Nicholas Korody penned an essay on White Space: The Architecture of the Art Fair, "the so-called photographic-seamless" and "The aura of art works". His conclusion "Art exists now in a strange truce, in which an object is used as the establishing point for a market as much as the market is... View full entry
Why not ask Howard Hughes to abandon its current plan and do something really wonderful and revive the Guggenheim plan for Gehry’s gargantuan palace of titanium ribbons? The residential conversion of so many major office buildings is going, eventually, to create a need for new office buildings. Gehry’s plan could be enlarged gracefully to accommodate both offices and condominiums and rebalance the famous Lower Manhattan skyline... — 6sqft
Does Gehry still the chops to revive Lower Manhattan? One former New York Times architecture critic, Carter B. Horsley, proposes bringing Gehry's aborted idea for South Street Seaport back to life. The plan would replace SHoP Architect's recently scaled-back design for the waterfront site. View full entry
The restoration of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin will cost an estimated €101m [...]. This masterpiece by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, which opened in 1968, was closed in early January.
David Chipperfield Architects has been entrusted with the refurbishment project, having found international acclaim for its work on rebuilding the Neues Museum on Museum Island in Berlin. The British architect pledged to “keep as much Mies as possible” at a symposium in late November.
— theartnewspaper.com
Does it make sense for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup? German architect Albert Speer, whose office is in charge of the project, says yes -- and is doing all he can to ensure sustainability. In a SPIEGEL interview, he says how. — spiegel.de
Related: Desert sands, soccer, sustainability and "symbolic capital"... View full entry
The idea is always that a building like this in a particular light merges with the sky. The building is on a very small site, and has a very small footprint. There was a requirement from a planning point of view, which we fully supported and were actually happy about, that we had to provide a plaza on the ground floor. And that’s actually why the building toward the base, it pulls in its belly and it slopes so that the urban space is adequate and a required size. — nytimes.com
Greater Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has temporarily pulled the plug on the ambitious Taiwan Tower project, citing concerns over safety and its costs, which have ballooned from NT$8 billion (US$253.5 million) to NT$15 billion. [...]
Designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who won an international competition in 2011 to draw up plans for the building, Taiwan Tower’s ornate steel structure was inspired by the trunk of a banyan tree.
— taipeitimes.com
At their first lecture at SCI-Arc since 1987, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien charted a simple course. They set out to explain the principles that guide their practice’s approach, regardless of program or site of project, and how those principles have morphed over time and place. Outlined at the... View full entry
A palatial unit occupying the 89th and 90th floor of One57 has just sold for a record-breaking $100,471,452.77—the most expensive condo purchase ever recorded Manhattan. — 6sqft
The penthouse sale at Christian de Portzamparc's One57 shatters a record previously held by Sanford Weill who bought an $88 million penthouse at the Robert AM Stern-designed 15 Central Park West in 2012. The arguably inflated purchase shows that NYC's real estate shows no signs of... View full entry
We've just heard from Cameron Sinclair, co-founder and ex-director of Architecture for Humanity, that the organization has "pivoted its mission and is planning to close".According to John King at the SF Chronicle, "While there has been no official announcement of the organization’s demise, all... View full entry
In 2006, the doors of the Hearst Tower were swung open for business. The design of starchitect Norman Foster, the building was one of the most cutting-edge of its time, lauded for its diagrid form, its green construction, and the then-radical approach of marrying the old with the new... Now, a decade later, Foster has returned to the Hearst Tower to mark its anniversary and reflect on his creation. — 6sqft
On Wednesday, developer Richard L. Friedman will formally kick off construction of the tallest skyscraper to be built in Boston in 40 years — a 700-foot tower at 1 Dalton St. that will include the city’s second Four Seasons Hotel and some of its most expensive condominiums. [...]
The skyscraper at One Dalton is being designed by Hancock Tower architect Harry N. Cobb, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in collaboration with Gary Johnson of Cambridge Seven Associates Inc.
— bostonglobe.com
Archinect Showcase:(ed) A’ House by Wiel Arets Architects a "compact private residence" in Tokyo's Nishi-Azabu neighborhood. Responding to chigurh, EKE and others Will Galloway commented "a european project, photographed by a european photographer as well. best not to generalize. Its a... View full entry
Architect David M. Schwarz, CEO and president of David M. Schwarz Architects, has won the 2015 Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame. Established in 2003, the $200,000 prize honors a living architect's lifetime contributions considered to embody positive cultural... View full entry
Hours before the official inauguration of the Philharmonie de Paris concert hall on Wednesday, its architect, Jean Nouvel, declared his intention to boycott the gala because he said the towering, 386 million euro (about $455 million) building is not ready to open. [...]
Mr. Nouvel wrote a column that appeared on the website of the French daily Le Monde denouncing the “contempt” of the concert hall managers for “the architecture, the work of the architect and the architect.”
— artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
Construction escalated in the days preceding the opening but large parts of the Philharmonie are still not complete, including the restaurant and exhibition space. The inaugural concert will feature the Orchestre de Paris, with dignitaries and French president François Hollande among... View full entry
As the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, prepares to break ground on its Foster + Partners—designed expansion in 2016, the institution has launched the second phase of its capital campaign, which has already raised nearly $34 million, more than half of the museum's $60 million goal. [...]
"Foster + Partners' plan pays homage to the Museum's past by restoring the clarity and symmetry of the original building, but also looks to its future as a leading museum in Florida" [...]
— news.artnet.com
