His favored collaborator was the British architect George Leopold (Tug) Wilson, whose travels had exposed him to Parisian Art Deco and the latest American skyscrapers...His clean designs, though not the first time modernism came to Shanghai, brought a touch of Gotham to a city whose architectural face had hitherto had a stodgy, neo-Classical cast. — NYT
Taras Grescoe explores the architectural remnants of pre-revolutionary Shangha built by Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon, the third baronet of Bombay. View full entry
Some of the damage could be repaired, he said. Still, “it won’t be the same,” he said. “Once you have blown down a building, it is blown down.” — NYT
Graham Bowley draws attention to the list of cultural treasures in Syria and northern Iraq, that have been; destroyed, damaged or looted, as a result of three years of war. For more information, see previous coverage here, here and here. View full entry
In Screen/Print #26: an interview with Jessica Walsh, currently half of design firm Sagmeister & Walsh, was excerpted, from the 2nd issue of Intern Magazine (devoted to "intern culture" in the creative industries). Darkman was confused "Strange choice to interview the most hated... View full entry
By the end of next year one-in-three of the world’s 100m+ skyscrapers will be in China, as its state-orchestrated urbanisation drive prompts a megacity building bonanza [...]
China now has over 140 cities of more than one million people; America has nine
— theguardian.com
Los Angeles' vast freeway system is incomplete — at least by the standards of its architects. In the 1940s, freeways were sketched through Santa Monica Boulevard, along Melrose, Highland and La Brea avenues, and near the Griffith Observatory. Many of L.A.'s freeways were built during the 1960s, but a combination of a freeway revolt, skyrocketing costs and a failure to increase the gas tax doomed the expansion of the freeway system during the 1970s. — LA Times
Whew. View full entry
This would be the first U.S. tower for Snøhetta, founded in Norway but on the rise in the United States since being selected in 2004 to design the pavilion for the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.
Snøhetta will replace an even better-known architect for the corner: Richard Meier, the Pritzker Prize-winning designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, whose firm has been working on a tower in the same location since 2008.
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The site in question is directly adjacent the Civic Center's metro stop on Market St., and a large part of the developer's plans revolve around shifting this existing stop one block north, to avoid (in the SFGate author's words) the "squalid even by neighborhood standards" area. The residential... View full entry
When we last checked in with Eli Broad’s eponymous downtown museum, its fall 2014 debut had been pushed back to some time in 2015. Today it was announced that the institution will open in fall 2015, although no precise date was given. [...]
The multi-story building, designed Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is still in the midst of construction. When it opens it will join two MOCA facilities and the Japanese American National Museum, making the northern end of downtown something of a museum hub.
— lamag.com
Previously:Los Angeles cultural boom gives city’s artists spaces they can call homeEli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over DelaysEli Broad's art museum, designed by DS+R, to open in late 2014 and will offer free admission View full entry
Between 1893 and 1919— 3-decade run referred to as the Golden Age of the American public library system—Carnegie paid to build 1,689 libraries in the U.S. These seeded the DNA for nearly every American library built before the end of World War II. That may explain in part why there is no central accounting for Carnegie's libraries, which were built without any oversight from a formal program or foundation: Even libraries that aren't historical Carnegie libraries share their aesthetic philosophy. — citylab.com
Oslo’s city council approved a plan for a new Munch Museum on the waterfront in a vote on 22 October. A new building designed by the architecture firm Herreros will be constructed at a cost of 2.8m Norwegian kroner. [...]
The long-delayed project has hit a number of political hurdles since the architects were first chosen in a competition in 2009. Some critics feared the dramatic design [...] would deprive the city’s relatively new landmark opera building of the attention it deserves.
— theartnewspaper.com
Previously: Winners for Oslo's New Library and Museum Competiton Announced View full entry
One of the most popular museums in Paris, the Picasso Museum, reopens on Saturday after a five-year closure for a costly and controversial renovation. [...]
In the run-up to the big day, Lebon has been busy conducting VIP tours. Among his guests: the American architect Frank Gehry, whose monumental Louis Vuitton art foundation has just opened on the other side of Paris.
"I am not here to criticise the architecture, but to praise the painting - which is of course phenomenal," says Gehry.
— bbc.com
Related: An Architect’s Big Parisian Moment View full entry
Conceived as a kind of southern hemisphere Serpentine Pavilion, the MPavilion has just opened its first work, a 12×12 meter kinetic box by the local architect Sean Godsell. Using the typically restrained massing of his homes as a template Godsell has then animated the space with a fully louvered skin. The pavilion is placed in the 18th century Queen Victoria Garden with Melbourne’s high rises serving as a backdrop. — eVolo
It's spring in Melbourne and there could not be a better place to spend an afternoon having a coffee than in a building that completely opens up. 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
Let's start with the building itself, the actual architecture. Union Station is a neo-classical mix of styles — European styles. The symmetry, arched windows, ornate cornice and stacked, stone walls have their roots in the glory days of France, England, Greece and Rome, in empires that were nearly absent of ethnic minorities and who felt fully at ease invading, exploiting and actually enslaving the people of Africa, subcontinent Asia and South America. — denverpost.com
If there’s one thing that all New Yorkers can agree on it’s that Penn Station is pretty awful. And if we’re ever going to get a new home for NJ Transit, Amtrak, and the LIRR, Madison Square Garden will have to move (just don’t tell any die-hard Rangers fans that). — 6sqft
The Alliance for a New Penn Station is proposing in a new report that the world-famous venue Madison Square Garden be relocated to the nearby Morgan Post Office and Annex, which occupies the block bound by 9th and 10th avenues and 28th and 30th streets. They say the mail sorting facility site is... View full entry
Amelia profiles the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture aka ANFA and ponders the lessons from her time spent down in San Diego for ANFA’s annual three-day conference at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Does neuro-architecture truly hold the promise of translational... View full entry