Too often during the bubble, banks and builders shunned thoughtful architecture and urban design in favor of cookie-cutter houses that could be easily repackaged as derivatives to be flipped, while architects snubbed housing to pursue more prestigious projects.
But better design is precisely what suburban America needs, particularly when it comes to rethinking the basic residential categories that define it, but can no longer accommodate the realities of domestic life.
— nytimes.com
In this uniformity, I see a tendency among architects to respect and maintain the status quo, and a consensus about what architecture is and can do for our society. That’s the expression of a decorative understanding of architecture, even if it expresses itself in a subtle, modernist language. (Jacques Herzog) — Places Journal
On Places, Jacques Herzog discusses the recent work of Herzog & de Meuron and the challenges of maintaining a creatively vital practice, in an interview with Hubertus Adam and J. Christoph Burkle. View full entry
The marriage of light and geometry does indeed find its consummation in architecture, but for me it did not come about so easily. At age eighteen I entered a fine school of engineering, then transferred to a fine school of architecture, finishing there when I was twenty-four. After ten or so years of working in corporate offices, learning what it meant to build—and leading a rather turbulent life—I went out on my own. — lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com
Lebbeus Woods shares part 2 of his personal story describing why he became an architect. View full entry
“The transparent tubes refract the lights of Times Square, creating a cluster of lights around the heart. The hovering heart will appear to pulsate as its tubes sway in the wind. When people touch a heart-shaped sensor, the heart will glow brighter as the energy from their hands is converted into more light.” — New York Observer
Bjarkes Ingles, recent New York transplant, gives a giant glowing valentine to his new home as designer of the fourth annual Valentine's Day installation for Times Square. View full entry
To Ingels, buildings are more than just monuments. They are part of an ever evolving landscape. Each one is a unique challenge with problems to solve but also an opportunity to add value or beauty to lives of the people who will live in them or work in them every day. — whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com
The L.A. landscape would look much different without four Chinese-Americans — Eugene Choy, Gilbert Leong, Helen Liu Fong and Gin Wong — whose work has shaped some of the city's architectural landmarks. A new exhibit at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles examines their contributions. — vcstar.com
Between 2000 and when he left office last May, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley and agencies under his control approved roughly $20 million in payments to an architectural firm co-owned by his cousin’s husband.
That cousin — Theresa Mintle — now is chief of staff to Daley’s successor, Rahm Emanuel.
But city officials say Emanuel won’t be following Daley’s lead in approving new work for VOA Associates Inc., run by Mintle’s spouse, Michael Toolis.
— suntimes.com
The design shows Eisenhower as a youth gazing out at images of his adult accomplishments against a backdrop of the Kansas plains. But the Eisenhower family objects to the design and is attempting to delay approval of the project in a dispute that has pitted a leading American family against one of the country’s most recognized architects. The family says Mr. Gehry should portray Eisenhower as a man in the fullness of his achievements, not as a callow rustic who made good. — nytimes.com
Architect and Woodbury School of Architecture professor Barbara Bestor presented an optimistic vision of architecture—one grounded in entrepreneurial practice and creating new opportunities—at the 2011 ACSA Administrators Conference: Old School/New School in November. (Co-chaired by Dean Norman Millar.) — vimeo.com
Liang Sicheng (1901-1972) is known as China’s “Father of Modern Architecture,” but he expressed strong sentiments throughout his career when it came to preserving the country’s heritage and identity. In the 1950s, when Beijing was selected as the nation's capital, he lobbied to keep its ancient buildings intact and urged the government to build an entirely new city instead. The ruling party disagreed, and ancient Beijing has become a distant memory. — artinfo.com
The Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei collaboration – the 12th pavilion – breaks the mould of the sequence so far as the criterion for the commission had been for an architect not to have built in England. But Herzog & de Meuron are also deeply engaged in the art world, having built the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They are currently working on art museums in New York, Miami and Kolkata. — ft.com
A dandy bedecked in flashy all-white outfits and a pince-nez, chain-smoking custom-made cigarettes that he ordered from a New York manufacturer in lots of 10,000... an early devotee of the motorcar, president of the local Automobile Club, and a notably fast and reckless driver... He paid his rent in gold coins, before moving to an opulently furnished, Oriental-themed downtown Kansas City apartment/studio building of his own design. — Places Journal
Why is Louis Curtiss so much less celebrated than Bernard Maybeck? On Places, Keith Eggener examines the career of the Kansas City architect, "designer of some of the earliest buildings in the world to employ caisson foundations, rolled steel columns and glass curtain-walls," who nonetheless... View full entry
We’ve received emails from people just starting out or thinking of going into architecture asking for advice. It gets heavy sometimes. People who have been laid off in the recession have also written to share their stories. One architect I know told me without irony that he wishes he had read it before starting out on this path. — metropolismag.com
Metropolis Magazine's Susan Szenasy interviews Archinect's own Guy Horton about his recently published book The Real Architect’s Handbook: Things I Didn’t Learn in Architecture School. View full entry
I would like to tell a short story—or perhaps not such a short story—about the reasons why I chose to become an architect. Exactly why this blog’s readers should be interested in my recollections about such a matter I cannot say, and perhaps I am mistaken in spinning out such a story here. Still, I feel compelled to do so and can only hope for the readers’ tolerance. — lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com
Scott Timberg wrote a piece for Salon examining how "One of the coolest creative-class careers has cratered with the economy". spaceman was surprised by some of the architects quoted and wrote "One successful architect feels ‘Very much like an immigrant worker,’ and another says, ‘We are making less than a cleaning lady.’ This seems a little over the top.”
Guy Horton, presented the first installment in a new reoccurring feature The CRIT, which will focus on architectural criticism, Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream. Therein Guy offered this critique of the architects featured in MoMA’s upcoming exhibition "They were... View full entry