It is a fractal of contemporary Los Angeles architecture, the fragment that both contains and helps explain the whole. [...]
What gives the $165-million project its unusual symbolic power is that it takes the generic stuff of a typical L.A. apartment building — a wood frame slathered in white stucco and lifted above a concrete parking deck — and expands it dramatically to urban scale. [...]
The design takes banality and stretches it like taffy in the direction of monumentality.
— latimes.com
Designed to inspire Canadian architects and raise the level of ambition in Canadian architectural culture, the inaugural 2014 Moriyama RAIC International Prize of $100,000 CAD has been awarded to Liyuan Library, a dramatic and beautiful project in Jiaojiehe China. The building is a simply... View full entry
“Seattle was a better opportunity for me than China right now,” Mr. Wang said. “A lot of Chinese families are planning to move here.” — NYT
Robert Frank reports in from Seattle, where wealthy Chinese seeking to relocate and/or invest are driving up the real estate market in eastern suburbs. View full entry
In its second season of lecture series, East Los Angeles College presents three lecturers for the Fall semester. Lectures are free, open to public and held every other Friday night at 7:30 pm starting Oct. 21st. in Vincent Price Museum.Friday, Oct. 24 @ 7:30 pm, Robert Alexander Friday, Nov... View full entry
We need to make sure we strike the proper balance between public safety and burdensome regulatory practices so that Indiana's economy can flourish and citizens can prosper - Nicholas Rhoad
Rhoad is executive director of the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency, an umbrella agency for 38 state boards, commissions and committees that oversee more than 240 types of licenses, permits and certifications between them.
— Indianapolis Business Journal Online
Last week Indiana began reviewing each of the State's more than 70 types of licenses to consider and then make recommendations which might be able to be eliminated. The (ironically-named?) Job Creation Committee is moving alphabetically through all professions, so last week they met with... View full entry
Julia Ingalls continued her Material Witness. In #5 she analyzed "Wings of Desire", "Billy Elliot" and "In the Mood for Love", for lessons about Cultural Gerrymandering. Olaf Design Ninja_ is appreciative "See Julia Ingalis quote above...there is more beer in the fridge...Enjoying this... View full entry
A few minutes after sitting down to talk with Renzo Piano in his large, airy Paris studio Tuesday, I asked the architect about the progress of the film museum he is designing for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wilshire Boulevard.
"The academy?" he asked. "Ha. The academy is a good story.
"Look, I know you don't like that scheme," referring to my recent coverage of the design.
"I don't think it will be that bad. Actually, I'm struggling to do something good."
— latimes.com
Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, asked eight different designers to submit their proposals for the redesigned currency, to be put into circulation in 2017, and the winning design features images by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta on one side and Oslo-based graphic design firm The Metric System on the other. — theatlantic.com
More details and designs also on Bustler. View full entry
The top five floors abruptly cantilever. Some neighbors say it looks like a prison. An “arty fortress,” was New York Magazine’s phrase.
I like the building’s exterior. Most people I’ve quizzed on the street during a half-dozen visits to the area turn out to like it, too.
— New York Times
Alejandro Zaera-Polo has stepped down from the deanship of Princeton University's School of Architecture to devote greater attention to his research and other professional activities. — princeton.edu
h/t - Tyler HopfMore from Princeton press..President Christopher L. Eisgruber reported the dean's resignation to faculty in the School of Architecture on Oct. 1. He announced that the school's former dean, Professor Stanley T. Allen, will serve as acting dean until a permanent successor is... View full entry
The first job I had after graduating from architecture school was in the office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. And I worked under the head person, Gordon Bunshaft, who was terrific. And, after I was there for six months, I was offered a position in the office of Marcel Breuer. So, I went and told Mr. Bunshaft, “I'm sorry that I've only been here a short time…” but I wanted to work in Breuer's office because it was smaller and more of the kind of office I had one day hoped to have for myself. — Esquire Magazine
On August 22nd, 2014 Brian Mackay-Lyons hopped off his tractor and wiped the diesel fuel off his hands to discuss architectural education with Keith and Marie Zawistowski, co-founders of the design/buildLAB at Virginia Tech and partners of OnSite Architecture. — Inform
Brian MacKay-Lyons is the founding partner of MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, a professor at Dalhousie University, and the founder of Ghost Lab – the now legendary 2-week summer design/build program that took place on his family farm in Nova Scotia from 1994 to 2011. While relentlessly... View full entry
Cartoonist and journalist Eleri Mai Harris tells the story of Canberra's creation by architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin (who also happened to be married to one another, and worked with Frank Lloyd Wright).Read the piece in full, gorgeous watercolor on Medium: The Utopian... View full entry
After it was built, some tenants pushed to have the building painted dark brown so it would look more "finished." Architect publicly protested this step, and the bank remained its simple, and quite effective, Brutalist self.Take it for what it is. I think it is 10 stories too short.Under The Radar... View full entry
AMP Capital has named 3XN as the architect for the 49-story, 102,000sm 50 Bridge Street tower and master plan for the Quay Quarter Sydney (QQS) precinct. 3XN was selected via a multi-stage international competition, the fourth it has won this year, which included two Prtizker Architecture... View full entry