New virtual reality tours are giving Muscovites the chance to see the Russian capital as the socialist utopia envisioned by the city’s Soviet architects.
The new project, The Moscow That Never Was, lets visitors glimpse shelved Soviet landmarks as they should have appeared on Moscow’s streets using VR goggles.
— Calvert Journal
The 2-hour virtual/augmented reality tours through central Moscow feature utopian architectural projects that never quite saw the light of day, including the infamous Palace of the Soviets (imagined as the world's tallest building, crowned with a 300-ft Lenin statue), an alternate Lenin... View full entry
Stacker was one of 188,000 people who applied for 20,000 spots in the voucher waiting line for the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles. And that line won’t be moving quickly. The Housing Authority’s Section 8 director, Carlos VanNatter, said only about 200 vouchers become available here every month, basically when a pay raise makes someone ineligible or someone dies. — marketplace.org
While the national average wait time for Section 8 vouchers is currently more than two years (with nearly half of all housing authorities having closed their lists to new applicants), the situation in big cities like New York and Los Angeles is so dire that residents have to apply for a coveted... View full entry
The slabs in front of me seemed at once the most and least architectural objects I’d ever seen. They were banal and startling, full and empty of meaning. Here were the techniques of Land Art, medieval construction, marketing and promotion, architectural exhibition and the new nativism rolled uncomfortably if somehow inevitably into one. — Los Angeles Times
LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne takes a trip down to the U.S.-Mexican border in San Diego to attempt the challenge of critiquing Trump's border wall prototypes, "alternating bands of substance and absence, aspiration and impossibility". Image: U.S. Customs and Border Protection. View full entry
Plastic building blocks are once again reaching for the sky.
This time, it was the city of Tel Aviv that made an attempt to build the tallest Lego tower — or, officially, the tallest structure built with interlocking plastic bricks, not all of them made by the Danish toy giant.
[...] a joint effort between Tel Aviv City Hall and Young Engineers, an organization that promotes learning with toy bricks. The tower is intended to honor a child who died from cancer.
— The New York Times
"Omer Tower" was built in memory of Omer Sayag, himself an avid fan of the colorful plastic blocks, who lost his battle with cancer in 2014 at the age of 8. Clocking in at a height of 35.85 meters (117 feet and 7 inches), the structure on Tel Aviv's Rabin Square beat previous world records... View full entry
But the building has proven controversial for other reasons. The 50-storey portal may be the tallest picture frame in the world, but its architect wants to add another title to the stats: for him, it is the biggest stolen building of all time.
“They took my project, changed the design and built it without me,” says Fernando Donis, the Mexican architect whose frame proposal won an international competition in 2008 for a “tall emblem structure to promote the new face of Dubai”.
— The Guardian
The controversial Dubai Frame opened to the public yesterday, finally offering tourists a 360-degree view of the city. While construction only began in 2013, the new 150 meter landmark has been a decade in the making, blighted by controversy surrounding its stolen design. Beginning with a... View full entry
Gavin Stamp, the architectural historian, who has died aged 69, was “Piloti” who wrote the “Nooks and Corners” column in Private Eye magazine; a television presenter of great charm and humour; a conservationist who personally saved one of the finest Arts and Crafts buildings in London; a photographer, draughtsman and writer of prodigious talent. — telegraph.co.uk
The architecture community lost historian, writer and broadcaster Gavin Stamp on December 30 2017 due to prostate cancer. Stamp had an immense impact on British architecture and authored several important architectural history books. He was also a television series presenter, co-founder of... View full entry
The goal with it is simple, says architect James Law: to utilize “leftover space” between buildings in Hong Kong, a city with limited land and a constant housing shortage. — Quartz
The city of Hong Kong has retained the title of the world's most expensive real estate market for the past seven years. As housing prices continue to soar, many residents are finding themselves with inadequate shelter, including over 200,000 people living in what has come to be referred to as... View full entry
Architect John Portman, often credited as the father of the massive hotel atrium, has passed away in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. No cause of death has been announced. His firm, John Portman & Associates, has released the following statement, along with a website celebrating his... View full entry
The recently opened Apple store in Chicago has been praised by one of the city’s papers as an “elegantly understated… boon to the city’s riverfront,” but perhaps that perception will change after the discovery of a significant design flaw.The structure’s ultra-thin carbon fiber roof was fashioned in the shape of a MacBook Pro but does not have any gutters to catch water, so melting snow has begun to turn into icicles and sliding snow that can harm pedestrians below. — Fortune
Outside Apple's recent Chicago store signs read: "CAUTION Watch For Falling Snow and Ice" as noted by blogger Matt Maldre. The new design by Foster and Partners was intended as a “town square” experience for the community, and to serve as a flagship design for all future Apple stores... View full entry
The following examples show how gamespace can become the stage for a social, political and ethical critique: from a nondescript city under the effect of gentrification, to a barren luxury estate and a set of playful and absurd buildings for London. These examples suggest that, rather than allowing architects to indulge Piranesi’s power-hungry ideal, games could work as a means of showing how dysfunctional reality really is. — Failed Architecture
In her essay Gamespace Urbanism: City-Building Games and Radical Simulations for Failed Architecture, Federica Buzzi looks at a new crop of indie city-planning computer games that promise fresh potential for simulation and exploration of radical urban scenarios — and subsequent social... View full entry
This week, for our last show of the year, Donna, Ken and Paul share highlights from their favorite episodes. It wasn't an easy task, as the year was filled with some brilliant guests and engaging conversations. Let us know, in the comments, what your favorite moments were from this year. We're... View full entry
When it comes to large-scale residential buildings, a complex set of economic, urban, and regulatory systems sometimes seem to have left little room for architectural exploration. Architects often struggle to find a point of entry for inserting their creative perspective in a way that would... View full entry
The train station is being planned for the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City. Katz said he decided to honor Trump in this way following the president's decision early this month to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to ultimately move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. — Haaretz
Yisrael Katz, Israel's transport minister, has said he plans to name a future train station in Jerusalem "Donald John Trump" Station, after the U.S. President controversially recognized the city as Israeli's capital earlier this month. The station is part of a contentious proposal to extend... View full entry
The feminist architecture collaborative, published Heroes, Rumors, Cults: Designs on Architectural Celebrity, also in Ed #1. One key question they ask "how might we attend to more urgent issues beyond self-promotion at a time when architecture has increasingly less economic power and political... View full entry
It's been a busy year for architects around the world, and plenty of high-profile projects — some dazzling, some goofy, some controversial — welcomed their first guests and residents in 2017. From the long list of completed buildings featured in the Archinect news this year, we have selected a... View full entry
