3 Sutton Place, a planned 950-foot-tall, 68-story Manhattan condo tower, won’t be materializing along the East River. After defaulting on $128.8 million in loans from lender Gamma Real Estate, developer Bauhouse Group‘s site at 426-432 East 58th Street will face foreclosure sale February 29th.
The site currently houses three contiguous five-story apartment buildings, which Bauhouse purchased to make way for the massive Foster + Partners-designed midtown skyscraper project.
— BuzzBuzzHome
Interested in other articles about Foster and Partners? Check out some of our past coverage:Masdar abandons its dream of becoming the first zero-carbon cityNorton Museum of Art breaks ground on Foster + Partners-designed expansion projectThe selective amnesia of Foster + Partners' Maspero Triangle... View full entry
The utilitarian décor is in keeping with Bourgeois’s pragmatic nature...She was always interested in architectural spaces, and the rooms of 347 West 20th Street can be compared to her other artistic creations — NYT
Arthur Lubow highlights the work of the Easton Foundation, a non-profit started by the artist Louise Bourgeois. Begining this summer, the house will be accessible to the public, through tours arranged on the foundation’s website, theeastonfoundation.org. It is being maintained as closely as... 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
"Does the Bauhaus really offer total liberty, or is it a place of oppression where all intimacy in banished, and the group triumphs over the individual?" asks the narrator midway through the English version of the acclaimed documentary The Dessau Bauhaus. The 28-minute film about Walter Gropius'... View full entry
Escalating their battle to stamp out an unprecedented spread of street encampments, city officials have begun seizing tiny houses from homeless people living on freeway overpasses in South Los Angeles.
Three of the gaily painted wooden houses, which come with solar-powered lights and American flags, were confiscated earlier this month and seven more are planned for impound Thursday, a Bureau of Sanitation spokeswoman said.
— The Los Angeles Times
Does providing homes for the homeless solve the problem? Studies would indicate that it does, based on our coverage of the development of programs across the globe to help provide permanent, individualized shelter for the homeless, including those in Utah, Seattle, and London.Here's a... View full entry
“The combination of the course offerings on a regular basis in subject-area courses, housing studios, design-build, as well as programs for both students and the primary faculty involved—that we feel is unique,” says UO architecture professor Michael Fifield. — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, American Institute of Architecture
The University of Oregon Department of Architecture was recognized in January as among the finest in the country for its housing design education.UO architecture faculty members Michael Fifield, Peter Keyes, and Rob Thallon, who spearhead the UO Housing Specialization Program, received the... View full entry
Bjarke Ingels' unfurling wall-based pavilion joins four summer houses—designed by Asif Khan, Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, and Yona Friedman—to create this year's Serpentine Architecture Program. Each of the four summer houses riffs on the adjacent Queen Caroline's Temple designed in... View full entry
The sentiment is warm and fuzzy. The design, however, is radical: BIG has imagined a complex that would be unlike any other building in the city – or, indeed, North America. The scheme blends an unusual stack-of-blocks form, and adds a complex weave of public and private spaces underneath and within the heart of the building itself...the effect [Bjarke Ingels] is going for is akin to 'a Mediterranean mountain town.' — The Globe and Mail
More recent BIG projects: BIG to design 2016 Serpentine Pavilion, alongside smaller "Summer Houses" by Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, Yona Friedman and Asif Kahn BIG in Paris: Bjarke Ingels to design for Galeries Lafayette on Champs-Élysées BIG's concept for a spiraling-landscape tower in... View full entry
A directive issued on Sunday by the State Council, China’s cabinet, and the Communist Party’s Central Committee says no to architecture that is “oversized, xenocentric, weird” and devoid of cultural tradition. Instead, buildings should be “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye.” The directive also calls for an end to gated communities.
The guidelines come two months after a high-level meeting to address some of the problems that have arisen as a result of China’s rapid urbanization.
— nytimes.com
The New York Times notes that this will most likely result in "stricter design standards for public buildings":Wang Kai, vice president of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, under the Ministry of Construction, said that functionality should take precedence in public buildings. “We... View full entry
Mortenson Construction Vice President John Wood said stadium designers and builders will cover the cost, so it won’t be added to the overall budget or cost taxpayers or the team any money. [...]
the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority tentatively agreed to pay Mortenson $16 million for cost overruns even though the final figures are still being tallied. The authority is overseeing construction of the $1.1 billion stadium and approved the payment to resolve a mediation claim by Mortensen.
— washingtontimes.com
Related on Archinect:How Cost of Train Station at World Trade Center Swelled to $4 BillionBudget Busters: ranking the world's most overbudget monumentsHKS is chosen to design new Vikings stadiumStadium Sticker Shock: Costs Explode for Russia's 2018 World CupPATH/Fail: The Story of the World’s... 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
The [Planning] department completed a draft report last month on how to expand the existing landmark designation to include aspects of the interior that date back to Wright’s 1948 design. [...]
“If anything, the inside is more important than the exterior,” said Turner, a professor emeritus of art at Stanford University. “It’s one of Wright’s most exquisite designs, and it’s almost exactly the way it was originally.”
— sfchronicle.com
More news on architecture's caped crusader, Frank Lloyd Wright:Watch (an animated) Frank Lloyd Wright talk about arrogance in this new shortSociety of Architectural Historians Announces Major Grant for Charnley-Persky House Conservation Management PlanFrank Lloyd Wright's Sturges House is for... View full entry
Ambition or talent: which matters more to success?
I think it’s probably ambition, because if you have talent without ambition, the talent goes to waste. But if you have talent and want to do something with it, you follow your intuition.
— Financial Times
A huge fire has destroyed a building set to become Central Asia’s tallest tower in the Kazakh capital, Astana.
The fire broke out in the early hours of Saturday morning at the construction site of the Abu Dhabi Plaza, an 88-storey tower standing at 381 metres high, designed by architecture firm HKR architects and being built by United Arab Emirates developer Aldar Properties and contractor Arabtec.
According to the Kazakh interior ministry, the most likely cause of the fire was a heater.
— calvertjournal.com
If in fact completed, this is what the 382 m/1,253 ft Abu Dhabi Plaza tower will look like. Image via the website of the building's architects, HKR Architects.Related stories in the Archinect news:The New East is where western starchitect dreams come true (or turn into nightmares)In Kazakhstan, a... View full entry
Adorned with gold and marble, [the Trump Tower] looks like Saddam Hussein went on a shopping spree with Liberace.
To make way for its construction, Mr Trump demolished the handsome Art Deco Bonwit Teller department store. He promised to donate its bas-relief carvings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but it turned out they were too expensive to remove so they were smashed to pieces on site instead.
— Financial Times
Loud, pushy, indifferent to anything but self-touted glamour: Donald Trump's politics and his buildings share a great deal in common. In this piece, The Financial Times' reigning design critic Edwin Heathcote briefly touches on the repugnant qualities that the Donald's politics and his buildings... View full entry