Imagine combining the movable gangway employed for airplane passengers with the slender above-ground urban footprint of a subway station, and you have the basic concepts behind Gensler and Dror's proposed underground cruise operation in their masterplan for the Galataport in Istanbul. Using a... View full entry
While the gapahuk (which in Norwegian means "a simple wooden structure with two or three walls and a roof") is not new, Snohetta's conceptualization of it as a multi-terrain, potentially solar-panelled off-the-grid insta-cabin is. The gapahuk has a purposefully tight layout to make it easy to... View full entry
As promised, initial designs for the Obama Presidential Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects were released today. The Center will be composed of three buildings—the Museum, the Forum, and the Library—that surround a rectangular plaza.The four primary sides of the Museum, the tallest... View full entry
“The Hall of Nations is a very significant building in the evolution of modern architecture in India. It demonstrated the ability of the profession in 1970 to build a large space frame structure with available resources, which in this case was reinforced cement concrete and skilled hand-labour.”
“It was an iconic building representing an important step in the development of Indian architecture. It should have been conserved on that account,”
— Indian Express
Built to mark the 25th anniversary of India's independence in 1972, Delhi's historic Hall of Nations and Hall of Industries were demolished last week to make way for a new commercial complex. The Delhi High Court's verdict was based on the decision of the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC)... View full entry
Even in this relentlessly vertical city, famous for walkways that feel like aerial labyrinths, you can’t levitate forever. Where the mountain rises up faster than the towers, you bump into a hillside and come back to earth. In Hong Kong, the ground is everywhere. — Places Journal
The terrain that weaves between streets, through public spaces, and beneath buildings in Hong Kong reminds observers of the tenuous relation between the city and its geology. Karl Kullmann photographs these zones of contact between the multilevel metropolis and the mountain, reflecting on the... View full entry
The future of U.S. homebuilding depends on more people like Cyndicy Yarborough, a 26-year-old former Wal-Mart clerk with no background in construction. — Bloomberg
In modular construction plants across the nation, robots are putting together lengths of wall, floor and roof elements in panel form that are then shipped to construction sites to help speed up the onsite erection process. In the factories where this assembly takes place, a new breed of worker is... View full entry
“How do you live with all that cement,” my schoolmates would ask. “With delight” was the only answer. They understood once they visited. — The New York Times
Part childhood memoir, part ode to brutalism itself, this piece by Blake Gopnik touches on his experiences living in Habitat 67 while celebrating the return of a form that many openly reviled for decades, but have now gradually come to like, even treasure. (Of course, not all is well for brutalist... View full entry
The urgency to fix the station has reached a peak. But this also creates a great occasion to get something done — something grander than Mr. Cuomo's current plan, a project born of political expediency. — The New York Times
For the majority of commuters in New York, New Jersey and the surrounding areas, Penn Station has been the source of many headaches, late arrivals to work, and chaos as of late. Throughout the month of April, multiple trains have been derailed, a train got stuck at Penn Station, there have been... View full entry
And still they come. The Gherkins, Shards, Walkie-Talkies, Cheesegraters, Scalpels, giant iPhones, Bird’s Nest stadiums, flying tabletops, big pants. Like the conveyor belt of consumer items that older readers will remember in Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game, the supply of funny-looking buildings with funny names seems never-ending. Nicknames are converted into brands; satire and marketing merge. — Rowan Moore / The Guardian
There has been an era of architectural invention like few others, combined with a sense of hollowness, the feeling of not knowing what it’s all for. View full entry
The iconic NY State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is set to undergo a $14.25M renovation funded by [NYC]. Repairs will begin next spring, which will include some structural conservation work and electrical and architectural improvements. The pavilion, which was originally designed for the 1964 World’s Fair by Philip Johnson and Lev Zetlin, has been ignored for the past few decades, largely in part because of the city’s failure to find the money for repairs. — 6sqft
A new era for an architectural icon is just over the horizon. View full entry
What will higher timber prices as a result of Trump's new tarriff mean for architecture? Dr. Warren Mabee, who is the Canada Research Chair in Renewable Energy Development and Implementation at Queen's University, told me over the phone that it will likely halt or significantly alter the design... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles.(Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect... View full entry
Uptown and underground is the home of a dense community of New York architects, their colleagues, clients, and friends, their skyscrapers and townhouses. They are the denizens of the boxes and the file folders of the Avery Drawings and Archives, one of the richest collections of American architectural drawings and records. For the last 36 years, Janet Parks, curator [...], has been mayor of this town, located in the lower level of Columbia University’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. — urbanomnibus.net
"The trove of drawings, which took a good 18 months to sort through, contained the physical traces of a long-gone city — and not just how it looked. Parks remembers opening a tightly sealed tube of drawings: “This wafting smell of cologne and pipe tobacco came out. It had been trapped inside... View full entry
When you think about diversity and globalization and urbanization, you can’t do it without a theoretical underpinning. You just can’t. And I think that what we’re seeing in the discipline at large is the limit conditions of thinking a-theoretically about urbanism, about inequality, about what we should do about environmental challenges and sustainability. We’ve got to address it through a theoretical lens. - Milton Curry — The Los Angeles Times
In this interview conducted by Christopher Hawthorne as part of his pithy Building Type column, the soon-to-be-Dean of USC's School of Architecture Milton Curry talks about reintroducing a theoretical emphasis to the school's programs. Curry, who in his time at University of Michigan experienced... View full entry
The World Monuments Fund (WMF) launched its first Instagram campaign [...] to draw attention to the plight of the world’s Modern buildings, an increasing number of which are at risk because of the lack of regulations or political will needed to protect them.
The fund kicks off the programme with a list of 30 sites nominated by architects, experts and students posted on its website and is appealing to the public to add to this list by submitting nominations via Instagram.
— theartnewspaper.com
"The list will be sent to an advisory council formed of architects, including Annabelle Selldorf, designers and critics, who will advise the WMF on the next phase of the Modern Century programme."The sites included on the initial list of 30 nominees are:Hall of Nations (pictured in the cover photo... View full entry
