Philip Johnson lovers rejoice! It was just announced that the city will put aside $5.8 million to restore the dilapidated crown jewel of the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Funding for the restoration of the “Tent of Tomorrow” came via Mayor Bill de Blasio, who contributed $4.2 million to the project, while the rest was provided by City Council and Borough President Melinda Katz... Efforts to restore the project will begin soon, but a bumpy road lies ahead… — 6sqft
Can a U.S. organization really tell Europe how to run its cities better? [...]
Following a successful inaugural challenge last year, the city innovation contest crossed the Atlantic in 2014, winnowing down European applicant cities to a shortlist of 21*, all of whom attended a two-day Ideas Camp staged in Berlin earlier this month. [...]
A European organization could not realistically offer anything as substantial as €9 million in prize money.
— citylab.com
Previously: Twenty-one finalists for the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge Competition in Europe View full entry
How do you put together an exhibition of over sixty studios at once, including final reviews, for an entire architecture school? With the help of many devoted administrators. Often working behind the scenes and in conjunction with the Deans of schools, administrators like USC's Gail Peter Borden... View full entry
[takes action] is the fourth issue from Bracket, Archinect's collaborative publication with InfraNet Lab. Edited by a diverse collection of professionals from the intersecting worlds of architecture, environment, and digital culture, Bracket's content is sourced from an open-call... View full entry
The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law that barred protests near abortion clinics.
The law, enacted in 2007, created 35-foot buffer zones around entrances to abortion clinics. State officials said the law was a response to a history of harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Massachusetts, including a shooting rampage at two facilities in 1994.
The law was challenged on First Amendment grounds by opponents of abortion
— nytimes.com
Massachusett's 35-foot buffer zone was initially enacted as a defensive mechanism, responding to a history of harassments and violence around clinics' entrances. The law had previously barred anyone from entering a fixed buffer zone around entrances to reproductive health care facilities... View full entry
Officials in Tel Aviv, Israel, announced this week that the long-anticipated skyTran system should be up and running by the end of 2015. Tel Aviv — globally famous for its terminally congested traffic — will serve as the pilot program for planned systems in Europe, India and the United States. [...]
Call up a sky car on your smart phone and the pod-shaped vehicle will pick you up at a designated station and whisk you off to any other station on the system.
— news.discovery.com
Garrison Architects adds to the pressing topic of 21st-century disaster resilience for dense urban cities with their modular post-disaster housing prototype. Developed for the New York City Office of Emergency Management, the project aims to provide New Yorkers not only with reliable and adaptable... View full entry
HOK has just unveiled its design for the Obama Presidential Library. Although several institutions in Chicago have submitted their own bids for the new museum and library, the global architecture and engineering office states that it submitted this design in coordination with the Museum Campus Foundation, which is an organization comprised of a number of community groups located in Bronzeville. — chicago.curbed.com
For the nineteenth edition of Screen/Print, Archinect excerpted from a new collection of essays titled Chicagoisms. - vado retro had a complaint "ragged right is, well, raggedy. widows and orphans galore. who did this page layout? it is not good"...
Terri Peters penned a review of Rem's Venice Biennale. Therein, she wrote "The exhibition encourages dialogue, and feels like an exhibition of architectural research, not a survey of new trends in architecture". For the nineteenth edition of Screen/Print, Archinect excerpted from a new... View full entry
Through case studies, surveys, and construction-cost analyses, the Cultural Policy Center report found that the museum building boom didn't bring the net benefit to communities predicted by the so-called Bilbao Effect. [...] Beyond the standard gentrification effect [...] supply may have outstripped demand over the course of the U.S. arts center building boom—leaving some cities with the responsibility to maintain or even pay for cultural centers that they don't entirely need. — citylab.com
Architect Peter Zumthor has dramatically revised his design for a new Los Angeles County Museum of Art, creating a new bridge-like section of the building that would span Wilshire Boulevard.
The new design is meant to address concerns that the original plan would encroach on, and potentially damage, the La Brea Tar Pits at the neighboring Page Museum, casting a shadow over the largest pit.
— latimes.com
The documentary Lagos Wide and Close - An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City, arose from Rem Koolhaas' 2001 visit to Lagos, Nigeria with filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, hoping to document a phase in one of Africa's fastest growing cities. The doc's unique direction allows viewers to... View full entry
Old Indian cities like Varanasi, Amritsar, Kolkata and even Delhi, could be in for a facelift over the next few years with the Narendra Modi government planning to develop modern satellite towns around these cities under the 100 Smart City programme, while upgrading the decaying infrastructure of the old towns. [...]
All new cities will have integrated transport — modern bus systems, trams, metro rail and bicycle tracks — aided by satellite mapping, garbage disposal and solid waste management.
— articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com
Before becoming India's prime minister and promising to make cities smart, Narendra Modi's campaign was focused on a slightly less lofty goal: "toilets before temples":The BJP leader is quite right to declare that India should spend less money on devotion and more on sanitation. According to... View full entry
The upstart exhibition, which Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to announce Tuesday, will be called the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a nod to the prestigious Venice Biennale, which just opened its 14th international architecture exhibition.
Chicago is billing its biennial as North America's biggest survey of international contemporary architecture, but the event faces a crowded field.
— chicagotribune.com
Upon NCARB's licensure-upon-graduation announcement that stirred up plenty of discussion here on Archinect, the Council recently unveiled three more major modifications regarding the Intern Development Program (IDP) and the Architect Registration Exam (ARE).Proposal for the streamlining and... View full entry
