The park...was conceived four decades ago. The visionary architect who designed it died in 1974. The site...remained a rubble heap while the project was left for dead. But in a city proud of its own impatience, perseverance sometimes pays off. — New York Times
If Nychaland was a city unto itself, it would be the 21st most populous in the U.S., bigger than Boston or Seattle, twice the size of Cincinnati. Despite these prodigious stats, the projects remain a mystery to most New Yorkers, a shadow city within the city, out of sight and mind, except when someone gets shot or falls down an elevator shaft—just these bad-news redbrick piles to whiz by on the BQE. — NY Magazine
Mark Jacobson visits New York City’s various housing projects, which are he argues the last of their kind in the country. He also suggests that they may be on their way to extinction. View full entry
In 1948 Le Corbusier was retained by the municipality of Izmir (my home town) to develop a visionary master plan for the city. He disregarded the historic core of Izmir which is laced with artifacts and buildings as old as 3500 years old and eventually was forced to resign from the job and most... View full entry
The 2012 winners of the prestigious Praemium Imperiale arts awards were announced today by the Japan Art Association at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The five recipients in their respective fields are Henning Larsen (Architecture, Denmark), Philip Glass (Music, USA), Cai Guo-Qiang (Painting, China), Cecco Bonanotte (Sculpture, Italy), and Yoko Morishita (Theater/Film, Japan). — bustler.net
For those of us who have long fought for greater diversity in architecture, the slow pace of change is less alarming than the emergence of cynical voices that dismiss the viability of architecture as a profession. At the final Van Alen roundtable, Dagmar Richter relayed the opinion, expressed by some in the field, that the declining status of the discipline is reflected in the growing presence of women in architecture schools — in other words, women are making headway because men are bailing. — Places Journal
Are we really ready to be post-feminist? Inspired by a series of Van Alen Institute roundtables held this spring — and by the alarming attrition rate of women practitioners — Despina Stratigakos advocates for an expanded role for next-wave feminism in architecture and design... View full entry
Architect Deborah Berke, founder of New York City-based firm Deborah Berke Partners, has been selected as the first recipient of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED) inaugural 2012 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize. — bustler.net
The Berkeley-Rupp Prize will be awarded biannually to a distinguished practitioner or academic who has made a significant contribution to promoting the advancement of women in the field of architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community. View full entry
With a sea change (partly generational, mostly philosophical) overtaking architecture, and attention turning from glamorous buildings and celebrated designers to broader issues like urbanism, public space, social responsibility and collaboration, “Common Ground” is well intended but, alas, a missed opportunity. — nytimes.com
![Left: Ms. Magazine, inaugural issue, summer 1972. Right: Faculty and students of the Women's School of Architecture and Planning Summer Program, 1975. [Images courtesy of Gabrielle Esperdy]](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/a6/a6e4976girowvrur.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=514 "Left: Ms. Magazine, inaugural issue, summer 1972. Right: Faculty and students of the Women's School of Architecture and Planning Summer Program, 1975. [Images courtesy of Gabrielle Esperdy]")
Let’s mentor a new generation of architects who are as proud to be women as they are proud to be designers. And let’s start by taking back the “architectress,” by infusing that cringe-inducing, condescending, mid-century term of opprobrium with some born-this-way, kick-ass, grrrl-power, retro cool. Imagine Architectress t-shirts and Architectress tattoos, Architectress blogs and Architectress fansites, Architectress flash mobs and Architectress meetups. Imagine Architectress going viral. — Places Journal
Back in the '70s, second-wave feminists were organizing and agitating, forming alternative communities, creating new spatial practices and attempting to pry open what a contemporary reporter called the "exclusively male preserve" of the American architecture profession. Gabrielle Esperdy revisits... View full entry
In a letter titled ‘Kicking against the Prix’, the RIBA gold medallist claimed the Coop Himmelb(l)au founder had failed to attend the biennale despite issuing a critical press release last week describing it as ‘banal’. — architectsjournal.co.uk
David Chipperfield’s full letter I am disappointed that our British architectural press should give so much coverage to the destructive opinions of a Viennese architect about the Biennale, even though he hadn’t even visited Venice. My concerns are not about the criticism, which I... View full entry
A reliable source provided us with some official blueprints for the Apple Campus 2 yesterday, and these are just a few of the images that illustrate the mammoth building currently being planned in Cupertino, Calif. A single one of these slides leaked out today, so we are putting these up now; we are resizing and still have to watermark. — 9to5mac.com
Firms credited on the drawings include Foster and Parters, ARUP, OLIN and Davis Langdon. View full entry
“We don’t believe architecture can solve anything,” Andraos said of the relationship between environmentalism and design in WORKac’s creations. “Rather, we feel this is a question of impacting culture. In the architect’s Sisyphean relation to power, we believe in the visionary, and his agency to radicalize and to move culture.” — yaledailynews.com
Gift Will Endow an Annual Prize to Recognize Outstanding SCI-Arc Graduate Thesis Projects The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) today announced it has received a transformative $100,000 gift from world-renowned architect and SCI-Arc trustee Frank Gehry, and his wife, Berta... View full entry
The practical problem to solve in meditation space is making it as quiet as possible, making the architecture as quiet as possible. The architecture has to come to rest if you want the mind to come to rest. And the architecture has to be, doesn’t have to be, but it’s best if it’s holding you to the ground as opposed to ascension. — Metropolis Magazine
Metropolis conducts a Q&A with Michael Rotondi on the design of sacred spaces. What he says is a beautiful way to look at architecture, meditative space and ourselves. View full entry
Mr. Shelton and his longtime design partner, Lee Mindel, were known for a distinctive modernist aesthetic that blended clean lines with references to classical periods to create opulent settings. Their less-is-more sensibility became a hallmark for apartments ringing Central Park.
“Truly they were leaders in their field,” said Margaret Russell, the editor in chief of Architectural Digest. “They won pretty much every award a firm could win.
— nytimes.com
[FLW's] entire archive is moving permanently to New York in an unusual joint partnership between the Museum of Modern Art and Columbia University’s Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, where it will become more accessible to the public for viewing and scholarship.
The collection includes more than 23,000 architectural drawings, about 40 large-scale, architectural models, some 44,000 photographs, 600 manuscripts and more than 300,000 pieces of office and personal correspondence.
— nytimes.com
