In a region at once feared and exoticized, we have been witnessing for more than a generation the devastation of old centers and the rise of new ones. Today there is no better context in which to investigate the complexities of global practice in architecture than that of the rapidly changing Arab city. — Places Journal
How does the deeply traditional meet the hypermodern in the older centers of Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo, and in the emerging new cities of Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi? In Amale Andraos’ new article on Places, and in the new book, The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, she explores the... View full entry
It is not the first time, though, that a design like this has been pitched for the university. However inadvertently, the DS+R design resembles another proposal for the campus—a draft project that was eventually revised. While the resemblance between two draft renderings is hardly consequential, this one comes as a surprise, given the nature of the projects and the history between the firms. — City Lab
Raking only the choicest aesthetic muck, in this piece Kriston Capps wonders at the passing similarities between Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects' initial proposed design for the University of Chicago's David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts and Diller, Scofidio, and Renfro's... View full entry
The new building design introduced massive 40 foot sliding glass doors that could one day turn that store into an iCar showroom if they wanted to.
The estimated breakdown of the costs started with the shell of the building costing Apple $19 million. Some of the other costs included $1 million on the staircase alone. If there's 30 stairs that $33,333 per stair.
— Patently Apple
While Norman Foster's "spaceship" design for the Apple Campus has attracted its own share of critiques for possibly reviving older corporate design models, this newly refurbished Apple Store appears to be heading for a far more multi-faceted (and luxurious) future. In an era where many prefer to... View full entry
Amro Sallam helped start Architects for Society in 2015, gathering together a collective of international architects to focus their work on humanitarian and social-welfare projects. One of their first projects, Hex House, is a solar-powered, single-family unit designed for deployment in refugee... View full entry
Alejandro Aravena’s brief for the Fifteenth International Architecture Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale calls for projects that “are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural... View full entry
A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.
“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said.
— theguardian.com
Although Khan originally showed reservations, it was revealed last week that he would back the project pertaining to certain conditions. Read more on the controversial project here:Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?Sadiq Khan investigates troublesome... View full entry
The lady on the ladder chosen as the image for the 2016 Biennale Architettura sees, amidst “great disappointments[,] creativity and hope,” states Paolo Baratta, president of the Venice Biennale. “[S]he sees them in the here-and-now, not in some uncertain aspirational, ideological future.”... View full entry
The opulence of Venice's 16th-century Palazzo Franchetti is as memorable as the designs of a particular Zaha Hadid. A can't-be-missed retrospective honoring the late architect's four-decade career opened to the public today, just in time for the hoards of visitors venturing out to the nearby... View full entry
The general atmosphere at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front, is one of excitement, of subversion. The Fifteenth edition of the Biennale explicitly calls for instances where architecture is an “instrument of self-government, of humanist civilization, and a... View full entry
London-based manufacturer Sto has collaborated with architecture and design practice Sam Jacob Studio to create a oversized replica of an ordinary garden shed by 3D scanning its facade and reproducing it using a product called Verolith. The oversized shed is covered in Verolith panels, a chalky... View full entry
“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.” — The Guardian
In this piece design critic par excellence Alexandra Lange analyzes two similar Thomas Heatherwick designed-projects, London's Garden Bridge and New York's Pier 55, in the hopes of discovering why one seems to be resonating with the public while the other has inspired satiric contests to replace... View full entry
It's not exactly a staircase to heaven (more of a "symbolic arising of the city after World War II"), but the intimate rooftop views provided by MVRDV's "The Stairs" of Rotterdam are spectacular. Plus, the gleeful discussion of temporariness by architectural video duo #donotsettle's Wahyu Pratomo... View full entry
Former Princeton architecture dean Alejandro Zaera-Polo filed a lawsuit to the Superior Court of Mercer County earlier this week against Princeton University, claiming that the school is guilty of libel and breach of contract. Zaera-Polo was asked to resign from his position by President... View full entry
The University of Chicago, weary of holding large events off-campus, hired Diller, Scofidio and Renfro to design a 90,000 square foot, multi-faceted meeting place. The result is the Rubenstein Forum, which will be placed next to the Harris School of Public Policy’s future Keller Center and... View full entry
I’m not so critical about New York, because they have this very firm grid-pattern. Even the newer buildings are lined up on good streets. If you stand in front of the Empire State Building, you can’t really guess how tall it is, because it meets the street in a friendly way. [...] It’s not so important how high the building is, or how much it looks like a perfume bottle, it’s more important how it interacts with the city. — commonedge.org
Related stories in the Archinect news:Jan Gehl's perspective on making "a good urban habitat for homo sapiens"Is Jan Gehl winning his battle to make our cities liveable?How to design that elusive "Perfect Town" View full entry