As we were getting off the plane he asked me what I was doing that evening: “Catching a train, I am afraid,” I said. “ Pity. You are fat and I like my women fat. We could have spent a pleasant night together.” He said this quite casually. [...] So gigantic was Corb’s egotism that he probably considered it enough of an honour for a humble mortal to provide a genius like him with a night’s relaxation. — theguardian.com
World-renowned architect Bjarke Ingels challenges himself and all of us to think beyond the status quo and dream big. Why shouldn’t you be able to ski down a power plant? He refers to his projects as “promiscuous hybrids”—they combine seemingly disparate elements and turn fiction into fact. — Future of Storytelling
Bjarke's video is part of the Future of Storytelling summit, which takes place in New York this October. View full entry
Software companies don’t usually go around buying architecture and design firms, but The Living isn’t your typical beards-and-Blue-Bottle band of architects. The 7-person shop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard was acquired earlier this year for a small, undisclosed price by design and engineering software maker Autodesk. The reason: The Living’s expertise in blending all that’s new in materials, 3-D printing and more arcane new fields such as biological manufacturing and algorithmic design. — forbes.com
Friday, September 5:Beijing public transit commuters can now pay fares with empty bottles: Beijingers can insert a recyclable bottle and receive equivalent rebates in train fares or mobile phone credits.Community Bus Stops Transform Brazil: Thousands of Brazil's bus stops are unmarked, leading... View full entry
“The first thing is to find the identity of Seoul,” he says. “Seoul was created very differently from western cities, with special theories of feng shui and Confucianism, and we kept that for 600 years. We didn’t change anything – even under Japanese colonialism, that was kept. But since the 1960s, under American influence, it has changed very much.”
If Seung has his way, the days of skyscrapers springing up in central Seoul would come to an end.
— ft.com
In what is being described as "a strategic alliance to collaborate to transform the construction industry" software company Trimble has acquired Gehry Technologies. The alliance will offer other architects and designers use of the technology to collaborate on projects more efficiently.Press... View full entry
I really like it. I don't get the hate for the sphere. I think it will be a cool space to enjoy in person, vs. just looking at drawings. - reader comment (NeutraFilmmaker67) — Curbed
Not that LA is so pristine with its architecture, mainly disliked and condemned by the form gendarmerie, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is looking better. It might be the ever so missing link which will tie-in all the disparate parts of LACMA from Fairfax eastward, even Zumthor's blot if... View full entry
... post-conflict response often disregards the potential of shared spaces to foster reconciliation, the importance of urban plans in managing turbulent population dynamics, and the need for a public realm that enables normal life to continue. "The absence of any architect or planner or designer in the negotiating room is something that has to change,"... — foreignpolicy.com
[...] Frank Gehry has once again revised his design for a long-delayed memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, removing two controversial metal tapestries that would have flanked the installation and two columns.
The revised design was shown today to the National Capital Planning Commission, whose members for the most part seemed receptive to moving forward with the plan. But discussion over remaining 80-foot columns — from placement to height to necessity — hinted at possible issues.
— dcist.com
Previously View full entry
Sean Smith published the first in a series of articles in which "three architects (two designers and one licensed architect) discuss their transition from student to professional, their changed perceptions of the career and the challenges and joys of their current work". The interview with... View full entry
[Calatrava's] at work in the new transit station at the World Trade Center in New York, but that project is massively over budget and behind schedule and it's highlighted some of Calatrava's legal troubles back in Spain. [...]
The architect was supposed to be in Spain this week testifying as a suspect in a fraud case. Prosecutors say he got 3.6 million dollars to design yet another Spanish convention center that was never built, but Calatrava didn't show up for his court date.
— npr.org
The International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam has announced the appointment of Maarten Hajer as Chief Curator of IABR–2016–. The theme of the seventh edition of the IABR will be “The Next Economy” and it will open in May 2016. — IABR
One of the most prolific and progressive architecture and urban design biennales in existence, IABR announced yet another building block for a better world, better discourse and more meaningful step towards the future of our cities, resources and the environments that are in development. Titled... View full entry
Execs of the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center have officially shelved the starchitect’s design planned for Ground Zero. Gehry drew up plans for the art center over a decade ago and very few moves were made to bring the project to fruition...The snub, which actually wasn’t communicated to the architect directly, seems to not have affected him much, and he had some choice words for the board’s President, Maggie Boepple. — 6sqft
We cannot rely on visionaries and authoritarians to generate more, and better, housing. They might deliver, with enormous risk and perseverance, through personal connections and their willingness to invest their own equity or to defer their developers’ fee, as BHC has done. But visionaries and authoritarians are few and far between. Rather, we need to formalize ways of rethinking and requantifying net-to-gross, studio-to-three-bedrooms, block-and-plank formulas. — urbanomnibus.net
... the 92-year-old structure had fallen into disrepair since it stopped transmitting TV signals in 2002. Plans to dismantle and relocate the tower were announced earlier this year, prompting Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas and other architects to petition Vladimir Putin to save it. Moscow's city council has now announced that the tower will be preserved at its current site. — newscientist.com