Many have challenged the logic of a Swiss building in Los Angeles [...]
In a sense, all of the criticisms can be boiled down to a single accusation: quality architecture does not belong in Los Angeles. [...]
Contextualism in Los Angeles requires more innovation than matching roof heights or aligning cornices; its ecology is one of large and oversized cultural objects that act as signposts amid sprawl.
— lareviewofbooks.org
Situating LACMA in "master builder" Peter Zumthor's career overall, architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (of the LA-based firm Johnston Marklee) discuss what distinguishes his work in a city with a somewhat confused attitude towards icons and context.More on Zumthor's LACMA:Is Zumthor's... View full entry
...What [Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao] showed, [is that] if you picked a remote part of the world and put a world-class museum in it, the world would beat a path to your door. That's the so-called "Bilbao Effect," but you'll notice that doesn't mention art; it mentions tourism, travel and finance.
I feel we're in a strange time where we're building furious Potemkin villages of seeming life, behind which, if you looked with the right eyes, you would see cobwebs and skeletons.
— NPR
NPR has curated a list of noteworthy-quotes from Michael Lewis, an art history professor at Williams College, who's interviewed in the recent issue of Commentary Magazine.Never before has art sold better or museums drawn larger crowds. Yet, according to Lewis at least, most Americans have become... View full entry
Across the continent, Chinese companies are building highways, railways, sports stadiums, mass housing complexes, and sometimes entire cities.
But China isn’t just providing the manpower to fuel quickly urbanizing African cities. It is exporting its own version of urbanization, creating cities and economic zones that look remarkably similar to Chinese ones.
— qz.com
Related in the Archinect News:Urban China: Chinese Urbanism in AfricaA Look at Africa's Modernist ArchitectureAdmire the diversity of African vernacular architecture in this growing online database View full entry
After the dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000, there was a sense that cities were “back,” and that the era of urban decay—marked by riots, violent crime, and abandonment—was drawing to a close. Unfortunately, despite the relative lack of public notice or awareness, poverty has re-concentrated. — Paul Jargowsky for The Century Foundation
The Century Foundation publishes a Paul Jargowsky paper laying out the facts and statistics of decline and poverty's impact on American cities. Paul Jargowsky is a fellow at The Century Foundation where he writes about inequality, the geographic concentration of poverty, and residential... View full entry
Americans living in rentals spent almost a third of their incomes on housing in the second quarter, the highest share in recent history. Rental affordability has steadily worsened, according to a new report from Zillow, which tracked data going back to 1979...While mortgages remain relatively affordable, landlords have been able to increase rents because demand for apartments remains strong. The U.S. homeownership rate fell to the lowest level in almost five decades in the second quarter. — Bloomberg
More on Archinect:Shipping container village crops up in Oakland, offering alternative to sky-high SF rents500 Square Feet and FallingPlay "Inside the rent", and become a virtual developer in NYCMonterey Park City Council adopts tougher penalties for landlords of illegal boarding homesL.A.'s... View full entry
Goldfinger’s [brutalist] buildings were decreed “soulless.” Inhabitants claimed to suffer health problems and depression from spending time inside of them. Some of Goldfinger’s buildings were vacated because occupants found them so ugly. Yet, architects praised Goldfinger’s buildings. [...]
This divide—this hatred from the public and love from designers and architects—tends to be the narrative around buildings like Goldfinger’s. Which is to say, gigantic, imposing buildings made of concrete.
