Austrian architect and designer Hans Hollein, a winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize whose work ranged from big museums through tiny shops to furniture and sunglasses, has died. He was 80. [...]
He won the 1985 Pritzker Prize for his work, which often included touches of fancy, such as bronze-clad palm trees in a Vienna travel agency.
— washingtonpost.com
RIP Hans Hollein (1934 - 2014), independent architect, artist and professor.From 1976-2002, Hollein served as a professor at the University of Applied Art in Vienna, where he was also Dean of the Architecture department. He also held professorships at Yale University, Washington University in St... View full entry
It's the urban planning equivalent of Rinaldo. Except instead of the siege of Jerusalem, it's the battle for Greenwich Village.
The legendary 1960s struggle pitted planning czar Robert Moses against neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs. Moses wanted to make the city easily navigable by car [...]
But the powerful planner met his match when he proposed an expressway through Lower Manhattan. Though she had little institutional support, Jacobs built a citizen coalition that ultimately defeated Moses.
— theatlanticcities.com
Was it: Possible for a group of architects, artists, educators, writers, publishers to fly to Shenzhen and start a dialog and call it a Los Angeles Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, a.k.a. LAB A/U? (Yes) A first for architecture and urbanism for Los Angeles? (Yes) Possible to bee line... View full entry
In a city where real estate values are as dizzying as the skyscrapers, the angst over Manhattan’s changing profile and streetscape is becoming louder. The most recent outcry came over the demolition of a five-story building on West 57th Street, former home of Rizzoli Bookstore. [...]
"There won't be anything left to love if we don't stop this kind of development," State Senator Liz Krueger said during a rally protesting the Rizzoli building's pending demolition.
— theatlanticcities.com
Whenever a campaign wants to stop some new development it will use the phrase "tower block". This isn't what the developers would call them – they prefer "stunning developments" or "luxury apartments".
There is a national campaign afoot against new towers, specifically against the astonishing 230 mostly residential ones planned for the capital. Inevitably, the campaign has referred to tower blocks and "the mistakes of the 1960s" knowing this is emotive language [...].
— theguardian.com
For the latest edition of the Working out of the Box feature Archinect talked with Emily Fischer, Founder of Haptic Lab. In the interview she explains how she started "The very first quilted map I made was designed to be a wayfinding tool for the visually impaired; my mother was diagnosed with... View full entry
...the little structures will remind you of every last thing: foreclosed houses...the Olympic stadium in Beijing...the Colosseum, the crumbling ruins next door to the Colosseum. Each building maps a path through Tihanyi's mind, and yours. You visit every teeny room...climb every ladder...Then you return to your big self, looking down on layers of sheen and pale color emanating from the surfaces, as if layers of translucent skin have been laid on top of flesh. How could you not love these? — Jen Graves writing for The Stranger
Art critic Jen Graves (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize ultimately won by Inga Saffron) reviews the tiny building-like constructions made by artist Timea Tihanyis. But while architecture aficionados will find these little structures initially reminiscent of 3D printed models, their laborious... View full entry
These days, it is not just a woman who can never be too rich or too thin. You can say almost exactly the same thing about skyscrapers, or at least about the latest residential ones now going up in New York City, which are much taller, much thinner, and much, much more expensive than their predecessors. And almost every one of them seems built to be taller, thinner, and pricier than the one that came before. — vanityfair.com
Did Paul Goldberger just say that women can never be too thin? View full entry
The NYPD said the balloon would remain aloft for about nine hours Sunday in lower Manhattan and more than 13 hours Monday in Midtown.
Police said the balloon will be about 800 feet in the air as it collects data for a private architecture firm conducting height surveys of Manhattan buildings.
— nydailynews.com
Inga Saffron, who writes the "Changing Skyline" column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism this week.
She talks with Dave Heller about the state of criticism today, and the changing attitudes towards cities.
— newsworks.org
Previously: Inquirer's architecture critic Inga Saffron wins Pulitzer Prize for criticism View full entry
The new commission for cultural heritage protection, an adviser to the Czech National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) director, has recommended that the state start protecting relatively young works of architecture from the second half of the 20th century [...]
“Unlike the architecture of the interwar Czechoslovakia, the post-war architecture has been omitted by protection programs so far, also because its valuable pieces are more difficult to distinguish."
— praguepost.com
If there is any one lesson that I have learned in my life as a city planner, it is that public spaces have power. It's not just the number of people using them, it's the even greater number of people who feel better about their city just knowing that they are there.
Public space can change how you live in a city, how you feel about a city, whether you choose one city over another, and public space is one of the most important reasons why you stay in a city.
— TED
Amanda Burden served as New York City's chief planner under Mayor Bloomberg, leading such revitalization projects as the High Line and Brooklyn's waterfront. You can watch the full TED talk below, or read the complete transcript here. View full entry
This past Tuesday, The Architectural League of New York hosted a lecture at Cooper Union by architect Sou Fujimoto, entitled “Between Nature and Architecture”. Despite the great number of practitioners and students in attendance (almost a full-house), the event felt more like an intimate... View full entry
Chinese companies have been known to build major real-estate projects very quickly. Now, one company is taking it to a new extreme.
Suzhou-based construction-materials firm Winsun New Materials says it has built 10 200-square-meter homes using a gigantic 3-D printer that it spent 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) and 12 years developing.
— blogs.wsj.com
Maidan Square in Kiev. Taksim Square in Istanbul. Tahrir Square in Cairo. Recent democratic movements around the globe have risen, or crashed and burned, on the hard pavement of vast urban public squares. [...] But too few observers have considered the significance of the empty public spaces themselves. [...]
If public squares are essential to democracy, is their relative absence in modern American life bad for our democracy—or a sign that we’re not as democratic as we imagine?
— zocalopublicsquare.org
