Biber Architects of New York recently announced the groundbreaking of the USA Pavilion, "American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet", for the Milan World Expo in 2015. The US pavilion is one of 147 participating countries responding to the expo's theme, "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life", which addresses global issues regarding food security, access and waste, and the challenging prospect of nutritiously feeding 9 billion people by 2050. — bustler.net
Highlighting America's role in the global food system, the barn-inspired pavilion includes features like a a harvestable vertical farm, food trucks, and a boardwalk.Read more about it on Bustler. View full entry
Sharif El-Gamal, CEO of real estate developer Soho Properties, announced today that his company acquired 49-51 Park Place from Consolidated Edison for $10.7 million. He also revealed that none other than Pritzker Prize-winning starchitect Jean Nouvel will be designing the site’s three-story Islam museum and prayer space. — 6sqft
This week came the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leaving its home in Washington, D.C. [...]
Most importantly, from the perspective of thousands of D.C. residents, the District will finally be rid of the FBI's dark architecture. I will be sad to see the building go, as the city will almost certainly demand. Not only could it still potentially be put to good use, but whatever replaces the FBI Building will be regular, orderly, safe, and worse.
— citylab.com
For the developers of the world's sixth tallest building near Seoul, a mysteriously shrinking lake and the appearance of small sinkholes in residential neighborhoods couldn't have come at a more inopportune time [...]
With about 70 of its 123 floors completed, the Lotte World Tower is now undergoing a review by experts and has put on hold the opening of adjacent low-rise buildings that form part of its complex.
— Associated Press
SURE Architecture's "The Endless City in Height" skyscraper is all about going with the flow while making a bold statement. Proposed for the SkyScraper & SuperSkyscraper Competition, the entry recently won first place in the international competition. Designed to integrate itself with the surrounding streets in London, pedestrians discover the skyscraper's vertical city inside while walking up and down the "endless" interweaving ramps that wrap around the tower. — bustler.net
Learn more about it on Bustler. View full entry
...In the 1970s, the streets east of Little Tokyo and west of the L.A. River made up a dingy district of hollowed-out warehouses that landlords rented to artists who needed a lot of space for little money [...] Then a decade ago, what started with a new restaurant on this block and then another up that street, turned into an avalanche of development [...] — LA Times
With change in Queens arriving rapidly, the Mets can preserve a piece of team history—and public good will—by helping to restore a part of the World's Fair from 50 years ago. — CityLab
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Editorial Manager for Archinect, penned another essay in the "non-conclusive series" AfterShock. Titled Brains and the City, in it she explores a new world of EEG urbanism, GSAPP’s Cloud Lab, brain computer interfaces and human architect-slash-neuroscientist... View full entry
Migrant workers building the first stadium for Qatar's 2022 World Cup have been earning as little as 45p [≈75¢] an hour, the Guardian can reveal [...] More than 100 workers from some of the world's poorest countries are labouring in ferocious desert heat on the 40,000-seat al-Wakrah stadium, which has been designed by the British architect Zaha Hadid [..] — The Guardian
This is just the most recent in a slew of bad PR for the British-Iraqi architect. Earlier, she was rebuked for asserting that architects have neither power over nor responsibility for the conditions of workers on their buildings. She won the 2014 Design Museum award for a building in Azerbaijan... View full entry
Rome may be a mecca for Medieval art, but it isn’t every day that conservationists there discover a trove of long-lost frescoes dating to the 1240s. That’s what happened a few years ago in the Gothic Hall of Santi Quattro Coronati convent, after a restoration project funded by ARCUS began in 1996. This summer, for the first time ever, those artworks can be seen by the public [...] [The frescoes] reveal how cardinals’ palaces were “places from which to launch very clear political messages.” — Hyperallergic
In celebratory June-July 2014 issue of Mark magazine #50, MovingCities published ‘Reality Check Shanghai‘ revisiting three Shanghainese buildings previously published and applauded in Mark: the Himalayas Centre by Arata Isozaki, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo site and the Giant Interactive... View full entry
If you had walked along the beach in Venice in the early 1970s, you would have come across the sagging, crumbling, partially incinerated ghost of an old amusement park on a pier. [...]
But when it opened in July 1958, more than half a century ago, Pacific Ocean Park — or P.O.P., as it came to be known — was the thing: an amusement park that married Venice Beach's kitschy seaside carnival culture with the space-age Modern architecture of the late 1950s.
— latimes.com
The trend of Italian fashion firms co-developing luxury condominiums continues, with Fendi on July 28 becoming the latest brand to announce its first foray into a branded real estate project — partnering with the Château Group to develop Fendi Château Residences, a new and exclusive 12-story waterfront condominium building located in Miami, Florida two blocks south of The Bal Harbour Shops. — blouinartinfo.com
Zaha Hadid's swooping, spaceship-like condo building along the High Line is just about the most exciting of the many buildings on the rise in West Chelsea and the dozens of projects designed by starchitects in New York City. Mind-boggling renderings of the wavy exterior? Check. Some voluptuous floorplans, plus pricing? Check. Here now, the first look inside the West 28th Street condos, with two unreleased renderings snagged by a tipster. — ny.curbed.com
Previously: Zaha Hadid Architects commissioned to design High Line condo, to be first Hadid project in NYC View full entry
London's Gherkin skyscraper has been put up for sale, with interest expected from Chinese, other Asian, and US buyers, estate agency Savills has said.
The City of London tower is expected to fetch offers in the region of £650m, the firm said.
— bbc.com