The series of videos below offers a fascinating insight into how this generation of "starchitects" behaves under pressure, as they each pitch to win one of the most high-profile competitions in recent years: a new tower for L&L Holding Company on Park Avenue in New York. The site has such daunting neighbours as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building, and it will be the first full-block office tower to be built on the street in almost half a century. — guardian.co.uk
While the design industry may not pay as much heed to star architects – or starchitects – as it once did, on a consumer level, they clearly still pack a punch.
This is exemplified by the sale of an apartment in the Frank Gehry-designed Opus Building in Hong Kong which, according to William Lau of Midland Realty, reached a record-breaking sale price of nearly $60 million due to its ‘unique’ architectural design.
— DesignBuild Source
A towering beacon of pink mirrored glass has overtaken the Shard to become the tallest building in Europe. Moscow's Mercury City tower, which topped out on Thursday, now rises to 339m, making it 29m taller than London's own crystalline pyramid.
The building joins a motley cluster in the emerging Moscow International Business Centre, a $12bn complex initiated by former mayor Yuri Luzhkov as a playground for rival oligarchs to demonstrate their penile might.
— guardian.co.uk
... we asked a few forward-thinking professionals in the business of buildings. The question went something like this: If we were going to remake a famous building or bridge using the materials we have today or will have in the future, what would we do differently? That's just vague enough to make things interesting. Here's what we got back. — popsci.com
Nearly 40 firms from around the world entered the competition to design the university’s new College of Architecture and Environmental Design which will form a gateway to the campus in the city of Kent.
They included Hadid, Moussavi, BIG, Gensler, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Perkins & Will and Eric Owen Moss Architects.
But the long list of eight contains only US practices. The most internationally recognised are Morphosis and NBBJ.
— bdonline.co.uk
The full list of invited firms can be viewed here. The remaining firms include: Bialosky & Partners Architects (with Architecture Research Office) Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (with SoL Harris Day Architects) KZF Design (with Morphosis) NBBJ Richard L Bowen & Associates (with Weiss/Manfredi)... View full entry
A judge Thursday gave at least a temporary reprieve to old Prentice Women's Hospital by stopping the city from issuing a demolition permit to Northwestern University until it can be determined whether the process by which the building was denied landmark status was properly carried out.
Circuit Judge Neil Cohen said the public's interest would be harmed if the building came down before the merits of a lawsuit filed by preservationists were considered.
— articles.chicagotribune.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 Outdoors. ↑ MU:91 in Los Angeles, CA by... View full entry
Developers in San Francisco are loath to take architectural risks because the city’s approval process for new development is long and rigorous, perhaps the most onerous in the country, architects say.
It’s hard to fault their caution when you consider how small San Francisco really is — 47 square miles (Manhattan alone is 23 square miles) — with much of the area consumed by neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes.
— The New York Times
When Mr. Keret, 45, received a call from the architect, he was initially puzzled. “This guy with a very heavy Polish accent said he wanted to make a house in proportion to my stories,” he said. “It sounded like a prank.” — NYT
Steven Karutz profiled Keret House, a recently completed example of "experimental architecture" by Jakub Szczesny, a Polish architect. Mr. Szczesny, 39, designed the space for an ideal resident, specifically Israeli writer, Etgar Keret. The architect who belongs to a collective called... View full entry
The poster showcases 620 projects (90%) submitted to the eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition. Size: 32" x 24"Double SidedISBN: 978-1938740022Limited Edition: 1000 copies Archinect has 5 copies to give away to our readers. To enter to win one, just fill out this quick survey. We will randomly select... View full entry
Led by Architekturzentrum Wien director Dietmar Steiner, the curators traveled around the former Soviet Union over a three-year period in search of their often elusive and quickly decaying subjects. Focusing on the former republics—from Estonia to Belarus, Armenia to Uzbekistan—they interviewed the still-living actors of the time and foraged in bookshops for archive material. They eventually uncovered major Soviet typologies... — online.wsj.com
"Some of the most important architects of the 19th and 20th centuries were commissioned to construct fair pavilions, dazzling, unusual structures incorporating the most cutting-edge materials and engineering prowess possible at the time," Doskow writes in an artist statement. "Among them are McKim, Mead and White, Louis Sullivan, Gustave Eiffel, Le Corbusier, Ando, Mies van der Rohe and the landscaping of Frederick Law Olmsted." — wbaa.org
The Downtown Market, in effect, is the newest piece of civic equipment built here since the mid-1990s to leverage the same urban economic trends of the 21st century — higher education, hospitals and health care, housing, entertainment, transit, and cleaner air and water — that are reviving most large American cities. — New York Times
Danish firm CEBRA has shared with us its adventurous project Skidome Denmark, a vision for the 'world’s biggest ski dome' in the city of Randers, Denmark. — bustler.net
Remarkable projects come from remarkable people and Inhotim is the creation of Bernardo Paz, a mining magnate who has lavishly installed his contemporary art collection across several hillsides in Minas Gerais, an estate of some 5000 acres. Paz has commissioned many architects, to make pavilions specially designed for individual artists, and others that house several artists’ works, all cushioned within the lush vegetation of a botanic garden. — tate.org.uk