Charlie Hussey of Edinburgh-based firm Sutherland Hussey, which has 75 per cent of its work in China, believes that architects are often singled out. “Whenever ethics in China is brought up, architects are always picked on,” he says. “But we’re all trading with China. If Joe Bloggs buys a TV, he’s trading with China. Architects just deal with bigger pieces. There isn’t a single person in the UK who hasn’t traded with China”. — ft.com
Steven Holl Architects’ gigantic Sliced Porosity Block just topped out in Chengdu, China, inserting its striking neo-cavern profile into the urban grid. The large-scale, LEED Gold project is a pedestrian friendly gathering space which, while immense in size, attempts to reduce its bulk with large openings to provide code-mandated natural light to the surrounding neighborhood. — Inhabitat
An exhibition of young polish architecture 'Avant-garde of tomorrow?' will inaugurate the opening of Centre for Architecture and Design in Łódź / Poland on the 7th of October. The exhibition gathers 14 of most promising polish designers and "puts focus on individual design... View full entry
GEHRY: No, no, no, no. That was just a fun – fun thing. But it has – it has haunted me. People do – who’ve seen “The Simpson’s” believe it. — New York Observer
On Sunday, Frank Gehry appeared on Fahreed Zakar's CNN program GPS, where among other things, he discussed his regret for having been a guest on The Simpsons. View full entry
theids wants to start a conversation about the Animal Architecture Awards. To theids, "this is not Animal Architecture. I feel that they have taken a term that was already being used to describe other projects... which pre-dates this competition that has been hosted for 3 years. " der flaneur cautioned "Zoomorphic is an architecture book for 1st year students that want to see 'cool animal-looking buildings'."
News Apple’s just-opened 4th Street (N. Calif.) store, is designed so that the new sidewalk, store window panels and inside stone floor tiles all are dimensioned and positioned to present a symmetrical appearance. subtect feels "This is a really terrible drawing. if you draw the room volume as... View full entry
Mexican born architect, Tatiana Bilbao focuses on uplifting previously neglected spaces in Mexico’s overcrowded urban centers and drug trafficking plagued rural areas. Her designs are 100% sustainable in terms of water and waste management and 40% sustainable in terms of energy use. She has also launched a sustainable nonprofit organization, MX.DF, to focus urban research and address Mexico’s most pressing problems... — juxtapoz.com
Chicago Women in Architecture is excited to announce the 52 artists that will be featured in the “architects.DOING OTHER THINGS” exhibition organized by CWA as part of Chicago Artists Month 2011, the sixteenth annual celebration of Chicago’s vibrant visual art community... View full entry
American architect Eric Owen Moss will receive the 2011 Jencks Award, an annual accolade recognising major international contributions to the theory and practice of architecture.
The award will be presented on December 6 at the RIBA where Moss will give a public lecture, chaired by Charles Jencks, after whom the award is named.
— bdonline.co.uk
Moss started Eric Owen Moss Architects in 1973 in Los Angeles, USA and has since become involved in lectures, exhibitions, publishing and teaching around the world. His publications include Who Says What Architecture Is?, Eric Owen Moss: The Uncertainly of doing and Architecture + Design LA... View full entry
Gary Bates, one of three founders of Space Group, a 12-year-old architecture and urban planning firm based in Oslo, Norway, was chosen over 13 other firms earlier this month by the Arena, Arts and Entertainment District Task Force's Planning and Design Committee. — kentucky.com
CTRL+5 - Remove Client’s color Palette
CTRL+6 - Remove Client’s wife’s color Palette (must press hard)
CTRL+E - Cycles through design ideologies
CTRL+F - Flatten all roofs
CTRL+H - Insert Awesomeness
CTRL+K - Justify design concept
CTRL+L - Left justify design concept
CTRL+P - Prints unemployment check
CTRL+V - Value Engineer (reduces scale by 78%)
F4 - Toggles MODERNISM
F8 -Toggles ORTHO MODE (should always be on)
F9 -Toggles POSTMODERNISM (should always be off)
F11 - Toggles ARROGANCE
— Coffee with an Architect
Jody Brown at Coffee with an Architect has come up with a revised list of Autocad Command shortcuts. I would imagine that these will quickly become the new industry standard for drafting stations everywhere. Please print and post next to your work station for future reference. And remember, to... View full entry
What impact is all this economic turmoil having on the development of important public architecture?
Unfortunately, I see less and less of it happening. The biggest issue right now is governments — federal, state and city — have depleted resources and therefore the construction process is slowing down.
— latimes.com
“It’s never good to have a hurricane two weeks before opening,” Matthew Donham told The Observer. Mr. Donham is the project manager at PWP Landscape Architecture, the firm that helped design the memorial plaza with architect Michael Arad. [...] “We’ll actually fair better than a nearby street tree,” Mr. Donham said. — Observer
Sure, the 9/11 memorial will not be destroyed if Hurricane Irene hits New York City, but what kind of shape it will be in is a whole other story. View full entry
Leonardo da Vinci was an architect, painter, musician, and more. Corb was an architect and watchmaker. Recently, we've seen celebrity designers David Rockwell, Santiago Calatrava, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron take an interest in set design for theater. And most recently, Rafael Viñoly, one of the world's most renowned architects today, takes center stage, yet again, at Bard SummerScape for the Festival's first fully-staged production of Richard Strauss's opera, Die Liebe der Danae. — huffingtonpost.com
Fallingwater was as handmade as any of the early Modern experimental structures that, while earnestly seeking the hallowed label of prefabrication, were largely handmade, with lumpy (handcrafted!) white stucco that was smooth only if you were two miles away. Like finally seeing a real Mondrian, with all of its beautiful “imperfections,” much of building today still remains “handmade” even when it means the final connections that make a building sing. — Lamprecht archiTEXTural
Author, preservationist and historian Barbara Lamprecht takes on an earlier WSJ article called, "What's So Great About Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater?" Read her response to second question in the article: Is Fallingwater a work of modernism? View full entry
The inspiring recent release Architects' Sketchbooks celebrates the earliest traces of a building's coming into being, the ideas that pave the way for the precision of engineers' calculations or CAD renderings. Through the book's beautiful reproductions of original blots, jots, and scribbles, we can see that even the most awe-inspiring edifices begin as a line—as reassuring an insight into the creative process as any. — theatlantic.com