Taking his inspiration from a Chestnut Street shoe store designed by architectural pioneers Oskar Stonorov and Louis Kahn, Martin produced a diaphanous glass jewel box, two stories tall and 35 feet wide. Large shop windows separated by the thinnest possible aluminum strips offered passersby views of the library’s bookshelves and clusters of comfortable reading chairs. — philly.com
Sydney E. Martin's Mercantile Library was awarded the gold medal in 1954 by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Inspired by modern retail buildings, Martin designed the library with a transparent glass facade to display the books as merchandise. This innovative design is hailed as one of... View full entry
He was very focused on the consequences of ideas. In his own work he was trying to create a sense of totality. He’s doing the hotel, the sculpture, and the furniture. He’s choreographing—it’s like a stage set and he’s staging the whole experience. — CityLab
CityLab chats with GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi about John Portman's relationship with the school, the professorship he created at Harvard, and their book collaboration, Portman’s America & Other Speculations. View full entry
Tucked away in the dense network of narrow streets in Kyoto's central Gojo Karasuma district, an old house has come back to life and—after a thorough, yet thoughtful, makeover—enjoys now a refreshed existence as a boutique guest house for tourists visiting the area. In charge of the redesign... View full entry
With the 2018 Venice Biennale only two months away, curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara and Biennale president Paolo Baratta revealed the latest details about the exhibition during a press conference today. The 2018 theme “Freespace” presents “a generosity of spirit and a sense... View full entry
Why focus on Wright, American architecture’s equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, the giant who casts a shadow over his field big enough to blot out smaller and underrepresented figures?
[...] Because the architect’s brilliant if forbidding Southern California houses, the most important of which were designed in a burst of creative energy during the first few months of 1923, remain mysterious, their meaning and inspiration as opaque as their heavy, richly patterned concrete-block facades.
— latimes.com
Christopher Hawthorne's documentary, “That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles”, focuses on aspects of the infamous architect's work which remain enigmatic. Filming inside eight Wright buildings, the project interviews around 20 people to present new insights around these... View full entry
London gets a major new contemporary art gallery this autumn with the launch of the long-awaited Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art on 8 September. [...]
Assemble, the London-based architects who won the Turner Prize in 2015, were selected in 2014 to convert former public baths and Victorian water tanks on the south London campus into the new 1,000 sq. m centre housing eight gallery spaces.
— The Art Newspaper
Goldsmiths CCA under construction. Photo via the school's website.Previously: Goldsmiths to Build Public Art Gallery View full entry
In their latest effort to advance diversity and equity in the architecture profession, today the AIA and the National Girls Collaborative announced their new partnership to create new pathways for girls to achieve educational goals that will prepare them for future careers in the architecture and... View full entry
In their latest “duograph”, as WORKac co-founders Amale Andraos and Dan Wood call it, “WORKac: We'll Get There When We Cross That Bridge” revisits the firm's formative projects that shaped their practice to what it is today. Thanks to The Monacelli Press, Archinect is giving away five... View full entry
Fifteen Hudson Yards, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group, has now topped out and stands over 900 feet tall. This is the first tower within the 28-acre NYC site with for-sale residencies. Sales for the 285 condominiums have now surpassed 50%, with the... View full entry
[...] Richard Meier designed a house on a rocky site on Long Island Sound that exhibited many of the moves that would come to define his career. From the front, the Smith House—located in Darien, Connecticut, and completed in 1967—is a narrow, three-story white box. — Surface
Completed in 1967, Smith House was one of Richard Meier's earliest commissions and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Judging by a new set of images shot by photographer Mike Schwartz, the building with its light-flooded interior and floor-to-ceiling windows enabling stunning vistas of the... View full entry
She believed that the five Platonic solids were the most basic archetypes upon which all organic structures, micro- and macrocosmic, were formed. — Architect
A diagram of the addition. Anne Tyng Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania"She was known as Louis Kahn's muse but never really escaped his shadow. What Tyng's only surviving solo project says about her legacy. The Rome Letters 1953–54 (Rizzoli), Kahn and another... View full entry
Mr. Cooper began his career in 1958 as overseer for architect Eero Saarinen in the construction of Washington Dulles International Airport. [...]
Mr. Cooper was best known for his work on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial, dedicated in 1982 and 1995, respectively.
— The Washington Post
Kent Cooper's architecture firm, Cooper-Lecky, became the architects of record for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. While Maya Lin's now iconic design for the memorial was chosen as the competition winner in 1981, Lin was an architecture student at the time and not a licensed... View full entry
Forensic Architecture [...] is an agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. The organisation’s founder and director is Eyal Weizman, a British-Israeli architect. Its primary mission is research, to “develop evidentiary systems in relation to specific cases”; in so doing, it acts as “an architectural detective agency”, working with NGOs and human rights lawyers to uncover facts that confound the stories told by police, military, states and corporations. — The Guardian
Weizman conceives of his work as an alternative practice, aiming to create a sub-discipline of architecture using architectural evidence in cases of war crimes or other human rights violations. Calling their activity "counter-forensics", the organization does not take commissions from... View full entry
Construction of The Conservatory sky bridge has given Raffles City Chongqing the title of development with the highest sky bridge linking the most number of towers. [...]
Designed by Moshe Safdie, Raffles City Chongqing also consists of a 350-m supertall skyscraper, which currently holds two records for being China’s tallest residential tower and Chongqing’s tallest building.
— Business Insider
Image: CapitaLandIf you thought Marina Bay Sands' sky bridge in Singapore was pretty impressive, hold your breath now for its younger, bigger sibling, Raffles City Chongqing, currently growing towards the sky in Central China. Also designed by Safdie Architects, the 1.12 million sqm... View full entry
Anthony Morey introduced Cross-Talk #4 on Academic Aesthetics. In his contribution, Zack Matthews "addresses a discourse of architectural representation which has made its re-entry into the academy—the neo-collage." After reading another entry, davvid complained "This is all very... View full entry
