Not everyone liked the skywalks, which connect buildings Mr. Franzen designed at Hunter College on Lexington Avenue. Neighbors lamented the loss of sunlight. But Mr. Franzen, a Modernist subscriber to the form-follows-function credo, considered them the functional equivalent of ivy-covered walkways for urban students. It would “become the college community’s main street,” he wrote of the skywalk plan in 1972 in the college’s student newspaper, “well above rush-hour traffic at street level.” — nytimes.com
Stanton Williams’ Sainsbury Laboratory has won the 2012 RIBA Stirling Prize. The winner was announced at a special event in Manchester on Saturday 13th October. The building is situated on the northern edge of the University of Cambridge’s Botanic Gardens. — ribastirlingprize.architecture.com
The great disaster of March 11, 2011 differed from any other catastrophe since the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake. In the age of advanced technology and "strong" buildings, the tsunami flattened Tohoku coastline in seconds. The nuclear accident that followed further revealed the vulnerability of "big and strong" architecture. In the face of radiation, materials such as concrete and steel were insufficient, even though nuclear energy had been a solution for our drive to be bigger, stronger... — youtube.com
To follow up with Lian's exceptional, as always, live coverage of Kuma's lecture, we present you with the video. View full entry
replete with two waterfalls that splash into plunge pools, Euro-style toilets inside individual private stalls and leather chairs custom-built extra wide to accommodate even the heftiest linemen...The locker room looks like a modern SoHo apartment — that is, if modern SoHo apartments had space for shoulder pads — all high ceilings and dim lights. — NYT
Judy Battista reports from Jacksonville Fl, home of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Although the team is one of the least successful in the NFL, they recently completed a more than $3 million upgrade of their locker room. The hope is that the new digs will help them in recruiting free agents. View full entry
Parenting is not the only factor affecting women’s engagement in architecture, but for many it is a big challenge. Samara Greenwood tells her story of negotiating architecture and motherhood so far – interspersed with thoughts from friends and colleagues. — archiparlour.org
This is truly a significant list of 36 teams. Those who have applied include Zaha Hadid, who is deemed the leading female architect in the world; Coop Himelb(l)au, who created the Akron Art Museum; Thom Mayne of Morphosis; and numerous other designers of note. Seven of the teams contain AIA National Firm Award winners, geographically located from Boston to Seattle. Many are recognized for their work across the country and around the world. — kent.edu
The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art is presenting a comprehensive retrospective including over 6 installations, 40 models and 270 drawings charting the seminal, cross-disciplinary work of Yung Ho Chang and his practice Feichang Jianzhu (FCJZ). — artdaily.org
SCI-Arc invited faculty members Ramiro Diaz-Granados, Elena Manferdini, Marcelo Spina and Tom Wiscombe to submit design concepts for a 1,200-seat pavilion that would accommodate graduation ceremonies, lectures, symposia and outreach cultural events with the neighboring Arts District community. The winning entry, League of Shadows, designed by Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich of PATTERNS, fully exploits the fundamental aspect underlying the pavilion, its temporal use as an outdoor event space. — bustler.net
Major League Soccer has asked SHoP Architects, the firm that designed the new Nets stadium in downtown Brooklyn, to prepare initial designs for a Major League Soccer stadium in Queens.
SHoP's name is on a July Major League Soccer proposal given to city officials, and obtained by Capital. Last night, MLS confirmed that SHoP is indeed working on the initial schematic designs for a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
— capitalnewyork.com
Perkins+Will has partnered with Infinite Family, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that helps children and teenagers from African communities virtually connect with mentors around the world and designed LaunchPad, a prototype computer lab where young people in Africa can communicate with mentors via face-to-face interaction thanks to high-speed and high-tech capabilities. — media.designerpages.com
For the latest edition of the Working out of the Box series, Archinect featured Ioana Urma. Ioana has completed a number of (public) art projects – murals, installations and other media and also does freelance commissions, ranging from 2D to 3D: books, illustrations, interiors, art... View full entry
As for Mies' continuing relevance, the main lesson he draws is: “We should not copy. We should try to understand the time we're living in and how we can make use of the latest technological possibilities so that architecture continues to move forward. We should build for generations to come. Architecture is not something fashionable. It has duration.”
What this means in terms of the school's future direction is a question still to be answered.
— chicagobusiness.com
Founders of award-winning design studio TYIN tegnestue Architects, these barely-out-of-architecture-school design wunderkinds (they graduated in 2010) are not only thinkers who do but who also create do-good designs that are enhancing people’s lives in remote Indonesia, Thailand, and Uganda, as well as back home in Norway. — thestar.com.my
"I was very fortunate because the first building in Germany was the Museum for Applied Art, which was a competition that I won. After that I was invited to do other competitions. There's an appreciation for architecture in Germany that doesn't exist in many other places." — Deutsche Welle
Zumthor’s work has nothing coldly functional or academic about it. He doesn’t deal in stacks of Lego or Zaha Hadid-style computerised ziggurats.
Instead he seems to warm bricks and mortar into subtle poetry, and whether he is dreaming up thermal baths (as at Vals), sheltered housing (Chur) or a place of worship (the Bruder Klaus chapel near Cologne), one invariably senses a powerful spirituality inspiring and informing the design.
— telegraph.co.uk