Critics have argued that big arts-building investments are vanity projects, or that private donors should finance community arts organizations or scholarships instead. — NYT
James S. Russell digs into the building boom on college campuses, where museums and arts centers are opening and expanding. Mostly an elite phenomenon (Stanford University is constructing a $235 million arts district), few state/public schools are able to afford the costs. View full entry
According to a press release issued last week by Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates, principal Gene Kaufman has submitted a proposal to buy the Orange County Government Center (Goshen, NY), which has been closed since 2011 due to storm damage. Designed in 1967 by Paul Rudolph, the building... View full entry
We're excited to announce the three lucky winners of Archinect's giveaway contest in collaboration with Tiny Modernism.In order to win one of the adorable architectural toddler t-shirts and baby onesies, we had asked you to tell us which dream combination of any four architects would adorn your... View full entry
[Jeanne Gang] had just come back from a trip on which she’d been using binoculars with Swarovski lenses and had become intrigued by the optical aspect of the crystal company’s output. She had also become interested in James Balog’s Extreme Ice Survey, a long-term project that documents glacier shrinkage using time-lapse photography [...]
One challenge the studio faced was communicating the size of the glaciers photographed by Balog, and the extent of the devastation caused by global warming.
— designmiami.com
Friday, December 5:William B. Callaway, noted Bay Area landscape architect at SWA Group, dies: He is survived by his four children and wife, Barbara Meacham. A memorial will be held in January.Thursday, December 4:How architecture is helping make Arcadia a magnet for Chinese money: LA... View full entry
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Monday proposed the most ambitious seismic safety regulations in California history that would require owners to retrofit thousands of building most at risk of collapse during a major earthquake.
Garcetti’s recommendations target two of the riskiest types of buildings in Los Angeles built before 1980: concrete buildings and wooden structures built atop weak first floors, such as those on top of carports and garages and supported by slender columns.
— LA Times
1. By current estimates, if the polar ice caps melt, sea levels around the world will rise by between 80 and 100m.
2. Many cities (and, by default, around 70 per cent of the world's population) border on a body of water of some kind. According to 2010 government figures, 39 per cent of US population live on a coast. Half live within 50 miles of the ocean.
— citymetric.com
Based on worst-case scenarios for sea-level rise, cartographer Jeremy Linn imagined the future of three of America's major Western cities. He used topographic information to speculate on what an 80m – ≈262 ft – rise would look like as well as coming up with new names for this new... View full entry
The tax breaks, rent-control laws and building restrictions that make up zoning codes in many major cities require lawyers to decipher. Whether by design or effect, a housing regime that is intelligible only to highly trained professionals is one that spells endless power for owners and endless misery for tenants. Zoning codes must be simplified — quickly, radically and without mercy. — Al Jazeera
The Galapagos Art Space, a performance center and cultural staple in Brooklyn for nearly 20 years, will close this month, another casualty of rising rental prices that its founder says are making it difficult for independent arts organizations to survive in New York ... Galapagos helped put Williamsburg on the art map when it opened there in 1995 ... Although the last night of programming is likely to be Dec. 18, the center will have a second life — more than 600 miles away, in Detroit. — nytimes.com
During its time in Brooklyn, Galapagos Art Space produced more than 7,500 shows. Hopefully, its legacy of progressive programming – from films to musical events to visual art exhibitions to burlesque – will continue after the space moves to Detroit. The new home of Galapagos Art Space includes... View full entry
It's not going to look like 'Apocalypse Now' by any stretch of the imagination.
The Marine Corps has held similar training in recent years in Atlanta, Memphis and other cities. The military worked closely with the Los Angeles Police Department and notified property owners so no one will be caught off guard
— CBS
Message and the purpose is clear. US Government is training for urban warfare and large cities are the training grounds. Once we are done with foreign urban centers perhaps the idea is to "bring it on home."Of course, it's all under the disguise of fighting terrorism (or is it... View full entry
“When they came out of the quarters they could see it was fully engulfed,” fire department spokeswoman Katherine Main told the paper. “It was a building under construction in the framing phase. Almost 1 million square feet and a city block.” — RT
Freeway signs melt and windows in adjacent buildings burst in the intense heat. Two buildings near the burning construction site are damaged and freeways are closed for hours.The fire which burned down an unpopular (among the architects) apartment complex a 7 storey wood construction in its final... View full entry
“I think it’s definitely derivative of the Gardens by the Bay concept,” Chris Wilkinson, one of the British architects responsible for the “super-trees” in Singapore’s Marina Bay, told The Daily Telegraph.
“You’d have expected them to have come up with something a bit more original.”
— telegraph.co.uk
"Super Trees", Singapore, designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects View full entry
Nowhere in the world has a city yet been conceived and constructed along the lines that these women planners would like. Nowhere in the world do women, and others who share the inclusive goals of gender planning, have the political power or access to capital that such an urban renewal project would require. — The Guardian
Archinect remains committed to addressing the gender gap in architecture. If you haven't already, listen to our first podcast, which was devoted to the subject. View full entry
Beth Mosenthal penned an Op-Ed: Response to Michael Kimmelman's Critique of 1 WTC. She writes "I can only imagine the list of priorities that 1 World Trade entailed, but am still celebratory of the feat that it was realized despite perhaps the greatest obstacles any project could possibly... View full entry
Blocks that were once sleepy, with single-story ranch houses from the 1940s set comfortably back from the street, are now lined with bloated villas pushed near the front of their lots [...]
What's happening in Arcadia is less about big new houses and startling sales figures than how new patterns of immigration are transforming the architecture of Southern California. [...]
The architectural landscape is being remade not to displace [Chinese immigrants] but as a magnet for their money.
— latimes.com
