London-based architect Simon Allford has been elected as the new president of the Royal British Institute of Architects (RIBA). Allford is a founding principal of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris architects, winners of the 2015 Stirling Prize. According to RIBA, Allford won some 58% of the... View full entry
Peopling Studio offers a 3D library of diverse characters in a variety of scenes to use and customize in your digital renders. The project appears to be voluntarily founded and run, offering free downloads. Their "disclaimer" describes the motives and inspiration behind the project... View full entry
City Dreamers is a Canadian documentary directed by Joseph Hillel that looks at the lives of Phyllis Lambert, Denise Scott Brown, Cornelia Oberlander, and Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, all notable powerhouses in architecture and design who were among some of the first women to rise to prominence... View full entry
Mass Design Group has published its latest COVID-19 guide aimed at retrofitting and upgrading existing senior living facilities to minimize pandemic transmission. The Designing Senior Housing for Safe Interaction; The Role of Architecture in Fighting COVID-19 guide follows a strategy document... View full entry
An undulating lobby ceiling that Isamu Noguchi sculpted in the 1940s has emerged at a U-Haul branch in St. Louis, two decades after it was hidden by partitions and dropped ceiling panels. Noguchi designed the feature, known as a lunar landscape, for the building’s original owner, the American Stove Company. — New York Times
The ceiling was discovered back in 2015 and immediately many began to advocate for its preservation. The New York Times reports David Conradsen, the St. Louis Museum of Art's decorative arts and design curator said that experts had contemplated removing the sculpture to transfer it to the... View full entry
Samuel Anderson Architects has completed a 65,000-square-foot addition to the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM) complex located at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. The updated art museum experience includes a new... View full entry
A new report from global architecture firm HOK highlights a growing awareness regarding "neurodiversity" in the workforce and offers design strategies for creating workplaces that cater to and facilitate the spatial needs of neurodiverse individuals. According to the report... View full entry
A new report from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) highlights the growing scale of construction disruption unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report states that projects totaling over $9.6 billion in expenditures have been either delayed on cancelled... View full entry
Built in less than two years to replace the collapsed Morandi bridge, the new span is already a point of pride for Italy. But residents fear it will not be enough to revive their aging port city. — The New York Times
Documentary about the new Genoa Bridge (in Italian). Video via Webuild S.p.A. on YouTube. The Genoa bridge project and its tragic origin on Archinect: Renzo Piano bridge in Genoa designed to “last 1,000 years” is nearly finishedConstruction of Renzo Piano-designed Genoa Bridge reaches... View full entry
Nearly 15 years after earning an M.Arch degree from the University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design, architect, educator, and author Vishaan Chakrabarti has taken the reins of the college as its new Dean. In a welcome note published to the school's website, Chakrabarti... View full entry
Conventions and trade shows are now wrestling with the same challenges facing schools, religious groups, and professional sports. Whenever large numbers of people gather indoors, in tightly enclosed spaces with mechanical air circulation, odds are that spikes in coronavirus infections will follow. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Inga Saffron, architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, probes some of the existential questions facing large urban convention centers, massive facilities that have had their spatial and economic potentials deeply challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. Saffron reports on efforts to... View full entry
Foster + Partners has released photos of the firm's new Apple Sanlitun retail storefront in Beijing. The store is located within a shopping and entertainment district in China's capital city that was originally home to Apple's first store in China back in 2008. The store was recently... View full entry
Software developer Autodesk has issued a second response to a previously published open letter from leading architectural practices speaking out about design, development, and cost issues associated with Revit software. Addressing the lack of product development for the Revit software suite... View full entry
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation, The JPB Foundation, J.M. Kaplan Fund, and The Executive Leadership Council are collaborating on a $1 million pilot project that aims to develop conservation and... View full entry
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the Olympics’s first postponement: Tokyo 2020, its name unchanged, will now take place in July 2021 if it takes place at all. Yet all around the Japanese capital is the legacy of another Olympics: the 1964 Summer Games, which crowned Tokyo’s 20-year transformation from a firebombed ruin to an ultramodern megalopolis. — The New York Times
NYT art critic Jason Farago takes a look back at the now iconic architectural and visual design — and its transformative power — of the 1964 Olympic Summer Games in the Japanese capital, 19 years after WWII had ended. "Those first Tokyo Olympics served as a debutante ball for... View full entry
