We're very excited to have Denise Scott Brown on this episode, to share some family history behind the Vanna Venturi house – the house that her husband and collaborator, Robert Venturi, built for his mother in 1965, and helped set a new tone for 20th century architectural history. The house is... View full entry
What is iconic in architecture? It's a debate that will never be settled precisely because the definition of "icon" is perennially changing to reflect the culture from which it derives. An icon, after all, is not necessarily a classic, and this inherent tension is partly what fuels... View full entry
By planning ahead now, while the humanitarian response is underway, this reconstruction program can bring additional resources to those efforts, overlapping the relief phase so as to rebuild communities that feel like home - but in an accelerated manner. This is what we don't see currently happening when disaster strikes, and so this effort presents a unique opportunity to standardize a model that can be followed by others - nationally and internationally - moving forward. — Huffington Post
As Nepal continues to deal with the aftermath of the deadly April 25 earthquake, the American Institute of Architects Foundation — now known as the Architects Foundation — recently announced with relief group All Hands Volunteers a two-year $3 million initiative for the reconstruction of... View full entry
In a fifty-one minute conversation with New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman, Bjarke Ingels does little to dispel his reputation as a media-friendly starchitect who dances his way around thorny design issues by reminding everyone of the rose. When Kimmelman brings up the wind issues that an... View full entry
With a list of over 90 participants and partners including U.K.-based Assemble, Jimenez Lai, Jeanne Gang, Archinect and Sou Fujimoto, the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial will open to the public on October 3rd. Officially billed as "North America’s largest international survey of... View full entry
Called Lysningen or ‘The Clearing’, it has been designed by the Bergen-based architects 3RW. [...]
“It is actually much better than I had thought,.” [Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the general manager of Utøya,] said. “The frame around the woods and the silence of nature, makes it feel like a well.”
— thelocal.no
On July 22, 2011, on the island of Utøyah, a lone gunman named Anders Breivik attacked a youth summer camp run by the Norwegian Workers’ Youth League (AUF), killing 69 people. Today, on the fourth anniversary of the attack, a memorial to the victims officially opens on the island. Known as... View full entry
The trend toward living in less square footage isn't just about battling rent hikes: in Orange County, the able-bodied and financially resourceful are choosing to habitate (and sometimes co-habitate) in so-called micro or mini-apartments. Although the definition varies, anything below 500 square... View full entry
"I propose a Moon village on the far side of the Moon.” –Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner, Director General of the European Space Agency — BBC.com
The Director General of the European Space Agency Johann-Dietrich Woerner has proposed creating an international village on the moon, partly as an apolitical way to bring more countries into the space program, and partly as a way to realistically pursue new frontiers in cosmic... View full entry
According to the AIA, while the demand for multi-family housing has slowed, many other design sectors, especially those related to institutional facilities, have prompted a significant increase in the architectural billings index, from 51.9 in May to 55.7 in June. To provide perspective, the... View full entry
Las Vegas’s recovery, like America’s, seems to have to come to the wealthiest first. [...]
But Sin City’s recovery shows the enduring ability of America to make improbable ideas work. Some 2m people live in a glittering, sprawling city deep in the desert and hardly think that this is strange. And with its mix of tech-obsessed yuppies, ageing baby-boomer gamblers and thrusting Hispanics, its demography resembles America’s future.
— economist.com
Related:Learning from Las Vegas: a look at the Strip through urban planning lensesWill Zappos turn downtown Las Vegas into the next Silicon Valley?70's Vegas underground home on the market for $1.7MSomething is happening in Vegas; but will it convince people to stay? View full entry
Müllner demonstrates how much environment contributes to the quality of what we hear...As slick as an advertisement, the short video uses a heavily mediated form to convey the simple idea of natural reverberation...The ways in which sound and space interact can determine the shape of a musical form. — Open Culture
Inspired by a video from the Wikisinger, Josh Jones reflects on the relationship between landscape, cityscape, architectural formation and the sounds of music. h/t @Nick Sowers View full entry
Clearly, the days of the critic’s hegemony are done. [...]
Yet as I know from years of blogging and tweeting, there is often wisdom in the crowd. The people who live in a neighborhood or work in a building often know more about it than the lazy critic who makes only a cursory inspection.
My take on all this is that architecture criticism is not dead ... They fail to recognize that the circumstances of our time offer promise as well as peril.
— niemanreports.org
In a speech delivered this past spring at Chicago's Society of Architectural Historians, Blair Kamin, architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, addressed the nature of architecture criticism in today's media landscape. The talk came after Kamin's contentious Twitter exchange with "comb-over... View full entry
[Ali] Piwowar, who studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, wrote her masters thesis in architecture on preserving the heritage of grain elevators by transforming them into community spaces.
Saskatchewan once had over 3,000 wooden grain elevators. One by one, however, the structures have been disappearing from the skyline, victims of changing economic and transportation conditions. Today, Piwowar estimates there are around 400 such elevators remaining with only 80 in working order.
— cbc.ca
More from the world of grain elevators and their reuse potentials:The Evil, Evil Grain Elevator: Places Journal studies how grain elevators can seem both friendly and terrifying.Stored Potential launches: a 2010 competition for an "iconic vacant grain elevator near downtown Omaha".The Wassaic... View full entry
Commercial real estate brokers and building managers say sophisticated tenants specify so-called chilling capacity in their lease agreements so they are guaranteed cold cachet...There’s also the widely held misconception that colder temperatures make workers more alert and productive — NYT
Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena has been named architecture director of the 2016 Venice Biennale, in a decision made by Biennale's Board on July 18. Known for award-winning architectural work under his own Santiao-based firm, Alejandro Aravena Architects, Aravena also serves as the executive... View full entry
