Taking Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey as an inspiration for the mood of the Sound Portal, Arup created an intimidating black rubber shape that sits in the centre of Trafalgar Square but opens up to reveal light and sky within. The facility provides the perfect environment for some of the most thoughtful and innovative recording artists in the world, including one of my favourite Tom Jenkinson a.k.a. Squarepusher I spoke to him about using ambisonic arrays and exploring sound in three dimensions. — cosmopolitanscum.com
On a quiet street in Inglewood, twin 1940 homes by midcentury legend Rudolph M. Schindler have been renovated by owners intent on making the most of the two-bedroom, one-bath floor plans. The goal: Respect the historic architecture while updating the spaces for modern living. — latimes.com
Not everyone liked the skywalks, which connect buildings Mr. Franzen designed at Hunter College on Lexington Avenue. Neighbors lamented the loss of sunlight. But Mr. Franzen, a Modernist subscriber to the form-follows-function credo, considered them the functional equivalent of ivy-covered walkways for urban students. It would “become the college community’s main street,” he wrote of the skywalk plan in 1972 in the college’s student newspaper, “well above rush-hour traffic at street level.” — nytimes.com
"There is a lack of feeling and lack of care for quality of design in retail parks and many dispiriting residential and office developments." In particular, he said he was concerned that architectural education is becoming "over theorised" and lacking in practical experience.
The quality of architecture in Britain is falling behind that of continental rivals, particularly Scandinavia and the Netherlands, he said.
— independent.co.uk
Stanton Williams’ Sainsbury Laboratory has won the 2012 RIBA Stirling Prize. The winner was announced at a special event in Manchester on Saturday 13th October. The building is situated on the northern edge of the University of Cambridge’s Botanic Gardens. — ribastirlingprize.architecture.com
In 2011, Tejlgaard built a plywood dome for Denmark’s famed Roskilde Festival (think Scandinavian Coachella) that became the hit of the event. This year, he and Jepsen were invited to build a pavilion to house attendees of Folkemødet, an annual town hall–esque gathering of Danish politicians and voters meant to generate national dialogue. Given the optimism of the event, the duo decided to test a new type of exploded geodesic dome--an icon of optimistic architecture if ever there was one. — fastcodesign.com
Tour Total, the latest project by German firm Barkow Leibinger, opened yesterday in Berlin. The 18-story tower, new home to the Germany headquarters of oil company TOTAL, is the first piece of the so called "Europacity" behind Berlin Central Station. — bustler.net
Kahn drew up the design in 1973, rendering it with soft charcoal on yellow tracing paper. He had readied it for construction in 1974, but New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a prime mover of the project, became vice president to Gerald Ford and got distracted by mightier demands...
Then Kahn died of a heart attack in a public bathroom in New York’s Pennsylvania Station at age 73.
— bloomberg.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 Biophilia. ↑ Cabbagetown Garden in... View full entry
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts opens to the public this weekend at the University of Chicago, setting up shop just steps away from storied structures designed by Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen. The $114-million project has been over ten years in the making — blogs.artinfo.com
Four years of construction is expected to begin next week on the long delayed 56 Leonard Street, the 830-foot-high residential tower announced four years ago for the southwest corner of Church and Leonard streets. For more than three years, the building's completed foundation has sat barren while the recession-stymied developer, the Alexico Group, sought financing to complete the project. — tribecatrib.com
Unfinished Spaces, a film that we've previously covered here on Archinect, is a documentary about the ambitious Cuban National Art School project, conceived, and ultimately killed, by the revolutionary communist Cuban regime. In addition to an exhaustive schedule of screenings, it will be... View full entry
Three winning entries and twelve honorable mentions were recently announced in the international competition for the Gosan Public Library in Daegu Metropolitan City, South Korea. With the first prize going to Spanish firm Gorka Blas and the second prize to British team STUDIO SH, we have just received the competition entry "Between Books and Trees" which won the third prize for Danish practice jaja architects. — bustler.net
Henning Larsen Architects has won the competition for a new research building for the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research in Stuttgart. The Center is one of Germany’s leading research institutions in the field of renewable energy.
In July '11, the Danish firm had won another big architectural competition in Germany for the new Siemens global headquarters in Munich[...].
— bustler.net
Audience members sat on the floor and stood in the aisles in the packed third-floor conference room where the BAR holds its hearings. Numerous neighborhood associations and preservationists had come to weigh in on the design, but the size of the crowd was also partly due to College of Charleston professor David Payne, who brought his historic preservation and community planning class to observe the melee. — charlestoncitypaper.com
From yesterday, New Clemson University architecture building set to test Charleston's limits on context. View full entry