At the intersection of these two domains – technology and civic life – a small and fascinating sector has been taking root for the last few years. [...]
Together, these types of companies and organizations have loosely come to define "civic tech" – and the potential for a future where technology finally, seamlessly, significantly alters how we relate to government and our neighbors.
— The Atlantic Cities
Not without its growing pains, the U.S. government is slowly learning to effectively use technology to connect to its citizens. The expanding field of "civic-tech" focuses on the sharing and distillation of government data, to grease the bureaucratic wheels and ramp up personal civic engagement... View full entry
"It looks like a prison to be honest with you," said Lynda Johnson, an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and editor and founder of KidStyleSource.com who has owned a townhouse on St. Nicholas Place for 20 years and is a member of the Hamilton Heights Homeowners Association.
Some feel the design does not fit into the context of the nearby Hamilton Heights-Sugar Hill Historic District, which is filled with Beaux Arts and Queen Anne-style 19th-century row houses.
— dnainfo.com
Archinect recently took a field trip to Playa Vista, a quiet community minutes from the ocean in west Los Angeles, to check out UCLA’s new satellite architecture campus, IDEAS. Entirely housed within a 13,000sqft airplane hangar, the campus is used by architecture students in the... View full entry
eric chavkin penned a review of "Glen Small: Recovery Room" an exhibit at Assembly in Los Angeles, organized and curated by Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce. MightyMike (aka Michael Locke) commented "For local (Los Angeles) fans of Archinect, there's a wonderful example of Small's work in the Franklin Hills...the Leiberman House". For his part davidd felt "This review and Small's work seems to come from an ingroup/niche point of view".
eric chavkin penned a review of "Glen Small: Recovery Room" an exhibit at Assembly in Los Angeles, organized and curated by Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce. He concluded "Despite the flaws the works of Glen Small offer so much that another architect could base an entire career on... View full entry
Once a bustling and stylish avenue, now a street that no longer knows its identity or purpose, no other street in Rotterdam provokes as much discussion as the Coolsingel. — Sculpture International Rotterdam
The Coolsingel is Rotterdam's civic artery, a 1km street home to the city's economic, commercial and political focal points. But despite its central position and function for the last century, the street has suffered a bit of an identity crisis, and lacks the vibrancy it once channeled. To... View full entry
The city has become a drop-off point for the migrant tribe of global super-rich, who feel the need to keep homes in London, New York, perhaps Moscow or an Asian city, and now Miami. [...]
At times, Miami seems to be following a London formula: property speculation + contemporary art + restaurant boom + cultural diversity = dynamic world city. It is easy to see where it all gets a bit shallow, starting with the sudden mania for collecting big-name architects.
— theguardian.com
In light of the upcoming prestigious ICON Magazine Awards 2013 taking place on Dec. 5 at the Oval Space in East London, we're excited to feature industrial design studio RoboFold, who is one of this year's "Emerging Design Studio" nominees.
Before RoboFold's establishment in 2007 at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, Gregory Epp — who was a student there — spent more than a decade researching curved folding techniques.
— bustler.net
“Arum” Sculpture by Zaha Hadid Architects. Image: Matthias Urschler. “Infinity” Sculpture by Stathis Lagoudakis. Image: Tracy Woodford. View full entry
The Freedom Ship would be home to 50,000 people and have its own airport, casinos and shopping centers. The Florida-based company behind the city of the sea says it is hopeful it can raise the $1 billion needed to begin construction on the massive vessel. — nydailynews.com
For help designing the College of Human Ecology's newest community space at Cornell, college leaders turned to a team of in-house experts: 10 senior interior design students in its Department of Design and Environmental Analysis. The 5,000-plus square foot Human Ecology Commons, which connects Martha Van Rensselaer Hall and the new Human Ecology Building opened . . . and has quickly become the hub of the college. — Cornell University
Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University is doing some amazing things that bring architecture, engineering and the sciences together through the lens of Human Ecology. The DEA department is a very impressive program at the College of Human Ecology, an... View full entry
The simple logic: Individuals who collaborate are creative. Consequently, all boundaries must disappear, including floors and walls. Private offices no longer exist, not even for top management. The open creative playground is the prevailing fundamental design of the digital economy. Those who don't already have it, have to create it. Stragglers like Microsoft, Yahoo and SAP are gutting their buildings and eliminating many offices. — spiegel.de
Read more about workplace design in the knowledge economy in Archinect's latest Aftershock feature, "Serendipity Machines" and the Future of Workplace Design. View full entry
The emperor sends his surveyor to create a report of the sites that are paradigmatic for a network of geopolitical control. Dispatching the surveyor on an enlightening Grand Tour, he expects to sharpen a geo-architectural strategy. The surveyor is reborn as an architecture student on a global quest for new precedents alighted from the experimental fringes of the emperor’s cacophonous archipelago of installations. — DEMILIT: Bryan Finoki, Nick Sowers, Javier Arbona
DEMILIT, whose members are no strangers to Archinect present their latest installation as open source. No need to include an image here other than the text itself for it is full of images sentence by sentence. "This is part of an extended and ongoing excavation about empire and urbanism. | This... View full entry
Our goal is to raise $600,000 to cover the incoming students' tuition bills for one year while a long term solution is developed to sustain the Cooper Union's promise of free education. — One Year Fund
Cooper Union students establish the 'One Year Fund' in an attempt to preserve the full-tuition scholarship policy at the historically free New York City school. The students of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union, recognize that the institution faces a serious... View full entry
Curated by architect and historian Joseph Abram, in collaboration with Rem Koolhaas’ OMA/AMO, the exhibition celebrates the work of Perret, in particular his extended use of reinforced concrete.
The exhibition analyzes, through more than 400 original documents such as sketches, pictures, scale models and personal letters, eight buildings conceived by Perret. These include the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, along with the Hôtel de Ville and the Eglise Saint Joseph in Le Havre.
— wwd.com
In the wake of the controversial demolition of Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, Northwestern University has moved forward with the process for selecting an architecture firm to design the building's replacement. Firms that protested the demolition, however, have been excluded from consideration for designing the building's replacement—and may be blacklisted from other projects at Northwestern. — architectmagazine.com
Here is a wonderful central London site that has hosted the arts since 1951. If it is not working, let's make sure we either restore the original buildings with dignity, to make them as good as they can possibly be, or take the plunge and replace them with a 21st-century set of buildings, better suited to the art forms and audiences of today — Guardian
Examining plans for the proposed redevelopment of the Southbank Centre, sculptor Antony Gormley concludes that bulldozing the site would be better than the planned revamp. View full entry
