When the Presidio Trust announced last year that it was rejecting George Lucas’ bid to build a museum at Crissy Field, its leaders didn’t reveal that three days earlier they had been prepared to grant the “Star Wars” creator the land he sought. [...]
if he agreed to change the look of his desired museum, a mock-classical temple that at one point had four ceremonial domes. [...]
Five months later, Lucas was bound for Chicago.
— sfgate.com
Today it houses one of London’s best permanent collection displays, but the 1991 Sainsbury Wing extension to the National Gallery in London was almost scuppered when Prince Charles and the other trustees opposed the architect of the new building, Robert Venturi.
The row was over a false Corinthian column that the US architect wanted as a decorative feature on the Trafalgar Square façade of the new extension.
— The Art Newspaper
What will Zumthor's plan do for the museum's art and its audience? An art museum presents our histories in visual form; is LACMA making room for enough stories? [...]
Los Angeles is one of the world's four major centers of art production. Yet the museum has no permanent-collection galleries that tell a California-authored story of contemporary art. [...]
The proposed Zumthor building is also awfully expensive given its modest gain in exhibition space.
— latimes.com
It's been over 50 years, but for many, the destruction of Charles Follen McKim's original Pennsylvania Station still stings (hey, even Mad Men mourned its passing). But now, there is a hopeful (if improbable) plan from Richard W. Cameron—principal designer at Atelier & Co—to bring back the civic jewel of a long-gone New York.
According to Traditional Building's's Clem Labine, Cameron's plan has three main goals [...]."
— ny.curbed.com
Previously View full entry
This modernist villa on the Côte d’Azur, designed by Irish architect Eileen Gray, has witnessed wartime shootings, murder and vandalism by Le Corbusier. Now, at last, it has been brought back to life [...]
Le Corbusier visited and, apparently outraged that a woman could have made such a significant work in a style he considered his own, assaulted it with a series of garish and ugly wall paintings, which he chose to execute completely naked.
— theguardian.com
On any given day, there are 80,000 U.S. prisoners in solitary confinement...has led some prisoners into a profound level of what might be called ‘ontological insecurity' — NYT
About a month ago the NYT published two pieces exploring two variants of the architecture of incarceration. The first essay, examined the stark conditions of United States’ only federal supermax facility. The second, explored The Radical Humaneness of Norway’s Halden Prison, designed... 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
Photographer Kevin Kelly shares a collection of beautiful photos he took in 1976. Heart wrenching.Katmandu was an intensely ornate city that is easily damaged. The carvings, details, public spaces were glorious. My heart goes out to its citizens who suffer with their city. As you can see from... View full entry
We need to talk! We at MONU think that the time has come to talk with you about "participation" in architecture and urbanism and re-evaluate and re-examine developments around this topic in recent years and what the future might hold.
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, May 2015)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
We need to talk! We at MONU think that the time has come to talk with you about "participation" in architecture and urbanism and re-evaluate and re-examine developments around this topic in recent years and what the future might hold. Our 11th issue on the topic of "Clean Urbanism", around 6 years... View full entry
Architect Juan Gabriel Moreno is teaming up with Chicago's International Latino Cultural Center to build a new downtown headquarters in the form of a wild-looking $50 million complex. Announced during the most recent edition of Chicago Latino Film Festival that took place this month, the organization announced its ambitious new "Ibero-American Tower" which would house a number of components [...]. — chicago.curbed.com
The forest of elevator cores sprouting up around town tells us that we’re living in a once-a-century moment—a sugar rush of development unseen here since our parents’ parents’ time. But the dirty little secret behind Boston’s building boom is that it’s profoundly banal—designed without any imagination, straight out of the box, built to please banks rather than people. — bostonmagazine.com
Economic boom isn't always congruent with good architecture in other cities either:The new 5 over 1 Seattle, where "everything looks the same"Blair Kamin not impressed by Chicago's latest housing developmentsJeff Sheppard calls downtown Denver's new housing developments "meaningless, uninspiring" View full entry
A Chinese construction company is claiming to be the world’s fastest builder after erecting a 57-storey skyscraper in 19 working days in central China.
Broad Sustainable Building, a prefab construction firm, put up the rectangular, glass and steel Mini Sky City in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha, assembling three floors a day using a modular method [...].
The company now has ambitions to assemble the world’s tallest skyscraper, at 220 floors, in only three months.
— The Guardian
After years of delays, Amsterdam RAI is getting its own hotel and with its 650 rooms, Nhow RAI will win the title of largest hotel in the Netherlands. The design of the building was chosen from eleven candidates and is designed by Rem Koolhaas from well-known Rotterdam architecture firm OMA. [...]
Among the features will be a virtual 3D holographic meeting space for having “in person” meetings with the holographs of people in another location.
— nltimes.nl
But supplementing that aesthetic of “the future” sketched in imaginary edifice, the full SF vision of the future city is a mosaic, constructed from fragments of the cities that we recognize, including symbols that are decidedly from the past. [...]
If SF functions by taking the world we know and altering it with a constructed future fantasy, the Statue of Liberty serves as the junction point, the axis where the speculative fantasy begins and ends.
— motherboard.vice.com
In over 140 years of making glass, [...] Corning Inc. has also established a reputation for commissioning first-rate works of architecture at its home base in this small city in the Finger Lakes region of New York. [...]
And now there’s a Contemporary Art + Design Wing by Thomas Phifer and Partners. Mr. Phifer is a New York architect whose intensely crafted minimalist sensibility comes as close as any American architect has to a Japanese aesthetic.
— wsj.com
Previously: An (almost seamless) Glass Museum View full entry