“China is evolving into a construction superpower,” says Fang Zhenning, a scholar who lectures at the architecture school of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
The country is expected to account for one-fifth of worldwide building by the year 2020, Fang says.
In the battle to build ever-faster, some architects have resorted to digitally cloning designs that can be replicated time after time.
— aljazeera.com
Related: Broad Sustainable Building - the McDonald’s of the sustainable building industry View full entry
“Home for All” for Rikuzentakata is a gathering place for those who lost their homes in the tsunami-devastated city in Iwate Prefecture. The project was led by architect Toyo Ito, who collaborated with younger Japanese architects, Kumiko Inui, Sou Fujimoto, and Akihisa Hirata. — japlusu.com
“For us, it was really a blend of what’s the right concept for Park Avenue, a place that has not had a new building for almost 50 years, an avenue that is quite possibly the most important commercial boulevard in New York City, quite possibly the United States, and what is the place of a new build down the street from Seagrams and Lever House, two of the greatest buildings ever built,” Daivd Levinson said. — New York Observer
Four very different schemes for an office tower in New York. Who's your pick? View full entry
... they started opening up in abandoned (but interesting) buildings where nobody wanted to spend the money to restore them to their former glory. Some didn’t have a roof (and still don’t), while others had a big courtyard offering ample space for revelers. Set up a bar, get the toilets working, and you’re set. Eventually some expanded to take over several adjoining buildings. The first ones were a success, others followed, and now they’re a fixture on the nightlife circuit... — travel.usatoday.com
Adding on top of the old Prentice is intended as a thought exercise in what might be called a third way that may not always get its due in preservation battles...And this is where Ms. Gang comes in, compellingly. After our conversation she rapidly crafted a concept for a 31-story skyscraper atop the cloverleaf. — NYT
Jeanne Gang and Michael Kimmelman team-up and offer a proposal which could save the concrete, cloverleaf structure from 1975 by Bertrand Goldberg. While Northwestern University argues, it needs new biomedical research facilities, saving Prentice would be too costly and/or difficult... View full entry
Inspired by many hiking trips that the two students from China have enjoyed during their studies at ETHZ, the entry is based on the idea of a hypothetical mudflow in the Swiss Alps burying a village. The project works with columns of transparent thermoplastic planted into the earth as a metaphorical representation of the former village. Sunlight is being transmitted through the columns into the subterranean space, where they illuminate a poetic memory of the former rooms in the buried houses. — BLDGBLOG
The fairly rectangular structure, located just a few feet from the new light rail Expo Line’s elevated tracks in Culver City, gets most of its energy from photovoltaics—a 2,800 sq ft array sitting on top of a shaded parking canopy outside. But what makes it all work are the energy savings: It significantly reduces loads through several low-tech, high-tech, and even revolutionary techniques, most of which were developed with engineers at Buro Happold, whose LA offices are just down the street. — archpaper.com
Riding on the tailwinds of last week’s Mirvish + Gehry announcement, Oxford Properties Group today announced plans for the large-scale redevelopment of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and its surrounding areas. Dubbed "Oxford Place," the project will include much more than a refurbishing of the convention centre. Oxford plans to build four towers: one residential, one office and, of particular interest, two for a hotel that would serve a proposed casino... — urbantoronto.ca
Bustler recently published the winning projects of the National Museum of Afghanistan competition. Here is another museum entry we just received, the proposal "Timeless Cube" by Paris/London-based firm Matteo Cainer Architects. — bustler.net
BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and Cymbal Development transform a portion of Fort Lauderdale’s New River front into a vibrant addition for the local community and future residents of the city. The mixed-use development, Marina Lofts, in downtown Fort Lauderdale seeks to infuse a currently run-down... View full entry
UNStudio’s recently completed Haus am Weinberg, located on the outskirts of Stuttgart, affords pastoral views of the stepped terraces of an ancient hillside vineyard on one side and cityscape vistas on the other. Whilst structurally the Haus am Weinberg and its garden landscaping reflect... View full entry
Alex Maymind highlighted the work of Cornell studio "Ungers vs. Rowe" in a piece titled ARCHIPELAGOS: Ungers vs. Rowe. Both the studio and feature, articulate "a theoretical argument about two divergent Cornell legacies: one, O.M. Ungers and the other, Colin Rowe as exemplary urban design... View full entry
Guangzhou International Finance Center in China by London-based Wilkinson Eyre Architects has won the RIBA 2012 Lubetkin Prize for the best new international building. Now in its sixth year, the RIBA Lubetkin Prize is awarded to the architects of the best new building outside the European Union. — bustler.net
World-renowned Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki is to design a Muslim cultural centre and university on the 67-acre King’s Cross development for the Aga Khan.
The 84-year-old Pritzker prizewinner has been appointed to draw up plans for the two buildings by the Aga Khan Development Network, an 80,000-strong organisation headed by the leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims.
— standard.co.uk
“Google didn’t exist 25 years ago, Facebook didn’t exist 25 years ago, even AOL didn’t exist 25 years ago,” Cornell's Andrew Winters said recently. “The challenge is how do you create a tech campus today that is still flexible enough to grow and evolve for the next 25 years?” — New York Observer
Cornell unveiled its plans for a brand new 12.5-acre tech campus on Roosevelt Island today. The master plan is by SOM and Field Operations, the first academic building is by Thom Mayne and includes a giant two-acre solar array meant to help the structure achieve net-zero energy consumption. View full entry