Japan’s Sport Council on Thursday awarded a contract to design and construct a centerpiece, billion-dollar national stadium that forms a key part of Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic Games to lauded U.K. firm Zaha Hadid Architects. — blogs.wsj.com
Previously: New National Stadium Japan Competition Unveils 11 Finalists View full entry
“In historic districts, the commission always regulated the entire lot,” said Sarah Carroll, the director of preservation at the agency. “But in the last decade we’ve been seeing more applications for rear-facade changes, particularly in Brooklyn, where there hadn’t been as many changes in the rear yards as in the past. And so we’ve been focusing more on the interiors of blocks.” — NYT
Constance Rosenblum reviews a number of recent examples of "contemporary" brownstone renovations in NYC. The article refers to work by Michael Rubin Architects, Rafael Viñoly, Rogers Marvel Architects, Kinlin Rutherfurd Architects, David Hecht and Brendan Coburn Brooklyn architects. One... View full entry
From William Zeckendorf’s work with I.M. Pei and Minoru Yamaski in the 1960s and ’70s to his grandsons’ projects with the likes KPF and, most notably, Robert A.M. Stern, who created both the brand new 15 Central Park West and the newly renovated 18 Gramercy Park South, the Zeckendorfs have a thing for high design. — New York Observer
Foster + Partners has just designed its second apartment tower in North America, and first in the U.S., for Zeckendorf Development. They are the same developer who worked with Robert A.M. Stern on 15 Central Park West, considered the best-selling condo building of all time. Can Lord Norman and... View full entry
“While the prospective buyer strongly supports efforts to preserve the David and Gladys Wright house, he has concluded that for personal and business reasons, this is not an opportunity he will pursue at this time. He has every confidence that a preservation minded buyer will be found, and that the house will be preserved," representatives of the prospective buyer told Joffe. — bizjournals.com
The Cleveland Design Competition recently announced the winners of its 2012 edition, Transforming the Bridge. The brief called for design ideas that would transform the abandoned lower deck of Cleveland's Detroit-Superior Bridge into a dynamic public space, performance venue, and pedestrian experience high above the Cuyahoga River. — bustler.net
News Architectural Digest interviewed Brad Pitt about his recently announced collection designed in collaboration with furnituremaker Frank Pollaro. mdler believed "you can tell the influence of Gehry in a few of his pieces” but Orhan Ayyüce commented "These belong to... View full entry
In the previous weeks, you could already enjoy two of our three favorites from the 2012 myMarvin Architect's Challenge, the LEICESTER HOUSE by Eric Gartner and the RUSSELL T. JOY BUILDING by THA Architecture Inc. Today's featured project is UTAH STREET RESIDENCE in Arlington, VA by Jon Hensley... View full entry
The Pop-up HAWSE (Homes through Apprenticeships With Skills for Employment) is a proposal to convert disused lock-up garages in London's Hackney into temporary accommodation for homeless people.
Conceived by Levitt Bernstein Architects for the Building Trust's Home competition, the scheme would allow an 11.5sq m bedsit to be created within a disused garage for around £13,000.
— guardian.co.uk
Eli Broad returned to his alma mater Michigan State University over the weekend to inaugurate a new contemporary art museum that bears his name. The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum had a formal dedication on Saturday and opened to the public on Sunday.
The museum on the university's East Lansing campus was designed by architect Zaha Hadid. Broad gave $28 million to MSU in 2007 for the creation of the museum -- $21 million going toward construction of the facility and $7 million for acquisitions
— latimes.com
The argument for preserving old buildings is a very strong one that I wholeheartedly support myself. However. On the rare occasions that I get to visit a forgotten building as magnificent as this one, I can’t help day dreaming about some of the incredible monumental relics I know back home and quietly wishing that a few more of them had been left to grow old and perish naturally rather than being unceremoniously hooked up to the proverbial life support machine of modern tourism... — humanplanet.com
Photographer, Timothy Allen, explores the ruins at the Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria. View full entry
Ruins don’t encourage you to dwell on what they were like in their heyday,before they were ruins. The Colosseum in Rome or the amphitheater at Leptis Magna have never been anything but ruins. They’re eternal ruins. It’s the same here. This building could never have looked more magnificent than it does now, surrounded by its own silence. Ruins don’t make you think of the past, they direct you toward the future. The effect is almost prophetic. This is what the future will end up like... — nytimes.com
Architects, he explains, “understand about aesthetics; they know about psychology. The next depth to which they can go is understanding the brain and how it works and why do people feel more comfortable in one space than another?” — Pacific Standard
Emily Badger examines whether neuroscientists could be the next great architects. Her article features quotes from among others; sociologist and architect John Zeisel, architect Alison Whitelaw and neurobiologist Fred Gage who at a 2003 conference laid out how "Changes in the... View full entry
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 Interiors. ↑ Black & White House in... View full entry
The X-code is a marking left by the Urban Search and Rescue teams, coordinated by FEMA. It was first developed after the 1985 Mexico earthquake, when many people died in later building collapses, trying to rescue people who were already trapped. As each building is searched for survivors, it is marked first with a slash, and then when the search is finished, an X. Then, the quadrants of the X are marked with a code to define who made the search, when, and what they might have found. — thestate.ae
Macy’s has added a new feature to its iPhone app that provides indoor turn-by-turn directions for its massive flagship location in New York City’s Herald Square, courtesy of Meridian, the software startup behind an indoor GPS platform. — mashable.com
Is indoor GPS navigation the new wayfinding? Since launching last year, Meridian has worked with a handful of prominent institutions to build indoor mapping systems from the ground up, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. The... View full entry