With a golden patina to their aged brick, these former flour and seed mills provide a striking contrast to the shiny new condo towers of the adjacent Pearl District, and their proximity to this burgeoning area could also make for an ideal riverside destination. [...]
He has approached Frank Gehry to design a glass-ensconced event center and Lin to design a pedestrian bridge over busy Naito Parkway.
— citylab.com
Earlier this fall, we had the pleasure of Brian Libby joining us live to discuss the future of the controversial Michael Graves-designed Portland Building on Archinect's podcast, episode 3: Keep Portland Architecture Weird! View full entry
This fall, the French cultural season opened with the private Vuitton Foundation museum in Paris, a rarefied environment for a select collection of contemporary art, by Frank Gehry. At the other end of the cultural spectrum, France’s second largest metropolitan area, Lyon — arguably Paris’s historic rival, the Chicago to New York — just inaugurated the equally large and prepossessing Confluence Museum (the Musée des Confluences). — nytimes.com
Alexandre Gady, conservationist, historian of French architecture and professor of modern architecture at the Sorbonne, argues that changing or “renewing” Paris diverts from its real need to look outwards. Paris, he says, is a “finished” city that does not need improving or anything more doing to it. “It’s not that we should be doing this or that – we should not be doing anything in central Paris ... any plan is a diversion from the need of the city to grow outwards,” [...] — theguardian.com
Previously: Paris row after HdM's Triangle skyscraper rejected View full entry
“It’s going to be saved,” Graves said. “They told me… They said they are saving the building and not only that but we want you to sit on a committee for the redesign.” Graves added that a time frame for the work has not been set but “I would imagine in the next year we’ll do something.” Dana Haynes, communications director for Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, confirmed that the Portland Building is not under threat of demolition and will continue to house city employees. — blog.archpaper.com
Related: Keep Portland Architecture Weird!: Episode 3 of Archinect Sessions View full entry
"The latest proposal for the aging Astrodome calls for converting the structure into an indoor park and civic space, including an indoor grassy lawn and an outdoor promenade lined with oak trees. An Urban Land Institute panel, comprised of urban planners, economists and designers from around the country, released its preliminary recommendations Friday at the NRG Center." — Houston Chronicle
The mortar resists microcracking through in situ crystallization of platy strätlingite, a durable calcium-alumino-silicate mineral that reinforces interfacial zones and the cementitious matrix. The dense intergrowths of the platy crystals obstruct crack propagation and preserve cohesion at the micron scale, which in turn enables the concrete to maintain its chemical resilience and structural integrity in a seismically active environment at the millennial scale. — Berkeley Lab
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 ATF national response team, at the end of its investigation, reaches one of three conclusions – incendiary, accidental, or undetermined. Given Thursday’s conclusion that the fire was determined to be "incendiary," or deliberately set, local authorities will probably launch an arson investigation to identify those responsible for the blaze. — latimes.com
Previously: Huge downtown Los Angeles fire burns towering apartment project View full entry
UIC officials said the site would extend like a deck over the point where the Kennedy, Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways come together, formerly known as the Circle Interchange. Officials said capping the expressways would be similar to the way Millennium Park was built over existing Illinois Central Railroad tracks. — chicagotribune.com
The Qatar World Cup Memorial project is a scalable building that raises awareness about the number of workers who died during the construction of the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It is in the form of a tower made of concrete modules, each one representing a deceased worker. The higher the number, the higher the tower...If the death rate is not reduced, the Qatar World Cup Memorial could reach a height of 1.5 kilometers (nearly a mile). — 1week1project.org
1W1P – 1Week1Project – is a collaborative effort by French architects Axel de Stampa and Sylvain Macaux, graduates of l'Ecole d'Architecture in Paris-Belleville. They challenged themselves to produce a "spontaneous architecture" per week for a year, or fifty-two projects. At this point, they... View full entry
Built by the Third Reich in the run-up to World War II, the Strength Through Joy resort was a Nazi vision of tourism’s future. Happy, healthy Aryans would stay and play at the 10,000-room complex on the Baltic Sea, eating, swimming and even bowling for the Führer. Think Hitler’s Cancun.
[...] a group of investors in this seaside town is now doing what the Nazis never could: realizing the site’s final stage of transformation into a vacation wonderland.
— washingtonpost.com
Previously View full entry
Ash-har Quraishi reports on why some Chicagoans oppose a plan for a museum for the ‘Star Wars’ creator’s artwork — Al Jazeera
Greenland’s affordable housing venture in Brooklyn, 298 apartments in an 18-story building in Prospect Heights, is part of a larger 15-tower apartment project in Atlantic Yards, (now rebranded “Pacific Park) adjacent to the Barclays Center, which will cost an estimated $4.9 billion to build. Half of the 298 units are supposed to be for families that make as low as 40% of the median income for the area—that’s about $33,560 for a family of four. — qz.com
Sports brand giant Adidas recently selected the COBE-led consortium to design the Adidas "Meet & Eat", a new public conference center at the Adidas Group's World of Sports headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany...The 11,000 m2 building has an open, clean design that complements and embraces its natural surrounding landscape. Aside the hints of Adidas' insignia through the interior, the "striped" pattern of the roof also seems to subtly nod to the brand's triple-stripe mark. — bustler.net
It is to serve this world that Second Home has come into being, a former carpet factory off Brick Lane in east London within whose seductive interiors a fragment of Superstudio’s techno-nomadism has, possibly, come to pass. [...]
The architects are José Selgas and Lucía Cano [...] who have just been announced as the designers of next year’s Serpentine pavilion. They bring to this, their first UK project, lightness and grace as well as invention, and an awareness of when to stop.
— theguardian.com
Related on Archinect:SelgasCano to design 2015 Serpentine PavilionAftershock #2: "Serendipity Machines" and the Future of Workplace Design View full entry