French architects [SCAU] are planning to build a 'water wheel hotel' on the banks of the Seine, which resembles the London Eye but with 'room capsules' that would rotate constantly. ...[However,] the wheel hotel is not intended to be a permanent structure. 'It is made of wood and it will only take four days to assemble or dismantle it, so it could be transported by barge and re-erected elsewhere on the river' [said Maxime Barbier of SCAU] — The Telegraph
More on Archinect:Movie-themed resort in Macau to show off "figure-8" ferris wheelTallest observation wheel in the Western Hemisphere expected to break ground in Staten Island soonUNStudio Designs Giant Observation Wheel ‘Nippon Moon’ for JapanArchitectural history in tiny Tokyo... View full entry
Connal...is one of the most active members of China’s approximately 200-strong urbex community. Worldwide, the pursuit – which some describe as “recreational trespass” – is estimated to have about 20,000 adherents, the majority in Europe and the United States.
Connal’s urbexing has taken him into derelict science museums, “haunted” pre-Revolution hotels, ghostly amusement parks, and a half-finished shopping centre that he calls the Great Mall of China.
— The Guardian
For more on abandoned, decaying sites worldwide, check out Archinect's coverage: Abandoned schools = new development opportunitiesThe Mysterious, Abandoned Silos of Washington, DCChinese Fun: Photographer Stefano Cerio captures the eerie side of empty amusement parks View full entry
The Chicago City Council voted on Wednesday to approve the zoning proposal for the 300,000-square-foot Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which will be located near Soldier Field. — NBC News
According to a press release issued by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art President Don Bacigalupi said that “[The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art] will also deliver nearly 200,000 square feet of new green space and accessible parkland along the lakefront for all... View full entry
"Steelhenge," BUREAU A's design for the inaugural BIG biennale for independent art spaces, isn't just 50 blue shipping containers arrayed to mimic Stonehenge's layout in the center of Geneva: it was also the site of a four-day party in June to celebrate the open-spirited biennale, which... View full entry
Choosing building materials is a delicate balance of factors – looks, quality, price, environmental impact and sustainability all contribute to the success and overall value of the product. When data about building materials are illegible or biased, the construction process can become convoluted... View full entry
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg penned an essay on The humanity of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, wherein she argues "the Biennial is more about architects than it is about architecture." Meanwhile Julia Ingalls reviewed the book Conversations with Architects: In the Age of Celebrity, by former... View full entry
good architecture can survive budgetary rigors — at Hunters Point South, for instance, where a pair of hulking towers designed by SHoP and Ismael Levya Architects expresses de Blasio’s urgency even though it’s a holdover from the era of the allegedly Nero-like Michael Bloomberg. [...]
SHoP’s new towers are not world-beating architecture, but they’re more than good enough to plug into an evolving network of ferries, parks, schools, shops, all of which foster more investment.
— nymag.com
More on affordable housing in New York:New York's "poor doors" are no moreNYC's public-housing woesThe Chinese government is building affordable housing in BrooklynArchitecture vs. Housing: The Case of Sugar Hill View full entry
Vicino's company built Vivos Indiana, an "impervious underground complex" built in a Cold-War-era nuclear shelter and kitted out with luxury amenities. The idea is that you sign up in advance and plunk down $35,000 per person ($25,000 for kids) to secure one of the 80 spots available within the shelter...you can survive for a year amidst leather couches, 600-thread-count sheets and gourmet chow. — Core77
"Once through security, the aesthetic makes a drastic shift," notes the narrator of the Travel Channel's video profile of the Vivos Group's underground luxury shelter. Vivo, a company which specializes in creating luxurious accommodations for that rough, between-civilizations feeling, also has a... View full entry
... transparent photovoltaic cells are fundamentally inconceivable, considering that solar panels can develop energy power through a transformation of absorbed protons into electrons [...] light would have to flow unrestrained to the eye, meaning that those protons would have to go wholly through the substance. Therefore what the Michigan State team developed [...] a device that utilize organic salts to take in wavelengths of light that are imperceptible to the human eye. — Next Nature
In the Bay Area, SFMOMA is now the largest art museum, surpassing the Oakland Museum of California at 110,000 feet. In the city, the de Young Museum is second at 84,000 square feet. Statewide, its exhibition space is 50 percent larger than the Getty Center in Los Angeles and is second only to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian of the West, which boasts 230,000 feet. — San Francisco Chronicle
While the museum won't open to the public until May 14, 2016, the SFMOMA has allowed a photographer from The San Francisco Chronicle inside and out to survey its newsworthily-expansive Snøhetta-designed spaces: View full entry
Zurich-based architects and roboticists have created the In-situ Fabricator, an autonomous construction robot capable of laying bricks into pre-programmed structures. Designers at the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication laboratory believe a future generation of the robot could be used widely on building sites. — Reuters
According to Mathias Kohler of ETH Zurich, "The benefit from an architectural point of view is that you can really design the construction directly, so you can plan for how it is built instead of designing your plan and then that plan afterwards being converted on the construction site. So it... View full entry
The tower, owned by Rudin Management, currently has 260,000 square feet of floorspace that counts towards zoning, and of that, 133,000 square feet will become residential, resulting in 205 new apartments. The remaining 127,000 square feet will stay commercial. [...]
110 Wall Street will be WeWork’s first foray into residential development [...]
The inclusion of Class B dwelling units, which denote transient housing, likely signals living options will range from communal to private.
— newyorkyimby.com
According to CurbedNY, ARExA will head design on the renovation of WeWork's first residential project under its co-living offshoot, WeLive. Completion date is currently slated for March 2017. WeWork is also hiring multiple positions in New York at this very moment. Check out their listings here... View full entry
Sustainable, fast, and cheap housing: just what you need when you're escaping oppressive regimes, natural disasters, and other refugee-creating events. Christoph Chorherr, Vienna's Green Party planning spokesperson, has blogged that the mobile Passive House dormitories designed by Günter Lang... View full entry
this San Diego County jail, which houses everyone from petty criminals to accused murderers and was once known for its sickening decrepitude, is at the forefront of a new and, of course, controversial movement in prison design, one that manifests a counterintuitive idea: You could build a lockup so pleasant and thoughtfully devised that inmates would never come back. [...]
Welcome to Las Colinas Women’s Detention and Re-entry Facility.
— ozy.com
More on prison design from Archinect:Architecture of correction: Rikers IslandThe NYT on prison architecture and ethicsHow Prison Architecture Can Transform Inmates' LivesADPSP and the Architecture of IncarcerationPrison design faces judgment View full entry
'None of the buildings seemed built to impose and in all of them one had the sense that what mattered about a room was the spirit and determination with which it was filled, and the uses to which ingenuity could put it. When I want to remember what a first-class education felt like, that is the architecture I remember, and it mattered solely because of what people did with it.' — The Guardian
It seems that no matter how many years have passed, those schoolyard memories — whether cheerful or hellish — will always be buried in the back of our minds. In light of the 2015 Stirling Prize recently awarded to the Burntwood School in Wandsworth, London, some of The Guardian's writers share... View full entry