Syrian government troops have retaken Palmyra from Islamic State forces, with help from Russian air support, the Syrian army said in a statement on Thursday. Politicians in Russian welcomed the news as a triumph, as widely reported by the state’s media, but few details have emerged about the condition of the ancient site, where Isil has previously wreaked large-scale destruction. [...]
Isil first took Palmyra in May 2015 and the extremist group destroyed a number of important monuments [...].
— theartnewspaper.com
The Syrian Directorate-General of Antiquities & Museums published an initial set of photos of the extent of destruction after ISIS troops had been driven out of Palmyra's archaeological sites on March 2, 2017.↑ Roman Theater↑ Tetrapylon↑ Triumphal Arch (previously on... View full entry
The Pierre Boulez Saal, a concert hall in Berlin designed by Frank Gehry, will open this weekend with an inaugural concert that will be live streamed. The concert hall, which is more quiet than most of Gehry’s other work, was designed in collaboration with the renowned acoustician Yasuhisa... View full entry
Adding 84,000 square feet of a custom-aluminum-facade-bearing mixed-use structure to a Metro Red Line adjacent corner of North Hollywood, Brooks + Scarpa are continuing their aesthetically pioneering work in low-income housing.The structure, deemed "NOHO on Camarillo," will defy old-school... View full entry
Urban policy experts and progressive activists have expressed intense concern that Carson, in keeping with his strong conservative positions, will seek to cut money for government assistance programs and wear down the social safety net. The Trump administration has recently signaled that many government agencies can expect budget reductions in favor of increasing defense spending. — Washington Post
Realizing the latent dream of every neurosurgeon to one day run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson has been officially confirmed by the U.S. Senate to start operating on the HUD. Although his plans for the agency are vague, Carson has spoken of being against granting... View full entry
Silicon Valley is in the midst of something of a building boom with several of the tech giants commissioning new headquarters from big-name architects. First came Facebook with a campus designed by Frank Gehry. Next, Apple got Lord Norman Foster to design a spacecraft-like... View full entry
The High Line is rapidly becoming not just a popular tourist site, but a veritable avenue of major—and glitzy—architectural projects. Studio Gang has announced that they will join the roster of big-name architects with buildings lining the pedestrianized train tracks. The firm has released the... View full entry
The notion of spending time at a subway stop or other major transit center for pleasure may strike you as odd, but many cities and transportation companies are investing heavily in building up this part of their infrastructure to create desirable public spaces (it adds a whole new dimension to... View full entry
Although it's not shocking that companies like Gensler have automated on/off sensors in their lighting grid to save energy when no one's in the office, it's slightly less comforting to realize that many companies are now using sensors to monitor when employees are at their desks, if they're... View full entry
Nicholas Korody, published HGTV Theory: Tiny House Hunters, Debt Resistors. Wherein he ponders "Are tiny homes the pots of today? Are tiny homeowners the Diogenes of the 21st century? Their lifestyle, a hyperbolic negation of some of the dominant values that define contemporary domesticity, draw... View full entry
Interviewed by Paul Goldberger, the New York architecture critic who advised the Obama Foundation on the architect selection process for the library, Williams and Tsien revealed conceptual ideas for the project, said Obama critiqued an early plan of theirs as too quiet [...]
"He said it was too unflashy," ArchDaily quoted Tsien as saying. "He looked at what we did and he said, 'I said you could be sort of quiet, but I think you're a little too quiet.'"
— Chicago Tribune
Amid the dust and clamor is the steel skeleton of Aitken’s “Mirage,” which takes the form of a 1960s-style suburban California ranch house. The seven-room structure, to be fully mirrored on the outside and inside, is perched on a hillside with city and desert views, which are key to the piece. The structure has gaping holes where doors and windows might be, and its interior walls are built on angles to reflect the sky and contrasting surrounding terrain... — The L.A. Times
What does the desert in Riverside County have to offer aside from a massive annual music festival, the sleek modernism of Palm Springs, and the ethereal vista of untrammeled nature? Well, starting on February 25th, it has the Desert Exhibition of Art, or Desert X for short. Exhibitors in the... View full entry
Two 58-story towers, eighteen years and two billion dollars make up the fundamental elements of Herzog & de Meuron's city-like mixed-used development "6 AM," which, while beginning its first phase of construction in 2018 in downtown L.A.'s Arts District, won't be finished until its principal... View full entry
As cities densify and the global population increases, much has been made of reclaiming physical spaces: but how does one reclaim a place that is bound up in tragedy, whether that tragedy was natural or man-made? On March 3rd and 4th, Parsons the New School for Design will host a symposium... View full entry
According to a press release from Apple, it will take six months to move all 12,000 employees into the 175-acre campus, which will officially open for occupancy in April. In addition to the 2.8 million square foot, naturally ventilated Foster + Partners'-designed "spaceship" building, the campus... View full entry
At an estimated $1.5 billion, the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago may end up costing more than three times what the George W. Bush Museum cost, according to new reports. This is primarily due to the fact that the center will house not one institution but two—both a presidential... View full entry