MoMA officials said the building’s design did not fit their plans because the opaque facade is not in keeping with the glass aesthetic of the rest of the museum. — NYT
Robin Pogrebin reported that MoMA expects to have the building demolished by the end of this year. h/t Donna Sink over at TC, who commented "It's tragic. We need to start a thread on it and call for a boycott of the new project by all architects. If MOMA moves ahead with this I will never step... View full entry
A few days ago, we published the winning entry of the first annual Flat Lot Competition in Flint, Michigan [...]. Here's now also one of the competition's three honorable mentions, the entry Stage a Lot by Brooklyn-based architects ksestudio. — bustler.net
Previously: Flint’s Flat Lot Competition Has Its Inaugural Winner View full entry
Back in January, we had published the shortlisted nominees in the Architecture category of the sixth annual Designs of the Year Awards, hosted by London's Design Museum. Today now the final winners across the seven categories—Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product, Transport—were announced, too. — bustler.net
Every day, more than 600,000 thousand rail commuters navigate the crowded maze of tunnels and tracks that is Penn Station. Mass transit advocates would like to replace the aging station with a world-class transportation hub. But there's a big obstacle: Madison Square Garden, the arena that sits directly on top of Penn Station. And the Garden's owners show no signs of moving. — npr.org
Previously: Municipal Art Society Challenges Architects for New Penn Station Vision View full entry
The City of Melbourne has been certified carbon neutral, an important step toward its goal of becoming one of the world’s most sustainable cities.
In a carbon constrained economy, councillor Arron Wood said the certification by Low Carbon Australia against the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) “was a solid demonstration of the City of Melbourne’s commitment to a more sustainable Melbourne.”
— DesignBuild Source
Unlike Rietveld’s complex interplay of layered planes, the Eameses, looking towards more commercial approaches to middle-class housing, created something more like the box that Rietveld was trying to escape. — ft.com
Since 2011, the budget for Apple’s Campus 2 has ballooned from less than $3 billion to nearly $5 billion, according to five people close to the project who were not authorized to speak on the record. If their consensus estimate is accurate, Apple’s expansion would eclipse the $3.9 billion being spent on the new World Trade Center complex in New York, and the new office space would run more than $1,500 per square foot—three times the cost of many top-of-the-line downtown corporate towers. — businessweek.com
Reading this was for me an epiphany. I could see, almost in a flash, the unity of building and landscape developing throughout Mies’s building art, ultimately morphing into the podium that binds the Seagram tower to the urban landscape — plaza, platform, an oasis amid the chaos of New York. This led me to reevaluate the importance of surrounding context, in Mies’s architecture throughout his career and to understand in a new light some of his statements, drawings, and photomontages. — Places Journal
"What led Mies to create the union of skyscraper and plaza on Park Avenue, a binding together so profoundly important in his oeuvre?" On Places, in an excerpt from the new book Building Seagram, Phyllis Lambert recounts the evolution of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's architectural philosophy, from... View full entry
Do you know what I love more? My children. And that is why I will never live in my MCM dream home. Because mid-century modern architecture is designed to KILL YOUR CHILDREN. (Also, moderately clumsy or drunk adults). — projectophile.wordpress.com
Red arrows show the direction of travel of children’s bodies It is pretty certain that none of these children reached adulthood intact. View full entry
Grimshaw has submitted a Development Application on behalf of Parramatta City Council for a landmark mixed-use tower. The Aspire Tower emerged from a design excellence competition held by the Council and is set to establish a new benchmark for innovative, passive-environmental design in... View full entry
The salesclerk at a Belgravia clothing boutique, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want to get in trouble, said that at some times of the year the area was virtually abandoned. “We’ll shut for the whole of August,” she said. — NYT
Earlier this week Sarah Lyall explored how some neighborhoods in London have become "So Exclusive Even the Owners Are Visitors". This is because the owners are increasingly, superwealthy foreigners from places like Russia, Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and India, who are purchasing a residence... View full entry
The four firms — Santiago Calatrava, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and SOM — will have until May 29 to propose new designs that will be unveiled to the public that day at the TimesCenter on West 41st Street. “We’re really trying to unlock people’s imaginations about the very real potential of a new arena and of a new Penn Station,” said Vin Cipolla, the society’s president, in an interview. — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
Whole Foods is teaming up with rooftop garden company Gotham Greens for its next New York location. When the lettuce only has to come down a staircase from the roof, that’s about as local as you can get. — fastcoexist.com
"Irrational exuberance" seems to me an apt introduction to an understanding of Rem Koolhaas in the '90s and beyond; it foregrounds his great success in navigating the intersection of the pragmatic corporate sector, on the one hand, and the “delirious” and volatile realm of desire and possibility, on the other. ... Koolhaas has encouraged his followers to shed the crippling shackles of critical theory and pick up a surfboard upon which to ride the shock waves of the new economy. — Places Journal
For decades Rem Koolhaas has been not only a leading global architect but also a restless provocateur. On Places, in a chapter from the forthcoming book Architecture and Capitalism, Ellen Dunham-Jones explores Koolhaas's protean career, from the early fantastical projects to the big books... View full entry
Kent State University has chosen a glassy, light-filled design concept by the firm of Weiss/Manfredi from New York for its $40 million new building for the College of Architecture and Environmental Design.
Richard L. Bowen & Associates of Cleveland will be the “architect of record” for the project.
— blog.cleveland.com
Previously: Four teams unveil concepts in competition to design $40 million architecture school at KSU View full entry