Little remains of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, a mid-century public housing complex once home to as many as 15,000 people. The poorly maintained high rises, rife with gang violence, were eventually demolished (the final one came down in 2011). [...]
The Chicago Housing Authority hopes to see it all redeveloped soon. [...]
CHA says half the new residential units to be market rate, another 30 percent public housing, and the remaining 20 percent affordable housing.
— The Atlantic Cities
With titanium facades swinging like jiving skirts and windows staggered like towers of toppling coins, the chaotic energy of the latest apartment designs for Battersea power station can only mean one thing: Frank Gehry is in town.
As the 85-year-old visionary architect behind the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao outlined plans for 700 apartments in London – his first English buildings – he walked straight into a raging debate about the capital's affordable housing crisis.
— theguardian.com
Previously: Gehry and Foster selected to design Phase 3 at Battersea Power Station View full entry
With around 10,000 lots scattered mostly across the Midwest and the Central Plains, Rolfe and Reynolds are about equivalent in size to a public-housing agency in a midsize city — and in an important way, they play the same role. Those living in public housing are generally required to pay up to 30 percent of their household income as their share of the rent. Rolfe and Reynolds’s tenants pay on average closer to 20 percent. — NYT
In Southern California Gary Rivlin attends Mobile Home University and profiles it's founder Frank Rolfe. View full entry
"E = mc²" by Swedish firm Wingårdhs was the winning solution in an invited competition to redesign the Forus West building of major energy company Statoil in Sandnes, Norway.
Statoil will now further develop its plans for the new building based on Wingårdhs’ proposal and clarify significant regulation issues before further progress is done.
— bustler.net
From 48 applications worldwide, the invited teams consisted mostly of Norwegian names and a few famous ones: Snøhetta (NO); Foster + Partners (UK) with Space Group (NO); and Helen & Hard (NO) with SAHAA (NO). OMA (NL) was also invited but withdrew shortly before the competition deadline, much... View full entry
The compact, two-level store itself is entirely under the plaza, but is topped by a first-ever rectangular “penthouse” composed of four single panes of glass and a roof. Portions of the store are visible through the windows from the plaza level. The store’s two glass staircases are also visible through huge glass panes over the top of each stair run on the sides of the store. — ifoapplestore.com
Photo by Instagram user orbaygumus View full entry
Construction has been underway for 10 Design's Zhongxun Times in recent months in the historic city of Chongqing, China. Commissioned by the ZhongXun Group, the mixed-use office and retail development is phase one of the Danzishi Central Business District, which 10 Design masterplanned.Corporate... View full entry
A federal commission that oversees plans for monuments in the nation's capital voted Thursday to reject the current design for a memorial honoring President Eisenhower, sending the concept back to its architects for revisions.
The National Capital Planning Commission voted 7-3 to endorse its staff's report opposing the current design. The objections focus primarily on the scale and placement of columns that would hold large stainless steel tapestries framing a memorial park honoring Eisenhower.
— bigstory.ap.org
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
Almost 10 years and £12bn in the making, the full extent of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will finally open to the public on Saturday, revealing "the biggest new park in Europe for 150 years", magicked from the mud at the bottom of the Lea Valley.
Stretching for 230 hectares (568 acres) around a knotted tangle of waterways and rail lines, it is, says its maker, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), the size of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens combined [...].
— theguardian.com
A Shanghai building company has erected a small village of pitched-roof, 3-D printed structures—in about a day. WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co is behind the series of humble buildings, which each cost less than $5,000 each. The homes were created through the use of a 490- by 33- by 20-foot 3-D printer that fabricates the basic components required for assembly. — blog.archpaper.com
When the National September 11 Memorial Museum opens next month at the World Trade Center, visitors will find a stark wall separating them from a repository containing about 8,000 unidentified human remains from the 2001 terrorist attack.
On the wall is a 60-foot-long inscription, in 15-inch letters [...]: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time. Virgil.” [...]
I asked a half-dozen classicists about the use of this inscription at the memorial museum. All but one questioned the choice.
— nytimes.com
Baan, who began shooting buildings in earnest less than a decade ago, balances politeness with relentlessness—qualities that help explain his rapid rise in the architecture world. So compelling is his work, which depicts the world's buildings being used, misused or even abused, that top-tier architects like Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid dispatch him to photograph all of their new projects, requiring him to fly hundreds of thousands of miles a year. — online.wsj.com
Mitchell Joachim; New York has, over the last few centuries, become one of the world’s most densely packed cities. But what if you could redraw the city’s map – and build it from scratch? — BBC
The article features both the High and Low lines, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Vision 42, Million Trees NYC, and Vertical Farms. View full entry
... when it comes to buildings that have cultural significance – like museums and arts centers, those buildings have also been dominated by foreign architects like Zaha Hadid or Norman Foster, who designed the Beijing Airport for example. But I think with the Pritzker Prize winner being a Chinese, Wang Shu, in 2012, you ‘ll find that when a building is important culturally and needs to relate to more to the Chinese culture, more and more that work will be done by Chinese architects. — forbes.com
Zero waste, lower transport costs and recyclable materials – is 3D-printing the future of housebuilding? Dutch architects are putting the process to the test for the first time in Amsterdam — theguardian.com