The ancient Afghan city of Ghazni has been designated an Asian city of Islamic Culture by the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation. But outsiders will find it difficult to see the city's famous Islamic and pre-Islamic architectural wonders because of the Taliban insurgency. — BBC News
...even for a big gun like Koolhaas, the global depression has had an impact. Thus his new furniture line for Knoll called “Tools for Life.” It’s a pretty standard track for any architect when the commissions start to dry up; have some interns fart out designs for a furniture line, ship it off to China for production, then slap a price tag on it with no less that 4 zeros and BOOM! you’re back makin’ Bentley payments and wearing Prada suits in no time. — The World's Best Ever
Every week The Principals call someone new into their office, this week it's Rem Koolhaas and "Tools for Life." View full entry
In June this year UNStudio will launch the new organisation of its practice as an open-source knowledge-based practice operating projects around four specialised Knowledge Platforms.
As part of the reorganisation of the studio a new interactive online knowledge platform will be launched, aimed at facilitating the open exchange of knowledge, with the ultimate goal of introducing and encouraging the expansion from a collaborative to a co-creative working model for architecture.
— unstudio.com
Sources close to the project said Foster + Partners... is helping Apple on the retail store design brief. — marketingmagazine.co.uk
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson has reached out to us about an error in the cited article at Marketing Magazine... The Regent Street and Fifth Avenue Apple Store were not designed by Eight Inc., but by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. We also continue to have a very collaborative relationship with Apple... View full entry
Renzo Piano has been awarded the highest honor of the Architectural League of New York, the President's Medal. The prize is bestowed annually on individuals in recognition of extraordinary body of work in architecture, urbanism, or design. — bustler.net
Architect Michael Maltzan has designed prestigious museums, luxurious private residences and social housing in Downtown LA. Music has been a factor in his life since he first started to discover architecture and he ruminates on the connection between the two art forms while sharing songs from Big Star, Talking Heads and more. — kcrw.com
Track list:The Bad Plus - Long Distance RunaroundTalking Heads - The Big CountryBig Star - The Ballad Of El GoodoPJ Harvey - We FloatGlen Campbell - There's No Me Without You View full entry
Visionary architect Paolo Soleri,the Italian-born designer of the experimental Arizona city near Cordes Junction called Arcosanti, died Tuesday. He was 93.
Arcosanti officials confirmed the death in a statement.
Soleri, one of the last living direct disciples of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed a $3.5 million pedestrian bridge in Scottsdale - Soleri Bridge & Plaza, the only completed bridge of the hundreds he designed. It is located southwest of Camelback and Scottsdale roads.
— azcentral.com
For the latest entry in the ShowCase series Archinect published the Shrine of the Virgin of "La Antigua" by Otxotorena Arquitectos. The project is located in Alberite, La Rioja, Spain and the architects main constraint was the need to "incorporate a preexisting stone archway in the design. This... View full entry
The City of Melbourne has been certified carbon neutral, an important step toward its goal of becoming one of the world’s most sustainable cities.
In a carbon constrained economy, councillor Arron Wood said the certification by Low Carbon Australia against the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) “was a solid demonstration of the City of Melbourne’s commitment to a more sustainable Melbourne.”
— DesignBuild Source
Reading this was for me an epiphany. I could see, almost in a flash, the unity of building and landscape developing throughout Mies’s building art, ultimately morphing into the podium that binds the Seagram tower to the urban landscape — plaza, platform, an oasis amid the chaos of New York. This led me to reevaluate the importance of surrounding context, in Mies’s architecture throughout his career and to understand in a new light some of his statements, drawings, and photomontages. — Places Journal
"What led Mies to create the union of skyscraper and plaza on Park Avenue, a binding together so profoundly important in his oeuvre?" On Places, in an excerpt from the new book Building Seagram, Phyllis Lambert recounts the evolution of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's architectural philosophy, from... View full entry
“brave new color, for a brave new world.” — The LACMA Blog
"It’s 1980s Los Angeles. Nighttime. (Freshly graduated Michael Asher students from Cal Arts,) Stephen Prina and fellow artist Christopher Williams walk along La Brea Avenue and a pink shape in a glowing storefront display catches their attention. Unable to identify the object, they approach... View full entry
Naturally, there were some projects that Bob worked on more and others that I worked on more. Sometimes our collaboration was more close than others. But I think our best projects were when we worked together. I remember so many real tousles—and those were the projects that worked out best. — Architect Magazine
The co-founder of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (now VSBA) talks to ARCHITECT about a petition to put her name on the 1991 Pritzer Architecture Prize, about sexism in architecture, and about her career in design. h/t Ana María León View full entry
The four firms — Santiago Calatrava, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and SOM — will have until May 29 to propose new designs that will be unveiled to the public that day at the TimesCenter on West 41st Street. “We’re really trying to unlock people’s imaginations about the very real potential of a new arena and of a new Penn Station,” said Vin Cipolla, the society’s president, in an interview. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
“When one office was doing well, another was not doing as well,” says the source. “But we always managed it so that there was the see-saw effect – one office would be profitable and another would be in the doldrums. But we managed to keep the group afloat.”
“What people are worried about now is that the people who ran the company down are still the ones in charge.”
— scotsman.com
"Irrational exuberance" seems to me an apt introduction to an understanding of Rem Koolhaas in the '90s and beyond; it foregrounds his great success in navigating the intersection of the pragmatic corporate sector, on the one hand, and the “delirious” and volatile realm of desire and possibility, on the other. ... Koolhaas has encouraged his followers to shed the crippling shackles of critical theory and pick up a surfboard upon which to ride the shock waves of the new economy. — Places Journal
For decades Rem Koolhaas has been not only a leading global architect but also a restless provocateur. On Places, in a chapter from the forthcoming book Architecture and Capitalism, Ellen Dunham-Jones explores Koolhaas's protean career, from the early fantastical projects to the big books... View full entry