— slate.com
Roman Mars, host of the design-centric podcast "99% Invisible", blogs for Slate on the polarizing quality of brutalist architecture – beloved by architects and hated by pretty much everyone else. Discussing the history of concrete in building architecture, Mars also puts brutalism in perspective... View full entry
Humans have exhausted a year’s supply of natural resources in less than eight months, according to an analysis of the demands the world’s population are placing on the planet. — The Guardian
According to the Guardian article, the world's population currently consumes the equivalent of 1.6 planets a year – and, at the rate we're going, that will jump to two planets a year by 2030. But what does that mean, exactly?Earth Overshoot Day, or Ecological Debt Day, refers to the "date on... View full entry
If America decides to take on its growing slum problem, people will need to think hard about how to do so. Mobility programs are proven to work for the families who move, but what happens to the neighborhoods that people leave? Can affordable-housing projects in low-income areas also help poor families succeed, or are they doomed to fail their residents, no matter how nice they are, because of where they are located? — theatlantic.com
Related on Archinect:In Chicago, forming economically integrated suburbs is more complex than it looksAbandoned schools = new development opportunitiesNYC's public-housing woes View full entry
'There is no one size fits all approach — every region is completely different...' Hurricane Sandy underlined the urgency by ruthlessly exposing New York's structural weaknesses...California also suffered as historic droughts settled in, and the 2014 wave of winter storms terrorized the North, emphasizing that extreme conditions were here to stay and could strike anywhere. This bought the U.S. into line with the global situation. — CNN
More on Archinect:The Hurricane Katrina Cottages: where are they now?Coating the LA reservoir in "shade balls" will save 300M gallons of waterHow the Cascadia earthquake threatens America's coastal NorthwestThe Pragmatics of Adaptating to Sea Level Rise: The Next Wave @ UCLAU.S. Department of HUD... View full entry
In 2007, [São Paulo] Mayor Gilberto Kassab implemented the Clean City Law, labelling outdoor adverts a form of “visual pollution”. In a single year, the city removed 15,000 billboards and 300,000 oversized storefront signs. [...]
The ubiquity of outdoor advertising means that we have come to take it for granted; accepting both its presence and its purpose as natural features of the urban environment.
— theguardian.com
Previously on Archinect: Rethinking Billboards as homeless shelters, and as land art projects in Art + Architecture: The Los Angeles Nomadic Division Sets Up Camp. View full entry
‘"It’s hard to think about ways to drain the swamp when alligators are biting your ass.’” — Placemakers.com
Immediately after a natural disaster, most residents want to get things back to normal, even if that "normal" wasn't particularly ideal. The story of the Katrina Cottages, a series of 400 to 800 square foot residences that would provide temporary relief housing in Mississippi after Hurricane... View full entry
Danziger addressed the issues of perception: How does a patient with a shifted perception experience space? He focused on color, the distribution of light, material, and shape. — NPR Berlin
While designing for medically healthy clients can occasionally drive an architect insane, an entirely different set of challenges is involved in creating a safe and healing environment for mentally ill patients. Architect Jason Danziger found himself asking questions like: what makes a bed... View full entry
Burglary is a spatial crime: its very definition requires architecture...Indeed, burglary's architectural interest comes not from its ubiquity, but from its unexpected, often surprisingly subtle misuse of the built environment. Burglars approach buildings differently, often seeking modes of entry other than doors and approaching buildings—whole cites—as if they're puzzles waiting to be solved or beaten. — BLDGBLOG
More on Archinect:The Secret Service wants to build a fake White HouseArchitecture of paranoiaCurbing violence through better architectureSingapore's Sterile Authoritarianism View full entry
Archive (“Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments”) proposes “bringing attention to the built environment and how it is a transmission vehicle for the spread and control of a respiratory illness like TB” [...]
Archive is starting small, with an as-yet-uninitiated project on respiratory health and indoor pollutants in Ethiopia and projects on TB awareness in London.
— nextcity.org
More on the intersection of architecture and public health:A story about death and architectureNew Parsons-led collaborative aims to make affordable housing healthierHow concrete floors can prevent child deaths in Bangladesh5 ways to build health into your architecture, as seen at GW’s new $... View full entry
Gornja Siga has come, over the last few months, to assume an outsize role in the imagination of many — not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East and in the United States...What novel society might be accomplished in a place like this, with no national claim or tenant? Such were the thoughts that had for some time inflamed the spirit of Vit Jedlicka, a 31-year-old Czech politician who traveled to the land earlier this year and, in broad daylight, planted a new flag in its unstable soil. — NY Times
The New York Times has posted a riveting portrait of the ongoing movement to establish a libertarian micro state in the borderlands of Serbia and Croatia. While unmentioned in the article, there's already fascinating connections between the potential state and the world of architecture.Last month... View full entry