Goodbye bright colors and unusual shapes. Today, the design is minimal and sleek. Most fast-food restaurants are built to maximize efficiency, not catch motorists’ attention. One critic has called this trend “faux five-star restaurants” intended to make customers forget they are eating greasy fries and burgers.
The chains now sport nearly identical looks. Call it the gentrification of fast-food design.
— CNN
The psychologically manipulative color schemes may remain, but fast food’s once-iconic Googie and mid-century modern designs are quickly being swapped out for more monolith structures. Changes caused by the pandemic and technology are the largest factors, along with the rise in popularity of... View full entry
An important Kenzo Tange design is facing an uncertain future in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture after reports that authorities there are moving forward with the demolition of his 1964 “Boat Gymnasium” over disrepair and an apparent inability to fund seismic structural upgrades. The Brutalist... View full entry
Following last week’s visit to New York City-based Andrew Franz, we are keeping our Meet Your Next Employer series in New York City this week to explore the work of BKSK Architects who are currently hiring for a Project Architect. Founded in 1985, and directed by six partners, BKSK describes... View full entry
In preparation for the Fall 2023 academic term, Brown University shares details of its new Deborah Berke Partners-designed Brook Street Residence Halls. Located at the southeastern edge of the University’s 143-acre historic urban campus, the 125,00-square-foot development has room for... View full entry
Populous has revealed designs for its new 20,000-seat multipurpose soccer stadium in Indianapolis. Their design for the city’s Indy Eleven professional soccer franchise will anchor a larger mixed-use development located at the southwesternmost corner of downtown that includes apartments, a hotel... View full entry
In this case, architecture is the issue and the engine of renewal. With its triple-height library and exalting, barrel-vaulted classrooms with huge punched windows overlooking Manhattan, the redesigned ice plant becomes one of the most spectacular school buildings in the city.
[...] the historical arc of 20 Bruckner, as the building is called, is instructive and tells a larger tale about the Bronx, change and renewal.
— The New York Times
The NY Times critic gets off the sixth train to explore Adjaye Associates' first American K-12 project in Mott Haven, The Bronx. Kimmelman mentioned his two best-known New York projects – 130 William Street and Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development – in addition to D.C’s National... View full entry
The material is essentially free, or at least locally available for a fraction of the cost of concrete...Mud construction contributes little to global warming. And concrete tends to be a gateway, once people can afford it, to another fossil-fuel-guzzling invention: air-conditioning. — National Geographic
Peter Schwartzstein explores the work of folks such as Clara Sawadogo, Francis Kéré and Salima Naji who are trying to rekindle an interest in materials and methods that have a long tradition in Africa and the Middle East. View full entry
The new Stanley Museum of Art at the University of Iowa has opened fifteen years after historic flooding destroyed the campus’ previous arts destination. Designed by BNIM, the new venue serves as a learning and teaching laboratory for the arts and a hub for the wider campus. Image credit: Nick... View full entry
A massive new proposed structure purporting to be “the largest inner city building in the world” is on tap for the Saudi capital of Riyadh, according to local news reports. The so-called “Mukaab” will form the centerpiece of a new downtown core for the city called New Murabba, which is... View full entry
The University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) in British Columbia has selected Canadian firms DIALOG and Group2 to design and the construction companies Clark Builders and Turner to build a six-story, CAD $73 million (USD $54 million) mass timber student housing building... View full entry
Snøhetta has been chosen to design a new National Court of Asylum and Administrative Court in Montreuil, France. The proposed scheme sees the two courts arranged on one site around large green areas, offering what the team calls “a place of calm during what can be a time of intense turmoil.”... View full entry
Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation has unveiled plans for an Adjaye Associates-designed Restoration Innovation Campus in Brooklyn. A re-imagination of the milestone corporation’s longtime Fulton Street home, the 840,000-square-foot campus will be dedicated to closing Brooklyn’s racial... View full entry
It is also the rare skyscraper designed with climate change in mind. It holds a self-contained, catastrophe-resilient power plant capable of generating as much energy as six football fields of solar panels. The building captures every drop of rain that falls on it, and reuses that runoff to heat or cool its 9,000 daily visitors.
But One Vanderbilt is also something else. It is already out of date.
— The New York Times
New York City’s recent ban on fossil fuels is making the green technology built into the merely two-year-old KPF-designed tower obsolete in terms of energy sources, the NYT's Ben Ryder Howe writes. Foster + Partners’ nearby 270 Park project is cited as an example of the forthcoming... View full entry
British firm Architecture for London has recently completed the extension and refurbishment of a traditional Edwardian terrace house into a modern, energy-efficient home. Photo: Lorenzo Zandri and Christian Brailey, courtesy of Architecture for London Called Low Energy House, the residence... View full entry
Montreal-based MU Architecture has completed a lakeside house in Quebec. Built on the shores of Lake Revdor, the three-level Break Residence was commissioned to fulfill the client’s wish of building a home on the land of his ancestors and is described by the design team as “a place of... View full entry
