It's not your everyday real estate deal. A team of young entrepreneurs persuaded about 50 deep-pocketed investors to help them purchase a mountain. The deal just closed in April, and development on Utah's nearly 10,000-acre Powder Mountain is now underway. [...]
"We were inspired by the core concepts of the Sundance Film Festival and the Aspen Institute. You can build place around a shared ethos."
— npr.org
“Cities today have become far too large,” Wang said in an interview while visiting New York in April. “I’m really worried, because it’s happening too fast and we have already lost so much.”
Wang, a sturdy 49-year-old, has built his small architectural practice as a riposte to this heedless destruction. With his wife, architect Lu Wenyu, he runs a 10-person firm called Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city southwest of Shanghai.
— bloomberg.com
In our previous post, we published the winning projects of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition: NEXT STOP-Designing Chicago BRT Stations. The brief asked designers to envision iconic, functional and sustainable stations for Chicago’s planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.
One of the finalist entries, the concept "Hurry Up and Slow Down" by Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, was recognized with a Citation for proposing a counterpoint to a RAPID transit system: the Slow Line.
— bustler.net
Previously: Winners of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition: NEXT STOP-Designing Chicago BRT Stations View full entry
The Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Architecture Foundation recently announced the winners of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition - NEXT STOP: Designing Chicago BRT Stations.
An exhibition of winning designs and all competition entries is currently on view at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Atrium gallery (224 S Michigan Ave) until June 28.
— bustler.net
See also: Hurry Up and Slow Down - 2013 Burnham Prize NEXT STOP Citation View full entry
SPIEGEL: Mr. de Meuron, Mr. von Gerkan and Mr. Ingenhoven, architecture's reputation in this country is worse than ever. How much of the blame do you bear? — Der Spiegel
Stuttgart's train station, Hamburg's concert house and Berlin's airport: Three projects in Germany are currently competing to be seen as the country's most disastrous. SPIEGEL spoke to the star architects behind the construction sites. View full entry
After 2,000 years, a long-lost secret behind the creation of one of the world’s most durable man-made creations ever—Roman concrete—has finally been discovered by an international team of scientists, and it may have a significant impact on how we build cities of the future. — businessweek.com
Nicknamed “The Fish House” by locals, the Tsui House built by architect Eugene Tsui is touted by its creator as the one of the world’s safest dwellings. The design is based upon a small and segmented water creature known as a tardigrade, and also features a few architectural elements inspired by dinosaur physiology. — Inhabitat
The sort of patronizing language used in the letter by Lord Palumbo is all too familiar. It is the voice of money and authority, the same sort of voice that spoke out against the rights of the women, the poor, and minorities. It is, alas, the voice of what Brown describes as the "sad white men's award." — varnelis.net
“Insofar as you have in mind a retroactive award of the prize to Ms. Scott Brown, the present jury cannot do so” -Peter Palumbo, the Pritzker chairman — NYT
No Pritzker Prize for Denise Scott Brown and no more pretzels for you guys! Boooooooo! View full entry
In June 2013, a further element will be introduced on the Vitra Campus. On a hill between the VitraHaus and the Dome, the Italian architect Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) has developed “Diogene”, which to date is Vitra’s smallest building ― but largest product. — vitra.com
We cannot expect big American cities to reach their potential when the very professions that purport to defend and perpetuate urbanism recoil at the presence of towers. Left rudderless by the experts, we are forced to inhabit the bleak consequences of a poorly regulated marketplace, analogous to a population that must operate on its own cancers due to the confused surgeons who keep cutting away at the healthy tissue. — Places Journal
Americans are famously conflicted about urban development: somehow we've demonized both sprawl and density. But today there is a new conversation about the future of cities, driven by diversifying social desires, evolving technologies, and pressing environmental constraints. On Places, in an... View full entry
As his career grew, David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall. He asks: Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation.
New York City must take urgent steps to protect New Yorkers and its buildings from the next extreme weather event, according to a report released today by the Building Resiliency Task Force at a press conference. In the devastating aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) today announced a strategic partnership with Make It Right, St. Bernard Project and Architecture for Humanity to launch “Designing Recovery,” an ideas competition created to aid in the rebuild of sustainable and resilient communities. The... View full entry
The Hearst Tower scaffold, in short, can fold around its center, allowing it to conform to the building’s angled windows. (A failure in this folding mechanism may be what trapped the men: NBC is reporting that the motor suffered a power failure.) — newyorker.com