For architects, the challenge is balancing the need for additional security with design principles that foster a more nurturing educational environment for students. As architect Jim French explained, designers could apply the design methods used to keep prisons secure to schools, but that would hamper the experience for children. — MarketWatch
Following the recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Jacob Passy reviews some of the ways that the design of schools is changing to address safety concerns. Interestingly, at last night's CNN Town Hall Gun Debate, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel argued there are three things we need to do in... View full entry
Although Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last year new mandates to force building owners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a way to fight climate change, a Dallas-based architecture firm has taken the idea of sustainable design to the next level. During last month’s International... View full entry
Picture the World Trade Center near the Empire State Building near Fenway Park near London's Tate Modern. Now picture trains zipping past the architectural icons.
That is the vision world-famous architect Frank Gehry and museum developer Thomas Krens are trying to bring to North Adams, in the form of the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum.
— masslive.com
With the aim of developing North Adams, Massachusetts as a cultural destination, Frank Gehry and Thomas Krens released plans last summer for their hybrid Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum. The initial concept has now developed into an entire model showcasing more of what... View full entry
WSJ reports that “a person familiar with the matter” claims that Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry have been tapped to design buildings for the megaproject’s second phase, due to rise over the west side rail yards [...] There’s little information beyond that, but 2018 is the year that co-developers Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group are due to start work on the platform that will cover the west side yards — Curbed
According to the Wall Street Journal, Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava may be joining the star-studded lineup of designers working on the Hudson Yards development, which — so far — includes SOM, Foster + Partners, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Rockwell Group, and Thomas... View full entry
Heatherwick Studio employs architects, but Heatherwick is not an architect. His work could be described as a celebration of never having absorbed, in a formal architectural education, dogma about designing things to be flush and taut. “There’s a Harry Potter-esque, Victorian quirkiness in the work,” Ingels said. “An element of steampunk, almost.” — The New Yorker
In his long read for The New Yorker, Ian Parker tells the story of New York's (potential) new Eiffel Tower, the Vessel at Hudson Yards, and profiles the British designer behind this and many other ambitious structures, Thomas Heatherwick. View full entry
A range of minimalist tableware is the result of Norman Foster's latest collaboration as a designer outside of the world of architecture, with Danish design house Stelton. Image: Foster + Partners.Combining simple sculptural form and soft geometry, the Norman Foster Collection spans a spectrum... View full entry
The last few months have been full of uncertainty for the prestigious AA School of Architecture, which currently does not have a permanent director (Samantha Hardingham has been interim director since Brett Steele left the position in 2016). In the school's ongoing search for a new leader, they... View full entry
Rejecting flashy forms in favor of buildings in harmony with their environment, the architect — poised to become world famous for his stadium for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo — is trying to reinvent his entire trade. [...]
Kuma, a constant source of paradoxes and ironies, often makes demagogic statements on behalf of his own brand of architectural modesty. “I want to change the definition of architecture,” he told me; in a way, he already has.
— The New York Times Style Magazine
Nikil Saval pens a beautiful profile of Kengo Kuma for T Magazine and investigates the architect's ongoing quest to ground his version of Modernism in authentic Japanese craftsmanship. View full entry
Flores & Prats Architects have released a new documentary series, ESCALA 1:5, focusing on their design for Sala Beckett Theatre and International Drama Centre in Barcelona. Sala Beckett Theatre facade, by Flores & Prats, located in Barcelona. Image: Adrià Goula. The series consists of... View full entry
The design development programme for Dubai Creek Tower is fully complete.
BMT, an international design, engineering and risk management consultancy, announced that it had taken the Emaar Properties project "to 100% design development".
Wind engineering experts from BMT have completed aerodynamic shape optimisation studies, wind loading analyses, and façade wind pressure assessments for the project.
— constructionweekonline.com
Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, stopped by the Santiago Calatrava-designed Dubai Creek Tower megaproject last month and inspected the monumental foundation work of what may soon be the world's tallest building (the final height is still kept a secret but was announced to... View full entry
Morphosis has announced the educational initiative led by the firm’s Pritzker Prize-winning founder, Thom Mayne Young Architects, has been extended through the remainder of the 2017-2018 academic year in partnership with Hall Elementary School in Bridgeport, CT. Students in the... View full entry
Wilbert R. Hasbrouck, a pioneering Chicago preservation architect who breathed new life into buildings designed by some of the city’s renowned architects and co-owned a beloved architectural bookstore, died Saturday at a care facility in suburban Norridge.
A longtime Chicago resident, Hasbrouck was 86. The cause of death was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his son Charles, a director at the Chicago architectural firm of bKL.
— chicagotribune.com
Over a 40 year career, Hasbrouck renovated buildings such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, William Le Baron Jenney's Manhattan Building skyscraper, and Louis Sullivan's Peoples Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, along with several of Chicago’s important 19th-century... View full entry
One of the world’s foremost living modernists, AIA Gold Medalist and Pritzker laureate Fumihiko Maki's celebrated career stretches over 60 years. Steering clear of “unnecessary forms or textures” (as he puts it), his designs are understated integrations of metal, glass and concrete. Like... View full entry
Michael J. Cox, FRAIC, an architect from Manitoba who has led numerous organizations and is passionate about the contribution architects can make in their communities, is the 79th President of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC).
Mr. Cox received the President’s Medal of office from the 2017 President Ewa Bieniecka, FRAIC, at a change-of-office ceremony on February 2 in Ottawa.
— Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
A 1971 University of Manitoba B.Arch graduate, Michael J. Cox has been the principal of his one-person practice in Brandon, Manitoba since 1979. "You can’t get much smaller than one," he jokes.Outlining key goals during his term, Cox remarked: "The RAIC needs to focus on the immediate needs... View full entry
There is a good case for listing Thomas Hardy amongst the greatest of all conceptual architects — the prophet, well before the fact, of a particular type of speculative, imaginary architectural project which would boom a century later. — Places Journal
The 19th-century author Thomas Hardy has never been considered much of an architect. Yet as Kester Rattenbury shows, his creation of Wessex was an architectural project - one that drew on the ideas of his time, but also predicted some of the most inventive architectural work of our own age. Hardy... View full entry
