The skyline of Chile’s capital city, Santiago, has a new addition with the Gran Torre skyscraper casting a two-kilometre shadow across the historic city.
The 70-storey residential building stands more than 300 metres tall, making it the tallest building in South America. The five-ton steel structure cost an estimated one billion dollars to build and tenants are expected to move into the building next March.
— DesignBuild Source
Below are the 12 most visited Discussion threads during 2012. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. 2012 M.Arch Applicants - Final Results, Decisions, Stats, etc. 2. Is there any future in Architecture??? 3. Yay!!!!! Architecture has the highest unemployment rate!... View full entry
Salameh is heading the “Adh Dhariyeh” project, in the south of Hebron, where he began with single-building restoration and has progressed to a community centre and two schools...“Dhariyeh is one of 50 historical sites whose renovation Riwaq has undertaken and which constitute 50 per cent of the architectural heritage of Palestine.” Salameh says. “There are almost 900 old buildings and the project is funded by the Arab Fund in Kuwait. — Gulf News-Weekend Review
Rafique Gangat writes about Riwaq, a Palestinian non-profit organisation established in 1991 in Ramallah, by a group of architects, many trained in the West. Riwaq aims to safeguard Palestinian heritage through a number of projects including; the establishment of a National Register of Historic... View full entry
Portuguese architect and 2011 Pritzker Prize winner Eduardo Souto de Moura was announced today as one of this year's laureates of Israel’s prestigious Wolf Prize. Souto de Moura is being honored for his achievements in architecture while other prizes are given to scientists in the fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and agriculture. — bustler.net
Related: Portuguese Architect Eduardo Souto de Moura Wins 2011 Pritzker Prize View full entry
Below are the 12 most visited People Profiles during 2012. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. Orhan Ayyüce 2. Tyler Hopf 3. Joann Lui 4. Natalie Hardbattle 5. Sean McGuire 6. Kimberly V.K.H. Nguyen 7. Donna Sink 8. Betsy Cole 9. Artur Nesterenko Alexandrovich... View full entry
Below are the 12 most visited Firm Profiles during 2012. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. OMA 2. Wiel Arets Architects 3. Marmol Radziner 4. Diller Scofidio + Renfro 5. Allied Works Architecture 6. Roman and Williams Buildings and Interiors 7. Safdie Architects... View full entry
Architects think people aren’t interested in buildings anymore, and don’t look at them, and consequently don’t — can't — appreciate what architects really want to do, which is make fetishized constructions to sit on the landscape like mechanical praying mantids, which will make people look at them some more. — Places Journal
On Places, architect David Heymann writes about a heartbreaking house commission outside Austin — the kind of larger-than-life story that could only happen in Texas. The feature includes an audio recording of the author reading his work. View full entry
Below are the 12 most visited Blog posts during 2012. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. // Architectural LOLCATS 2. Ruins of an Alternate Future (Jinhua Architecture Park) 3. Unpaid internships are so hot right now 4. Top Architectural Record award for Guangzhou... View full entry
Below are the 12 most visited Live Blog posts during 2012, all authored by our live blogger extraordinaire Lian Chikako Chang at Harvard School of Architecture. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. Rem Koolhaas 2. Patrik Schumacher 3. Wang Shu on "Building a Diverse... View full entry
Below are the 12 most visited News posts during 2012. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. Master Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer passes away at 104 2. Lebbeus Woods dead at 72 3. First Frank Gehry Home Completed by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation... View full entry
Piano apparently sketched his idea on a restaurant napkin while meeting property developer Irvine Sellar in March 2000. According to Piano's architectural firm, RPBW, Sellar keeps the famous napkin in his offices. "He saw the beauty of the river and the railways and the way their energy blended and began to sketch in green felt pen on a napkin what he saw as a giant sail or an iceberg," Sellar recalled in a recent interview. — guardian.co.uk
Star architect Zaha Hadid is currently building several projects across China. One of them, however, is being constructed twice. Pirates are the process of copying one of her provocative designs, and the race is on to see who can finish first. — spiegel online
Does she have anything to say to thousands of architecture students who copy her designs every semester? View full entry
Unpaid interns are common in architecture firms, but recent lawsuits brought by interns across other industries may have the architecture industry forking out some cash.
In many industries, the term ‘intern’ is often used to describe someone who works for no pay, but the NCARB’s IDP has been trying to detach interns from the assumption by architecture firms that they are willing to work for free. The council defines architectural internships as post-graduate, pre-registration professional work.
— DesignBuild Source
Mels Crouwel, the lead architect for the Stedelijk, was government architect for years. His firm is normally reliable, with an industrial bent. He promoted the tub as a technological novelty, its aerodynamic exterior made of a reinforced synthetic fiber coated in white airplane paint to give the museum a shiny, enameled finish and to nod to the old Stedelijk’s white rooms, which still fails to explain the plumbing metaphor or other moves. — NYT
Michael Kimmelman reviews the new addition to the Stedelijk Museum by Benthem Crouwel Architects. View full entry
Finally, Orhan Ayyüce posted a quote of John Chase’s Shopping for Architecture LA Forum Newsletter, from December 1989. citizen concluded "My old colleague John certainly knew how to turn a phrase. ..My opinion is that merely expanding the list of things to pick out or specify for a design --while certainly adding important variables-- still is not sufficient to get at the complexity of architecture".
News Donna Sink spoke for architects and Wright-lovers everywhere when she commented "YAY" in response to the news that the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has facilitated the purchase of the David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix, Arizona, through an LLC owned by an anonymous... View full entry