Foster + Partners just announced they will be designing the new Kuwait International Airport - and they're aiming to make it the world's first LEED gold certified passenger terminal! The stunning design is sure to be an eye-catcher from both the ground and the sky, and it will raise the environmental bar for airports everywhere with a smart set of green features that will reduce the building's energy use and keep it cool in one of the hottest places on earth. — Inhabitat
The 2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winners were announced today with an official presentation ceremony to follow on November 7th at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. [...] Hsieh Ying-Chun is the Grand Prize Winner; he will receive $100,000 from the foundation with no strings attached. Hsieh is a leading Taiwanese architect who for over a decade has deployed his talents in rural areas decimated by natural disaster. — bustler.net
Two additional 2011 Winner Prizes, of $10,000 each, will be awarded to Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) and FrontlineSMS. View full entry
A dazzling €44 million (£37.7m) arts centre in the northern Spanish city of Avilés is to close after six months amid political squabbling as the country asks itself what to do with a glut of glittering new museums.
The Niemeyer centre, which was designed by the celebrated 103-year-old Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, was intended to have the same impact on the industrial Cantabrian sea port as the Guggenheim museum has had on Bilbao, 150 miles to the east.
— guardian.co.uk
Chyutin Architects is threatening to resign after the Wiesenthal Center withheld a scheduled payment over what center officials say is the architect’s failure to meet certain contractual obligations on the $100-million project, according to Wiesenthal spokesman Lior Chorev in Jerusalem. — latimesblogs.latimes.com
Visitors to the Hungarian pavilion at the 1992 Seville Expo came in from the searing heat to a cavernous, dark space with a great curving roof like a cathedral. At its centre was a tree, brought from the Hungarian plains, stripped bare and set into a glass floor so that its roots, which stretched as far and wide as its branches, were made visible.
It was the work of Hungarian architect Imre Makovecz, who has died aged 75.
— ft.com
Last Saturday, October 1, the Royal Institute of Architects, RIBA, not only awarded the 2011 Stirling Prize to Zaha Hadid Architects for the best new European building built or designed in the United Kingdom—the office's second consecutive Stirling Prize win—but also presented this... View full entry
Two blocks from the stately columns, arches and sculptures of Grand Central Terminal, a rogue band of architects is engaged in a retrograde venture: They're teaching a new generation how to draw and paint the elements of classical architecture—all those columns, arches and sculptures—with nothing more than pencils and paints on paper. No computers. Ever. — online.wsj.com
Suzanne Labarre of Fast Company uses the term "Lady Parts" in a review of the self-designed Shanghai studio by/for Taranta Creations. Liebchen correctly points out "When its vaginal, its a "design crime." But Philip Johnson gets to hold his little Johnson/model of the AT&T building on the cover of time magazine and everyone's fine with it? http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1979/1101790108_400.jpg"
In the third part of the CONTOURS: feature Sherin Wing, talks about urban justice. Specifically the needs of those impoverished, living in our own urban centers often in what Sherin describes as "Segregated urban centers". Drawing on the work of Edward Soja, Distinguished Professor... View full entry
A design competition opened in December 1860 with a month's deadline; it drew 171 submissions. The winning architect, Garnier, was a blacksmith's son who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, taking its Grand Prix de Rome for architecture in 1848. — online.wsj.com
The Evelyn Grace Academy, a cutting-edge new secondary school in Brixton, south London by Zaha Hadid Architects has won the prestigious £20,000 RIBA Stirling Prize 2011 for the best new European building built or designed in the United Kingdom. This is the second year running that Zaha Hadid Architects have won the RIBA Stirling Prize; last year they won the award for their MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome... — RIBA
Just two more days, and New Yorkers get to celebrate - for the first time ever - a very special month in their city: Archtober, a month-long festival of architectural design activities, programs and exhibitions. Presented by the Center for Architecture and many, many other collaborating... View full entry
Our first commissions were conversions and residential renovations with no budget. We were looking at how to convert an 1890s Victorian terrace house into something that suits a more modern spirit. Many of these spaces were tiny. But if you coat a wall in a certain colour, the visual experience of the space suddenly changes. You can use the effect of colour... to make spaces that look generous, but are actually quite restricted. — Matthias Sauerbruch, theglobeandmail.com
A review of project invoices... shows $5.17 million in lump-sum payments for work done by Calatrava himself, mostly "visioning." There is little accounting of what Calatrava did and how much time he spent on it — which is not unusual with star architects but isn't always the case.
The records provide other glimpses at the cost of doing business with someone of Calatrava's stature, including more than $640,000 spent on models and animation whose ownership is now in question.
— denverpost.com
In a recent Washington Post article architect Roger K Lewis wrote about a recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which examined how commercial architecture’s similarity across nation provides mobile Americans with a sense of stability. Donna Sink, thinks it has less to do with with concepts like "familiarity-seeking" and more to do with the profit motives of developers.
In the second part of the CONTOURS: Whither Goest Thou, Green Economy: feature, Sherin Wing looks at the how the R-word index and the drag that the so-called PIIGS is having on the economy, are impacting the greening of the economy. Her essay attempts to put aside overblown... View full entry
"My client is not in a hurry", Antoni Gaudí is said to have remarked when asked if he was concerned about the time it was taking to build the Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona. According to the Old Testament, Gaudí's client was in much more of a hurry than his architect: he rushed to create the world in just six days, although even He needed a rest on the seventh. — guardian.co.uk
