Two monuments to East Germany's peaceful revolution of 1989 were supposed to be unveiled in time for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this autumn. But due to a raft of obstacles, from roosting bats to technical challenges, neither project will be ready on time. — spiegel.de
Silicon Valley long prided itself on building world-changing technologies from the humble garage, or the nondescript office park. The new spaces are more distinctive, as companies seek to build a consumer profile [...]
[There] is a sense that nothing is permanent, that any product can be dislodged from greatness by something newer. It’s the aesthetic of disruption: We must all change, all the time. And yet architecture demands that we must also represent something lasting.
— mobile.nytimes.com
The latest edition of Student Works: highlighted "Eidos" a proposal for a housing complex located in East Harlem, New York, by GSAPP students Carlo Bailey and Lorenzo Villaggi. Plus, Archinect launched a new a new feature series, highlighting some of the more ambitious and intriguing... View full entry
U.S. and local Chinese officials gathered to host the ribbon-cutting of the new U.S. Consulate General today in Guangzhou, China. Perceived as a symbol of the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China, companies from both countries collaborated on the $267 million project, which broke... View full entry
New homes in America are a lot bigger than they used to be. In fact since 1950 they've doubled in size, to an average about 2,500-square feet per home. And a bigger home generally uses more energy. So one college professor is attempting to trash some of our ideas about home ownership, by sleeping in a six-by-six-foot dumpster.
[...] this month, Wilson moved into a sanitized recycling dumpster on the Austin, Texas, campus of Huston-Tillotson University.
— marketplace.org
A Catholic church, a theater and one of the nearly 50 schools closed by Chicago Public Schools last year are among the most endangered buildings in the city, a local preservation group said today.
Preservation Chicago today released its Chicago 7 list, an annual collection of seven local, historic properties in danger of being lost to demolition or decay.
— chicagobusiness.com
The historic Grand Palais is due for a contemporary touch-up from French firm LAN, who recently won the competition to restructure and expand the monument...Looking beyond the museum's Beaux-Arts style, LAN highlights the museum's durability and flexibility in an effort to bring out the building's full potential. — bustler.net
Have a glimpse of LAN's winning proposal below:Drawings:Find out more on Bustler. View full entry
Let's say you are an architect and what you really like to design is single family houses, with flair, with distinctive maybe even avant-garde features and you want to design houses that will actually get built. Well if that's who you are...than for you utopia might be Japan... — Freakonomics Radio
In a recent Freakonomics Radio podcast, “Why Are Japanese Homes Disposable?” Greg Rosalsky examines the short lifespan of Japanese residential architecture. h/t Andrew Sullivan /The Dish View full entry
In keeping with the designer's forest-themed interior motif, a pair of homesteader cabins from the late 1800s are being installed in Twitter's new digs in the historic Western Furniture Exchange and Merchandise Mart building, a 1937 art deco landmark on Market Street. [...]
In this spirit of reuse and reclamation, Lundberg saw the cabins as a novel way of breaking up the wide open spaces of a gutted floor in the old furniture mart that will become a casual dining area.
— Marin Independent Journal
Taking architectural anachronism to a whole new level, Twitter turns the open-plan office on its head by installing original one-room wood cabins from Montana as lunching spaces. Designers for Twitter's offices feel the choice is coherent with the company values of reuse and reclamation, while... View full entry
To get a sense of the kind of hotel they wanted, Mr. Stockhausen did extensive research with Mr. Anderson. This included looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots. They also looked through hotel archives and studied the architecture of locales like the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. — nytimes.com
The art and technology center Eyebeam has selected WORK Architecture Company (WORKac) to design its future home in Brooklyn, another addition to the Brooklyn cultural district in Fort Greene.
“It’s a great moment in Eyebeam’s trajectory to think about the relationship between art and technology,” said Dan Wood, a principal in WORKac, with Amale Andraos — both of whom worked on the cultural district’s master plan.
— artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
'I Have No Words' Emoji and the New Visual Vernacular from Eyebeam Art + Technology Center on Vimeo. View full entry
Kohn Pedersen Fox's Riverside 66 in Tianjin, China is steadily working its way to completion, scheduled for this September. The 10-year retail project will be one of China's longest buildings, with a 350-meter "super shell" made of 22 seven-story concrete ribs and 10,000 panels of glass. At this... View full entry
The Commission of Fine Arts [...] has praised Gehry’s designs in the past but asked him to consider minor revisions. [...] In response, Gehry submitted a redesign that incorporates a few dozen more trees – but left the basic components of the memorial untouched. Gehry did not attend the presentation of the new designs last week, and an architect at his firm said: “We are staying with the overall big ideas for the project.” — theguardian.com
Previously View full entry
London's iconic Crystal Palace just moved one step closer to its magnificent resurrection with the announcement of six shortlisted design teams, all vying to rebuild The Crystal Palace and the surrounding public park as a major landmark. — bustler.net
The list of selected architects to move on to the next competition stage reads like a who's who in British architecture:David Chipperfield ArchitectsGrimshawHaworth Tompkins ArchitectsMarks Barfield ArchitectsRogers Stirk Harbour + PartnersZaha Hadid Architects with Anish Kapoor View full entry
"I have nothing to do with the workers," said Hadid. "I think that's an issue the government – if there's a problem – should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved."
Asked if she was concerned, Hadid added: "Yes, but I'm more concerned about the deaths in Iraq as well, so what do I do about that? I'm not taking it lightly but I think it's for the government to look to take care of. It's not my duty as an architect to look at it.
— theguardian.com