In Georgia, one school with an eye-popping price tag opened its doors today. $147 million buys North Atlanta High School a 600-seat theater, a food-court-style cafeteria with a smoothie bar and more than 50 acres of athletic fields.
But here's another ... less impressive... number: North Atlanta has a graduation rate of only 60 percent.
School leaders hope this investment will help turn things around. Is that too much to ask of a building?
— marketplace.org
Behnisch Architekten, in collaboration with Ayers Saint Gross, completed the John and Frances Angelos Law Center for the University of Baltimore this past April. The structure began construction in 2009 after the firm, which was developed under the leadership of Günter Behnisch's son Stefan, won first place in the university's international design competition back in 2008. — bustler.net
The Jury of Melbourne's Flinders Street Station competition was unanimous in the highly anticipated selection of the final winner: the beautiful vaulted roof-scape designed by Australian/Swiss team HASSELL + Herzog & de Meuron with London-based Purcell as heritage consultants. The entry by Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Santiago Medina was announced as Winner of the People's Choice Award. — bustler.net
Previously: Big Names on Flinders Street Station Shortlist - Public Voting Now Open View full entry
“Louvers won’t work, they reflect light too,” he wrote in June in a blog comment on dallasnews, “and retrofitting on a 42 story building has never been tried and the makers say they would rip off in high winds prevalent in Dallas.”
An honest opinion, except that there is no such Barry Schwarz.
This post and others proved to be the work of Mike Snyder, long a fixture in the city and now a public relations executive who had been hired by the tower’s outside law firm.
— nytimes.com
Previously: The Nasher and The Ant BullyRenzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center controversy continues View full entry
According to data released by New York City last fall, the Bank of America Tower produces more greenhouse gases and uses more energy per square foot than any comparably sized office building in Manhattan. It uses more than twice as much energy per square foot as the 80-year-old Empire State Building. - Sam Roudman — Co.Design
The Bank of America tower in NYC, winner of Platinum LEED certification and (according to Bank of America) "one of the world's most environmentally responsible high-rise office buildings", is under scrutiny for its environmental claims, in a debate hosted by the Fast Company blog, Co.Design. A... View full entry
“This area hasn’t seen any great architecture since the development of the United Nations” in 1947, said Vishaan Chakrabarti, a partner at SHoP Architects, which is responsible for both exteriors and interiors in the project. “This could be a harbinger of things to come in terms of getting more innovative design along the East River.” — nytimes.com
Cities can transform into an entirely new place once it's nighttime, sometimes to the point of disorientation that you wonder if you're still in the same city. The upcoming "Vers un climat: Building (With) The Unstable" exhibit at Cornell University presented by award-winning interdisciplinary... View full entry
Well, it is the prerogative of men to enter the world without acknowledging that they are men. - Sylvia Lavin — Harvard GSD M.Arch.I (Lian)
Watching Sylvia Lavin and Eric Owen Moss in conversation at SCI-Arc last night, prolific Archinect blogger Lian Chang took careful note of a few key impasses -- where Lavin and Moss either failed to see eye-to-eye, or artfully dodged one another's argumentative traps. Lavin, an imposing academic... View full entry
Romania's Minister of Religious Affairs, Victor Opaschi, concedes that there is a close working relationship between the church and politicians during electoral campaigns, and that this is "not a good thing". — BBC News
Tessa Dunlop reports in from Romania where the Orthodox Church is in the midst of a growth spurt with as many as 10 new places of worship being completed every month, and the enormous Cathedral for the People's Salvation is slowly taking shape. However, Romanians have begun to question... View full entry
According to Preservation Detroit, "The City of Detroit Historic District Commission has received a petition to demolish the State Savings Bank. The petition is subject to a public hearing, which is scheduled for the next Historic District Commission meeting on Wednesday, August 14." — change.org
Samantha Farr, an Urban Planning Graduate Student at University of Michigan, has started a petition to block the plans by Andreas Apostolopoulos, CEO of Triple Properties, to demolish the historic Beaux-Arts-Style State Savings Bank in Detroit, to make room for a parking structure. Triple... View full entry
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Editorial Manager for Archinect, reviewed the exhibit Never Built: Los Angeles, currently on display at the Architecture and Design Museum in L.A. She concluded "When Los Angeles appears so often but rarely as itself, Andersen’s piece honors the... View full entry
The Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand opened its doors to the public for the first time on August 6. Designed by Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban, the cathedral is a temporary replacement of the original Christchurch Cathedral, the city's symbol that was destroyed by a 6.3-magnitude... View full entry
A major force within contemporary Indonesian architecture, the soft-spoken man is recognized as the helmsman of a generation of independent architects, yet hardly anyone outside his native country knows his name. Locally celebrated but internationally undiscovered, Matin was one of the first Indonesian architects to establish an independent practice after the fall of Suharto in 1998. — MovingCities
Mark magazine #44 (June-July 2013) put the spotlight on the architectural scene in Indonesia. MovingCities contributed with an interview with leading Indonesian architect Andra Matin who is hailed as ‘a well kept secret in the architecture world’. An extract: A major force within... View full entry
Great architects build structures that can make us feel enclosed, liberated or suspended. They lead us through space, make us slow down, speed up or stop to contemplate. Great writers, in devising their literary structures, do exactly the same.
So what happens when we ask writers to try their hand at architecture?
— New York Times
Who said that libraries were irrelevant in this digital age? Not the submitters in this competition.
Since May, the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation (CMLC) in Alberta, Canada has been on the search for the architectural team to create a compelling design for the new Central Public Library in East Village. CMLC, the City of Calgary, and the Calgary Public Library held an open Request for Qualification as Stage One of a two-stage process to ultimately select the Prime Design Consultant.
— bustler.net
On August 1, CMLC announced the following four shortlisted firms—some who already have high-profile status—that will advance to Stage Two, Request for Proposal: 3XN and AECOM (Denmark and Calgary) KPMB and BKDI (Toronto and Calgary) REX and Group2 (New York and Calgary)... View full entry