Nearly half a century after Habitat 67, I worked five days a week in a cubicle in Safdie's latest high-profile creation, the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. And as I stared at a computer screen in my small slice of Safdie-dom, I wondered: What good has visionary architecture ever done for working plebes? — theawl.com
Leah Caldwell discusses the perspective of an office worker in a building designed by a "starchitect". View full entry
Zaha Hadid has made the Sunday Times Rich List for the first time, with her personal wealth estimated at £37 million.
Hadid features in the extended list of the UK’s 2,000 wealthiest people, due to be published in full later this month. The threshold for entering the top 1000 is £70 million.
— bdonline.co.uk
Previously discussed: Zaha Hadid to make 100 staff redundant View full entry
Junaid Younis, Modern Associates principal told Mr. Buncombe that his father, Mohammad, made the drawing,
“Lots of people come to us,” Younis said. “We are more interested in making money rather than the individual.”
— International Business Times
Architecture rarely goes viral on the Internet, but a video of Toyo Ito's Mediatheque in Sendai taken at the height of the Japanese earthquake has had an extraordinary run as an eyewitness and vertigo-inducing account of what it was like to be inside a building during the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11. — Ada Louise Huxtable, WSJ.com
Click here to view the video, previously reported and discussed on Archinect. View full entry
“We wanted … for the work to speak for itself,” says Mr. Kuwabara, who won the 2006 RAIC Gold Medal, awarded for a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian architecture. For the group, every project matter, he says. “A lot of architects do some kind of work just to keep the cash flowing,” says Mr. Kuwabara. “They’re always waiting for the next big project where they’re going to do exactly what they want. [But] it never happens.” — The Globe and Mail
Google has hired Ingenhoven Architects, a German firm that specializes in sustainable architecture and has completed award-winning green designs from Sydney to Stuttgart, to develop plans for what could total nearly 600,000 square feet of space. Google currently owns or leases about 4.3 million square feet of space in Mountain View, according to its securities filings. — mercurynews.com
News In our latest In Focus we talk to English photographer Tim Pike. To our question What is your goal when capturing buildings in photographs? Tom responded "That would vary. If it is entirely at my discretion, I tend to want to almost 'deconstruct' the building to an essence that is summed up... View full entry
When architect Cesar Pelli built his aka 'Blue Whale' Pacific Design Center in 1975, the West Coast officially declared it was going to be the center of the decorating universe. Almost forty years later, and with the addition of green and red compartments, that primary-shaped colorful dream is... View full entry
Even in the most turbulent eras, intelligence and clarity sometimes win out over chaos, a fact evident in the work of the Engineers and Architects Association of Liberec (SIAL), a small but vitally important architecture studio that opened under communism. — The Prague Post
Jacques Herzog: I don't believe in books on architecture; they're bound to fail and disappear even sooner than architecture...which can last for hundreds of years [before disappearing]. Not that I don't respect people who write books. — Harvard GSD (Lian)
BIG, Martha Schwartz Landscape, Buro Happold, Speirs & Major, Lutzenberger & Lutzenberger, and Global Cultural Asset Management were today announced as the winning team of the international design competition for a new 27,000 m2 cultural complex in Albania, consisting of a Mosque, an Islamic Center, and a Museum of Religious Harmony. — bustler.net
As the guiding principals of British-born Max Gordon, a contemporary architect who designed the first Saatchi Gallery and constructed apartments for Richard Serra and Elizabeth Murray, he adhered to a notion of simplicity. — blogs.wsj.com
WSJ blog "Speakeasy" discusses the late minimalist architect Max Gordon, and the recently published book on his work by his brother. View full entry
But it is no longer a work of Gaudí. It cannot overcome the central paradox, which is that Gaudí's architecture was organic, living and responsive, whereas posthumous simulation of his ideas makes them fixed and lifeless. The fusion, the melting, the integration of structure and ornament and the demented frenzy that drove Gaudí to do strange things with comatose turkeys and dead babies cannot be replicated. — Guardian
Rowan Moore asks, now that the 130-year labour of love that is Barcelona's Sagrada Família could soon be at an end, does it truly reflect Gaudí's intentions, or vision? View full entry
MONU - magazine on urbanism has released its new call for submissions for MONU #15 on the topic of Post-Ideological Urbanism — MONU
Today we find ourselves in a jealous mood, yet at the same time disillusioned, looking back to the times when revolutionary urban ideologies were not only conceived but actually, unlike today, also truly believed in. Just think about the passionate ideas of the Situationist International, who... View full entry
News Orhan Ayyüce visited the semi private Central Park at Playa Vista by Michael Maltzan Architects. In the latest Working out of the Box: we interview Logan Amont who at one point worked in Ahmedabad as an assistant to Balkrishna Doshi, but now works with a master gardener named... View full entry