Below are the 12 most visited News posts during 2012. For a full list of all of our top 12 lists for 2012, click here. 1. Master Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer passes away at 104 2. Lebbeus Woods dead at 72 3. First Frank Gehry Home Completed by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation... View full entry
Piano apparently sketched his idea on a restaurant napkin while meeting property developer Irvine Sellar in March 2000. According to Piano's architectural firm, RPBW, Sellar keeps the famous napkin in his offices. "He saw the beauty of the river and the railways and the way their energy blended and began to sketch in green felt pen on a napkin what he saw as a giant sail or an iceberg," Sellar recalled in a recent interview. — guardian.co.uk
'[R]emember that a place like Dubai really emerged in the last 50 years. It was a sleepy, you know, Bedouin town half a century ago. And what you do is when you bring in the world’s, you know, most sophisticated architects and engineers, you can literally build anything, including a building of 140 or 150 stories. But designing a municipal network of sewage treatment is in some ways more complex. - KATE ASCHER — Boing Boing
Terry Gross recently interviewed Kate Ascher about her skyscraper book, and ended up discussing the common lack of sewage connections in Dubai - including the Burj Khalifa. So they end up using trucks to cart the sewage to the central treatment plant, where they often end up queuing for 24-hours... View full entry
Star architect Zaha Hadid is currently building several projects across China. One of them, however, is being constructed twice. Pirates are the process of copying one of her provocative designs, and the race is on to see who can finish first. — spiegel online
Does she have anything to say to thousands of architecture students who copy her designs every semester? View full entry
The Park Avenue tower rises from a monumental covered plaza to two setbacks, where the 42-foot-high garden levels expose those massive, dramatic building supports. The top two floors of the tower, tentatively planned to rise 49 stories, form a glass- roofed garden. Elevator shafts morph into glowing blades that slice the sky above the roof. — bloomberg.com
Mels Crouwel, the lead architect for the Stedelijk, was government architect for years. His firm is normally reliable, with an industrial bent. He promoted the tub as a technological novelty, its aerodynamic exterior made of a reinforced synthetic fiber coated in white airplane paint to give the museum a shiny, enameled finish and to nod to the old Stedelijk’s white rooms, which still fails to explain the plumbing metaphor or other moves. — NYT
Michael Kimmelman reviews the new addition to the Stedelijk Museum by Benthem Crouwel Architects. View full entry
Unlike more traditional colleges, SCI-Arc, as it is known, has no lawn or central quad to accommodate graduation ceremonies and other big events. The school uses the parking lot for such gatherings, but it lacks amenities and charm, despite remarkable views of downtown skyscrapers.
Now an ambitious project is in the works to create what teachers and students believe will fill the need and become a landmark in a neighborhood that is morphing from gritty to artsy.
— latimes.com
In celebration of the upcoming centennial of New York City's Grand Central Terminal, the Architectural League of New York and the New York Transit Museum have announced the winners of a competition to select sketches by contemporary architects for a new Grand Central Terminal sketchbook produced in collaboration with Moleskine. — bustler.net
Only a few days ago, we published the winning entries of the Basel Ozeanium Aquarium competition with Boltshauser Architekten taking the First Place. Here is now also the winner of the Second Place, the entry "Watergate" by collaborating Swiss firms HHF and BURCKHARDT+PARTNER. — bustler.net
“Our approval will facilitate development of a significant new building with a distinctive pyramid-like shaped design and thoughtful site plan that integrates the full block site into the evolving residential, institutional, and commercial neighborhood surrounding it,” Ms. Burden said before voting in favor of the project. — observer.com
Mark Simon, a founding partner of Centerbrook Architects and Planners, agrees. “I think [bars and other fortifying techniques] send the wrong message to both kids and teachers,” he says. Based in Centerbrook, Connecticut, Simon has designed 20 school buildings, including five public elementary schools, though none in Newtown. “Buildings tell stories, and when a building is designed that way, it tells you that it doesn’t trust you. And kids intuit that they’re not trusted,” he says. — archrecord.construction.com
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. Today's top images (in no particular order) are from the board Details. ↑ Ophir Design/Build by... View full entry
He has split his time between London and the French capital for the past decade but next year will open a new office in the central London architecture hotspot of Clerkenwell where his neighbours will include Zaha Hadid Architects and Wilkinson Eyre.
Before he goes, Matthews has agreed to complete all his work on the Shard including the viewing gallery, due to open in February, and the restaurants on floors 31, 32 and 33 which are expected to open in the spring.
— bdonline.co.uk
The building, known as 1 Angel Square, has been designed to deliver a 50 per cent reduction in energy consumption compared to The Co-operative’s current Manchester complex and an 80 per cent reduction in carbon. This will lead to operating costs being lowered by up to 30 per cent. — DesignBuild Source
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has facilitated the purchase of the David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix, Arizona, through an LLC owned by an anonymous benefactor. The transaction closed on December 20 for an undisclosed price. The property will be transferred to an Arizona not-for-profit organization responsible for the restoration, maintenance and operation of the David Wright House. — savewright.org