New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced plans for a $30 million "Buildings of Excellence" Competition, to promote the design, construction and operation of low-carbon buildings across the state. The competition, announced yesterday morning, is part of the Governor's goal to reduce New... View full entry
Two new OMA-designed residential towers at Greenpoint Landing, Brooklyn were unveiled this morning by Brookfield Properties and Park Tower Group, the developers behind the endeavor. The towers, in conjunction with a lower seven-story building, will offer 745 housing units and are expected to... View full entry
By championing virtues such as speed, technology, youth, and flight, the Futurists worked to cement Italy’s status as highly advanced and, thus, superior. In Asmara, the handsome structures built between 1935 and 1941 became multi-faceted tools of oppression.
Eight decades later, these Italian-designed edifices are still standing, albeit in need of rehabilitation. But preserving Asmara’s Futurist architecture necessarily preserves the fascist agenda that erected them in the first place...
— Atlas Obscura
Though the Futurists are featured in virtually every textbook on Modernism, their politics can be described as more than controversial. As they embraced speed, technology and scientific progress, the Italian group was also upfront about its misogyny, sympathetic towards fascist ideologies and... View full entry
Though he was described by architectural historians as "humorless," Walter Gropius "was in fact a charismatic figure," according to The Guardian's Fiona MacCarthy. His life and career are shrouded in myths of solemnity and passionlessness, though the fact remains that he imparted a significant... View full entry
Antipathy to the “concrete jungle” is rooted in the assumption that concrete-heavy environments are by nature detrimental to psychological health. One study of more than 4 million Swedes, published in 2004 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, seemed to suggest that moving from a rural to an urban environment had a detrimental effect on individuals’ mental health. — The Guardian
"Has the material been made a bogeyman for the urban environment – assumed to be harsh and unforgiving, rather than liberating and inclusive – when many of the problems it seems to embody are more directly related to how inequality and segregation manifest in cities?," writes Lynsey Hanley for... View full entry
In 2017, Sidewalk Labs, aka Google's Company for Cities, announced plans to build an innovation-forward community along Toronto's waterfront. Developed alongside designs by starchitecture firms Snøhetta and Heatherwick Studios, the idea behind the mini smart city is to integrate cutting-edge... View full entry
Along the way, the games have introduced millions of players to the joys and frustrations of zoning, street grids and infrastructure funding — and influenced a generation of people who plan cities for a living. For many urban and transit planners, architects, government officials and activists, “SimCity” was their first taste of running a city. — Los Angeles Times
"It was the first time they realized that neighborhoods, towns and cities were things that were planned, and that it was someone's job to decide where streets, schools, bus stops and stores were supposed to go," writes Jessica Roy for the Los Angeles Times. Happen to look for a real life urban... View full entry
New details and renderings have been released for 35 Hudson Yards, set to be the tallest residential tower in the Hudson Yards neighborhood at over 1,000 feet. The boutique apartments come with a wide array of in-house lifestyle services, some provided by the Equinox Hotel, which is part of the development. David Childs and Skidmore Owings & Merrill are the architects, while interior design is being led by Tony Ingrao. — New York YIMBY
To make 35 Hudson Yards your new home address, be prepared to open the checkbook extra wide — two-bedroom condos start at $5 million, while the average unit of the overall 134 apartments will set you back $11 million ($4,100 per square foot). The three penthouses have yet to be priced, reports... View full entry
Ryan Scavnicky started off the year with a critique of the popular Instagram page @pleasehatethesethings (as well as McMansion Hell and other such snarky pages/sites) "The attitude the page displays is disparaging and elitist". Further "it feels unproductive to deflate the poorly executed... View full entry
Microsoft will allow businesses to customize HoloLens 2 before purchasing a fleet of headsets. Trimble, the owner of 3D modeling package SketchUp, has already modified the headset so that it can be worn like a hard hat in construction sites and other potentially dangerous locations. The rebranded version will be called Trimble XR10 and is set to launch alongside the regular HoloLens 2 later this year. — engadget
One of the first 'working-in-the-field' customizations of Microsoft's newly unveiled HoloLens 2 mixed-reality headset is a hard hat by Trimble for construction workers that pulls up holographic CAD data on the worksite. Image: Trimble/Microsoft"It will have all of the same specs, performance, and... View full entry
Join us March 16th at Archinect Outpost to celebrate Swimming to Suburbia, the latest book of essays by UCLA professor Craig Hodgetts. Hodgetts will provide a lecture about the books, followed by a book signing. The book is available for presale here, to be signed by Craig Hodgetts at the event... View full entry
Kevin Roche (1922-2019) had a lasting influence on the American architecture scene. After moving here from his native Ireland in 1948, Roche studied under Mies van Der Rohe, another significant European emigré, and quickly found his footing in the country's largest cities, producing numerous... View full entry
When we were considering what to carry at Archinect Outpost, our retail shop and event space in Downtown Los Angeles, the products designed by Sam Jacob Studio immediately sprang to mind. Though they were, without question, designed with architects with mind, they were designed to appeal to... View full entry
And the prototypes came tumbling down. [...]
They have been used most dramatically as a backdrop for a presidential visit last March and for protest art. [...]
On Wednesday, slabs from seven out of the eight prototypes fell in clouds of dust in under two hours, no match for a jackhammer. At the point of destruction, an owl fled from a steel tube atop one section.
— The Guardian
And just as quickly as they came, they're gone again: seven of the eight prototypes for a lofty 1,954-mile border wall project to Mexico were bulldozed and turned into piles of expensive rubble on Wednesday morning... View full entry
Exuberant design was [Alessandro] Mendini’s specialty. Mendini died last week, age 87, and his death leaves a void in the school of thought that favored emotion and surprise over the cold efficiency that has come to dominate much of design, calibrated as it is to the precise and bottomless needs of the technology industry. — Fast Company
Trained as an architect with a passion for design, Alessandro Mendini (1931-2019) will be remembered as an advocate for the function of pleasure in design. Mendini and other Italian architects and designers championed a vibrant postmodernism throughout the second half of the 20th century, but... View full entry
