace it with Hadid’s proposal [...].
— bdonline.co.uk
Earlier this year, the AIANY Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) Committee revealed the winners of its biennial design ideas competition QueensWay Connection: Elevating the Public Realm (previously on Archinect). Now the public is invited to take a closer look at the winning entries at the... View full entry
Zaatari is becoming an informal city: a sudden, do-it-yourself metropolis of roughly 85,000 with the emergence of neighborhoods, gentrification, a growing economy and, under the circumstances, something approaching normalcy, though every refugee longs to return home. [...]
The change, accelerated by regional chaos and enterprising Syrians, illustrates a basic civilizing push toward urbanization that clearly happens even in desperate places.
— nytimes.com
