Suzanne Labarre of Fast Company uses the term "Lady Parts" in a review of the self-designed Shanghai studio by/for Taranta Creations. Liebchen correctly points out "When its vaginal, its a "design crime." But Philip Johnson gets to hold his little Johnson/model of the AT&T building on the cover of time magazine and everyone's fine with it? http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1979/1101790108_400.jpg"
In the third part of the CONTOURS: feature Sherin Wing, talks about urban justice. Specifically the needs of those impoverished, living in our own urban centers often in what Sherin describes as "Segregated urban centers". Drawing on the work of Edward Soja, Distinguished Professor... View full entry
A design competition opened in December 1860 with a month's deadline; it drew 171 submissions. The winning architect, Garnier, was a blacksmith's son who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, taking its Grand Prix de Rome for architecture in 1848. — online.wsj.com
The Evelyn Grace Academy, a cutting-edge new secondary school in Brixton, south London by Zaha Hadid Architects has won the prestigious £20,000 RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 for the best new European building built or designed in the United Kingdom. This is the second year running that Zaha Hadid Architects have won the RIBA Stirling Prize; last year they won the award for their MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome... — RIBA
Just two more days, and New Yorkers get to celebrate - for the first time ever - a very special month in their city: Archtober, a month-long festival of architectural design activities, programs and exhibitions. Presented by the Center for Architecture and many, many other collaborating... View full entry
Our first commissions were conversions and residential renovations with no budget. We were looking at how to convert an 1890s Victorian terrace house into something that suits a more modern spirit. Many of these spaces were tiny. But if you coat a wall in a certain colour, the visual experience of the space suddenly changes. You can use the effect of colour... to make spaces that look generous, but are actually quite restricted. — Matthias Sauerbruch, theglobeandmail.com
A review of project invoices... shows $5.17 million in lump-sum payments for work done by Calatrava himself, mostly "visioning." There is little accounting of what Calatrava did and how much time he spent on it — which is not unusual with star architects but isn't always the case.
The records provide other glimpses at the cost of doing business with someone of Calatrava's stature, including more than $640,000 spent on models and animation whose ownership is now in question.
— denverpost.com
In a recent Washington Post article architect Roger K Lewis wrote about a recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which examined how commercial architecture’s similarity across nation provides mobile Americans with a sense of stability. Donna Sink, thinks it has less to do with with concepts like "familiarity-seeking" and more to do with the profit motives of developers.
In the second part of the CONTOURS: Whither Goest Thou, Green Economy: feature, Sherin Wing looks at the how the R-word index and the drag that the so-called PIIGS is having on the economy, are impacting the greening of the economy. Her essay attempts to put aside overblown... View full entry
"My client is not in a hurry", Antoni Gaudí is said to have remarked when asked if he was concerned about the time it was taking to build the Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona. According to the Old Testament, Gaudí's client was in much more of a hurry than his architect: he rushed to create the world in just six days, although even He needed a rest on the seventh. — guardian.co.uk
JDS Architects’ Holmenkollen Ski Jump has been announced as the winner of the 2011 ECCS Structural Steel Design Award today at the ECCS Congress in Potsdam, Germany. The award recognizes outstanding design in steel construction emphasizing the many advantages of steel in construction, production, economy and architecture. — bustler.net
Find more images of the new Holmenkollen Ski Jump here. View full entry
We are days away from launching our new blogging platform, and we're looking for a few motivated individuals to get started now. If you're an architecture student that wants to represent your school with a school blog, we want to hear from you. But our new blogging platform will no longer be... View full entry
The Case Study program, in case it still needs any introduction, was a pioneering effort sponsored by L.A.-based Arts & Architecture magazine and its ambitious editor, John Entenza, to develop new and unapologetically modernist prototypes for the postwar American house. — latimesblogs.latimes.com
Jeanne Gang is an architect challenging the aesthetic and technical possibilities of the art form in a wide range of structures. Always responsive to the specific geography, social and environmental context, and purpose of each project... Gang is setting a new industry standard through her effective synthesis of conventional materials, striking composition, and ecologically sustainable technology. — Mac Foundation
Congrats to Studio Gang! Previous winners of the MacArthur grants include: James Carpenter Elizabeth Diller & Ricardo Scofidio Samuel Mockbee Plus the grand dame of critics: Ada Louise Huxtable But looking at the list of dozens of past winners, I'm struck by how few... View full entry
Over the next six months Architecture for Humanity plans to transform their current Open Architecture Network, an online network that empowers architects, designers, builders and their clients to share architectural plans and drawings, into a robust platform that provides dialogue and tools to support a shared vision of a more sustainable future across sectors. The combined strength of these communities, both created out of the TED Prize, will help spur innovation, learning, and best practices. — architectureforhumanity.org
Over twenty architects, designers, philosophers and photographers across Sydney have participated in a series of creative conversations, which transform the image of this harbour city from generic postcard perfection to a set of multiplicitous, individual urban narratives. These are networks of surrender, whose ambition is not the cohesion of a finished, consumerable product, but the construction of new communities for creative work. — Gwangju-Design-Biennale_MEDIA-RELEASE.pdf
"Networks of surrender" sits in the ‘Communities’ sub-section of the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale alongside four other invited cities: Johannesburg, Macau, Medellín, and Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The exhibition is a collaboration between three practitioners/academics Samantha Spurr... View full entry
Simultaneously acting as exhibition, discussion tool, and architectural manifesto, “What About It? Solo Exhibition” presented for the first time a physical collection of the intellectual provocations, architectural narratives, and theoretical adventures of WAI Architecture Think Tank... View full entry