Vandals have smashed an ‘irreplaceable’ stained-glass window after breaking into Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel in eastern France.
The hand-painted, coloured glass window designed by the Swiss architect in the early 1950s was destroyed, it is understood, as the intruders forced entry into the famous Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut.
Once inside the vandals lifted a concrete collection box and threw it outside.
— Architect's Journal
Archinect is shocked and saddened to report the death of Philadelphia architect Amber Long, a recent Philadelphia University graduate working for U.S. Construction Inc. Long was shot and killed this past Sunday night, the victim of an attempted robbery while walking home with her mother. She was... View full entry
January 22, 2014 (Raleigh, NC) – The 2013-2014 MODTriangle Architecture Movie Series concludes on Wednesday, February 5, at the Raleigh Grande Cinema with a special screening of “Lioness Among Lions: The Architect Zaha Hadid.” Winner of the prestigious Pritzker prize in 2004 and... View full entry
For the fifth installment in Screen/Print (an experimentation in translation across media) Archinect features Portal 9's Fiction: Contemporary Arabic and Russian Pursuits. Portal 9 is a biannual publication out of Beirut, Lebanon, which puts out a mix of creative and critical urbanism writing... View full entry
Despite a city planning report advocating its preservation, Oklahoma City’s Downtown Design Review Committee voted 3-2 last week to green light the destruction of the Stage Center, a futuristic landmark of modern architecture designed by the late John M. Johansen. — artsblog.dallasnews.com
Despite a city planning report advocating its preservation, Oklahoma City’s Downtown Design Review Committee voted 3-2 last week to green light the destruction of the Stage Center, a futuristic landmark of modern architecture designed by the late John M. Johansen. Originally known as the... View full entry
the show offers innumerable other examples of the housing industry’s braiding of mythic imagination and commercial calculation...It’s an epic, richly rewarding intellectual journey — NYT
Ken Johnson reviews the exhibition currently on view Grolier Club (running through February 7, 2014). The show explores how quintessential American traits are reflected within the pages of the builder’s guides, pattern books, catalogues, and other forms of architectural literature. View full entry
"I think that the press has been too fast to reduce the conversation to heroes and villains and martyrs, and to suggest that what MoMA is doing is necessarily bad. We want to get more information out. We want to share the problem with others and invite them to really take a hard look" - Elizabeth Diller — LA Times
They discuss the almost uniformly negative reaction to the announcement as well as the details of DS+R’s proposal for MoMA, which is still in an early design phase. In response Michael Kimmelman tweeted "Her answers are deeply unsatisfying". View full entry
In a SPIEGEL interview, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, 56, discusses how the authorities monitor his movements in sometimes bizarre detail and the feud with the government in Beijing that has kept him from being allowed to leave the country for three years now. — spiegel.de
The latest edition of ShowCase highlights CRAB Studio’s Abedian School of Architecture in Queensland, Australia.Plus, the fourth installment in Screen/Print (Archinect’s experimentation in translation across media) features "fruity labors" from the quarterly journal MAS Context's 20th... View full entry
British architect Kathryn Findlay, Co-Founder and Principal Director of London-based Ushida Findlay Architects, has died. Findlay had been suffering from a brain tumor.
Unaware of her recent passing, the jury of the 2014 Jane Drew Prize just announced her as this year's award recipient. The Prize, awarded annually by The Architects' Journal, recognized Kathryn Findlay ‘for her outstanding contribution to the status of women in architecture.'
— bustler.net
Findlay is most famous for her projects Truss Wall House (1993), Soft and Hairy House (1994), and, most certainly, the ArcelorMittal Orbit Tower, the UK's tallest sculpture and intergral part of the London 2012 Olympic Park. View full entry
I wish that it still existed.
— Frank Gehry
It would be the world's biggest nightmare if the Institute were still alive.
— Mark Wigley
It was the moment for something to happen.
— Diana Agrest
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— Places Journal
In 1967 Peter Eisenman founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, and until it closed in 1985 the Institute — a heady mix of think tank, exhibit space, journal publisher and cocktail party — was one of the centers of American architecture culture. Belmont Freeman... View full entry
Sexism is alive and well in architecture, according to research showing that two-thirds of female architects believe the construction industry hasn’t fully accepted the authority of women.
The annual Women in Architecture survey, conducted by Architects’ Journal, found evidence of widespread discrimination and unequal pay in the profession.
— independent.co.uk
"Sharon's architecture involved not only destruction but also construction. The other major projects he undertook, besides the destruction of the camps, was an attempt to "pacify" the refugees by constructing and forcefully relocating a few thousand of them into Israeli-style social housing blocks next to major Palestinian cities". — Al Jazeera English
With the recent news of Ariel Sharon's passing, Eyal Weizman (architect, professor and director of the Forensic Architecture) reviews the legacy of construction and destruction he left behind. As "Daddy of the Settlement movement" his legacy has decisively shaped the built environment of... View full entry
“We’re not used to seeing this shape in our country...We haven’t anything like this in Algeria. It’s very beautiful. It’s like a bird.” - Mekki Damerdji, an architect and professor in Algiers — NYT Magazine
Julie Bosman highlighted the work of Jason Oddy who has photographed some of the lesser known projects of Oscar Niemeyer. Niemeyer, a Communist who fled to France following the military takeover of Brazil in 1964, designed 12 buildings in Algeria in the late 1960s although only 4 have been built... View full entry
The mural project is part of a renewed attention to the Central Library in Grosse Pointe Farms, which received approval from the Grosse Pointe Library Board in October for more than $241,000 in outside masonry repairs, according to Library Director Vickey Bloom. — Eric D. Lawrence, Detroit Free Press
News from the Grosse Pointe library by Marcel Breuer, saved thanks to the efforts of MAPA, a group that came together through Archinect! Grosse Pointe Central Library: Efforts Towards Conservation Virtual Activism View full entry