This week, architect-turned-coffee entrepreneur Yeekai Lim of Cognoscenti Coffee joins us in-studio, to talk pop-up shops and hospitality architecture. Afterward, Paul, Amelia, Donna and Ken hash out the recently announced finalists for the Guggenheim Helsinki competition.Listen to episode nine of... View full entry
Architecture critic Owen Hatherley travelled to Nizhny Novgorod to visit Avtozavod, a purpose-built “workers’ paradise”. The idealism may have gone, but its legacy remains strong — calvertjournal.com
The architect, who implicitly exempted himself from that 98%, might have been arrogant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.
[...] many if not most buildings are the work of contractors, not architects, and that this has been and will likely always be the case. Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary.
— forbes.com
NCARB has just announced an avenue for qualified, licensed architects from the U.S., Canada or Mexico to offer their services across any of those countries. The mouthful of the "Tri-National Mutual Recognition Agreement for International Practice of Architecture" formally allows for architects to... View full entry
Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires — no part of the United States is immune to natural disasters. While no one can prevent these hazards, people can prepare for them. “Designing for Disaster” at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., showcases how scientists, engineers and government officials work together to guard the country’s infrastructure against Mother Nature’s fury. — ScienceNews
For Archinect coverage of related design work, check out these links:Shitting Architecture: the dirty practice of waste removalArchitectures of the DisasterStudent Works: Resilient Public Housing from ParsonsCutting Room: Talking architectural dissent and climate-proof buildings with Eugene Tssui... View full entry
A floating blue dot on a handheld device’s mapping app has become the default way we understand the complex flows of people through the city and the diverse ways we experience coming and going. Such direct representation is convenient, but removes the spontaneity of approaching the city as both... View full entry
The current, temporary trade center station serves... only 10,000 more than use the unassuming 33rd Street PATH terminal in Midtown Manhattan.
In fact, the hub, or at least its winged “Oculus” pavilion, could turn out to be more of a high-priced mall than a transportation nexus, attracting more shoppers than commuters. The company operating the mall, Westfield Corporation, promises in a promotional video that it will be “the most alluring retail landmark in the world.”
— nytimes.com
One World Trade Center is by far the world's most expensive building, coming in at $3.9B, nearly double the second-most expensive buildings, Vegas' Palazzo casino and London's The Shard, which both cost $1.9B to build. Perhaps even more surprising, Dubai's dizzying Burj Khalifa, currently the world's tallest building, comes in at number five — curbed.com
Introducing his Serpentine Pavilion in 2013, Sou Fujimoto described the structure as "between architecture and nature", suggesting an architectural form ethereal enough to change at any given moment, depending on perspective or approach, between the artificial and organic. That phrase has since... View full entry
They would never discuss issues of repression or land grab directly. There is a certain pact of silence around the political dimension of architecture there. Schools of architecture depoliticise the profession, they put it very much within the domain of aesthetic experimentation — MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
Eyal Weizman - architect, writer, activist and professor of visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London - is explaining how architecture and power are inextricably linked, even within structures that appear largely to serve an aesthetic purpose. Buildings or cityscapes that a tourist... View full entry
In the tents of Syrian refugees, stories abound and tragedies surround them daily... With the passage of time, a tent becomes a home and shelter, their only place in this limited world. When rain exhausts the roof of the tents and wind uproots them, the refugees agonize as much as they did over the destruction of their houses in al-Raqqa or Aleppo. “We may have grown accustomed to our tent. Some of us like it, and others still cannot stand it. Do you know how the world can become a tent?” — Al-Akhbar
When Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne looks at L.A., he sees the city shaped by immigrants. Landmark buildings in Koreatown that adapt and evolve with a new generation. Houses in Arcadia that allow Chinese homeowners a proud, conspicuous place in a new country. Street life across the region that takes its cue from the way Latino neighborhoods blur the line between public and private. — latimes.com
The median per capita income in Los Angeles is $27,900. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment—and, frankly, this sounds low to us—is said to be about $1,400.
You can do the math. It's very difficult to keep a roof over your head in this town.
Yet another analysis has confirmed this. The folks at Rent.com looked at median rent and median income in America's largest cities and concluded that L.A. is one of the five worst places in the nation for renters.
— LA Weekly
When Shanghai Tower opens as China’s tallest building next year, the 2,073-foot (632 m) tower will feature elevators capable of traveling 40.3 miles (64.8 km) per hour, or 59 feet (18 m) per second, a new milestone. [...]
The question facing the industry today: how fast can elevators go without sacrificing comfort? [...]
At 66 feet (20 m) per second, even the slightest vibration will create a shock for passengers.
— urbanland.uli.org
Related: Up and Down, Side to Side; ThyssenKrupp's cable-free MULTI elevator to begin testing in 2016 View full entry
Can billionaires remake the Manhattan shoreline? Apparently so, in light of the news that a new park will be just offshore in the Hudson River, largely financed by the media mogul Barry Diller and situated, conveniently, a short walk from his office in Chelsea.
The new park will also be near the High Line, allowing for an easy tour of how private wealth is remaking the city’s public spaces. This trend isn’t unique to New York [...]
— NY Times
