in professional practice, there’s a tendency to lose track of the initial spark that drew us to the profession and fall into a routine of designing similar projects for a familiar client type without thinking too deeply about it. It’s hard to make any money in the profession without a certain amount of repetition and standardization. So when a project comes along that challenges your values, that would be a good time to reconnect with the reasons you got into your profession in the first place. — thepolisblog.org
polis has published an interview with Raphael Sperry, former president of ADPSR, and founder of the Alternatives to Incarceration / Prison Design Boycott Campaign. View full entry
MASS Design Group is one of a handful of nonprofits showing that design isn’t just for the wealthy, nor is it just image-making. The challenge, for MASS and others trying to do public service design work, is to make their operations financially sustainable. As students, MASS provided much of their work on the Butaro Hospital pro bono, but they are not students anymore. The staff of MASS eclipsed 20 in the past year... — blog.sfgate.com
Related: ShowCase: Butaro Hospital in Rwanda View full entry
Beginning on May 19th, people will see the Barnes collection not where Barnes intended it to be seen, but in a new building designed by the New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.
This building won’t please the absolutists, the people we should probably call Barnes fundamentalists, because nothing would please them short of a return to the way things were. But it really ought to please everybody else, because—to cut to the chase—the new Barnes is absolutely wonderful.
— vanityfair.com
Elected officials in Goshen, N.Y., voted Thursday against a resolution to demolish and replace the Orange County Government Center, a late-1960s building in the small Hudson Valley town that sparked debate on the value of modern architecture.
"I am deeply disappointed by the outcome of today's vote," Mr. Diana said in a written statement.
— online.wsj.com
The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York will celebrate outstanding achievement in design this fall with its 13th annual National Design Awards program. Today, CooperHewitt Director Bill Moggridge announced the winners of the 2012 National Design Awards, which recognize excellence across a variety of disciplines. The award recipients will be honored at a gala dinner in mid-October in New York. — bustler.net
After spending last year traipsing below the border to break ground on his first few projects in Mexico, Richard Meier is heading below the equator to start his first South American project: a light, modernist office building in the beach-lined metropolis and future Olympic host city Rio de Janeiro. — ARTINFO
When Anne Griswold Tyng entered Radcliffe College in 1938, she had already found her calling: her faith was in architecture. “I was intensely drawn to the combination of science and art, of the pragmatic and aesthetic, of rigorous facts and intuitive leaps,” she wrote, looking back nearly 60 years later... In 1942, she enrolled in the first class to admit women at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she studied with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer... — nytimes.com
... instead of drawing his inspiration from buildings in his portfolio, Gehry designed the various pieces of this chess set based on their role in the game. So the soft curves of the queen contrast the sharp angles of the king, while the pawns have all been equipped with cannons atop them. Unfortunately the set, which is made from fine bone-china, is only available from Tiffany & Co. as a special order for a staggering $25,000. A check-mate to the bank account for most of us. — gizmodo.com
How to confirm one's role as a starchitect? Appear in the Simpsons. In its last episode the Simpsons featured a split-second of Rem Koolhaas/CCTV. The architect, not seen sporting any Prada though, is instructing, eyes closed, a group of nine pupils. Next to him, a vegan buffet and 'Junior TED... View full entry
Archinect had the opportunity to speak with Tadao Ando. Check out the Interview: 20 Minutes with a Master. b3tadine[sutures] was so inspired that he posted three times and archaalto wrote "I sometimes imagine that millions of years from now when another intelligent species excavates the earth they find the ruins of Louis Kahn's and Tadao Ando's buildings, and maybe they'll think we had some grace and weren't just accidents waiting to happen.."
Archinect (including Orhan, Alex, Kaori and Paul) had the opportunity to speak with Tadao Ando during Ando's brief visit to Los Angeles to collect his 2012 Richard Neutra Award. Check out the Interview: 20 Minutes with a Master. I especially liked the final exchange wherein Ando revealed "As... View full entry
The American Academy in Rome recently announced the winners of the 116th annual Rome Prize Competition. Recipients of the 2012-2013 prizes are provided with a fellowship that includes a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board for a period of six months to two years in Rome, Italy. — bustler.net
Among many other fields, these are the 2012-13 Rome Prize winners in the fields of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Design: PABLO CASTRO ESTÉVEZ (Architecture, James R. Lamantia, Jr., Rome Prize) Principal, OBRA Architects, New York, NY Seeking a New Poetic of Dwelling: The... View full entry
Over the past ten years a lot has been researched, analyzed, written and said about cities in the largest developing countries and emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China. (Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief of MONU Magazine, April 2012) — http://www.monu-magazine.com/
Over the past ten years a lot has been researched, analyzed, written and said about cities in the largest developing countries and emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Let us call it "BRIC Urbanism" as BRIC is the acronym that refers to these countries. Recently, however... View full entry
As a measure of the influence of all these ships, one need only look at the cities in which these museums are sited: London, Portsmouth, Southampton, Belfast, Bristol. All have been shaped – literally as well as metaphorically – by their seafaring pasts — Guardian
Steve Rose writes about a trio of museums celebrating Britain's nautical history; The Cutty Sark conservation project, the Mary Rose Museum and Southampton's SeaCity. The first, a newly restored Cutty Sark can be found at its new home in Greenwich, designed by Grimshaw... View full entry
A public forum today at Union Station provided the public with their first look at conceptual visions for Union Station and the surrounding area by six architectural firms bidding to prepare a master plan for the facility.
Metro Executive Planning Director Martha Welborne told the several hundred people in attendance that the point of the vision boards was to energize the teams submitting bids to prepare the master plan, and energize the public that uses — or will someday use Union Station.
— thesource.metro.net
If you're in Berlin this weekend, you might wanna check out this exhibition as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin: JOH3 - J. MAYER H.'s newly-opened residential building in Berlin's Mitte district - will open its gallery space with carpets and furniture from J. MAYER H.'s 2011 exhibition "Rapport" at Berlinische Galerie. The exhibition was organized as a collaboration between the Berlinische Galerie, Euroboden and Vorwerk. A model of the building will also be on view. — bustler.net