A team of faithful farmers have built a scale model of Lichfield Cathedral - out of straw.
The monument, which stands 50ft tall, 74ft long and 14ft wide, took three weeks to complete before it was unveiled yesterday.
Farmer Rob Gray, 50, decided to build the replica of 12th century Lichfield Cathedral which is near his 250-acre sheep farm in Whittington, Staffordshire.
— dailymail.co.uk
Originally a low income neighborhood of informal, mud brick housing, Sher-Pur was subject to government land grabs around 2004 and is now Kabul's wealthiest neighborhood. Built up using mashup of imported architectural designs from Dubai, the neighborhood is full of massive poppy palaces and narco palaces... as the international community pulls out ahead of the 2014 NATO withdrawal deadline, many of these elaborate mansions are sitting empty. Sher-Pur is becoming a ghost town of opulence. — sustainablecitiescollective.com
And although performance spaces both at Yale and elsewhere face a myriad of sound-related problems — the Alice Tully Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center has been renovated multiple times due to acoustic problems — the intersection of musical science and architecture is not often discussed in the educational context, Stern said. — yaledailynews.com
a Starbucks coffee shop opened its doors inside a renovated space-age concrete gas station at Grand and Forest Park boulevards, the subject to an intense demolition threat just one year prior. By the end of the day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke the news that another chain, drug store CVS, was backing off its plans to demolish the elliptical mid-century modern AAA Building in Midtown. Within a few hours, months of protest ended in celebration. — americancity.org
The developer says it had been issued a valid demolition permit; the city of Phoenix says whoever issued the permit made a mistake.
A deal was signed on Monday between the developer and the city of Phoenix that delays demolition of the home for one month.
— latimes.com
Though unemployment is widespread among designers and architects, there exists a world of products, places and processes in desperate need of redesign. Imagine if designers — uniquely trained to listen and observe, and to improve the way things function, feel and look — were, like the Enterprise Rose fellows, embedded in schools, nonprofit organizations, health clinics, religious institutions and government offices, where they could experience community needs and behavioral patterns firsthand. — John Cary and Courtney E. Martin (NYT)
The main basis of his fame isn't built work but imaginary projects and sculptures and installations that might be called architectural art. An artist was what he wanted to be as a child, and when he graduated as an architect during the Brezhnev era he wasn't interested in working for "one of the big state institutions" which were the only likely sources of employment. So he started dreaming up "paper architecture", imaginary projects, in collaboration with the artist Ilya Utkin. — guardian.co.uk
He may look like a kid in a hoodie, but Bradley Garrett has a degree in anthropology and history, a PhD in social and cultural geography, and is about to take up a research post at Oxford University. But away from his lofty academic work, this bespectacled American is a trespasser – "urban explorer" has a nicer ring – who infiltrates abandoned buildings, sewers, bridges and office-block rooftops, filming and photographing them to bring these hidden spaces to public view. — guardian.co.uk
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 Architect Sure!. ↑ Floriade... View full entry
In the competition for the new École Centrale engineering school in the French city of Saclay, southwest of Paris, OMA has been awarded the First Prize. The brief also includes the urban development of the area surrounding the school in Saclay's research and innovation zone. The winning proposal was developed in collaboration with Bollinger and Grohman, Alto, DHV, DAL, and D'Ici Là. — bustler.net
Mr. Gehry will not change the signature Bacardi buildings themselves, whose exteriors were landmarked in 2009 and have long been admired for their tropical, Latin-infused take on Modernism, except to make interior alterations. But he will create a park and replace an existing office building — which is not landmarked — with a new performing arts center of his design. — nytimes.com
The Miller House and Garden Collection includes correspondence, drawings and blueprints, textile samples, and photographs that document design, construction, and maintenance of the Miller House and Garden in Columbus, Indiana. — Indianapolis Museum of Art
In May 2012, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the Indianapolis Museum of Art a grant for its project “Documenting Modern Living: Digitizing the Miller House and Garden Collection.” This Tumblr includes archival information giving an intimate view into the... View full entry
Johnson, a design partner in the New York City office of architect NBBJ, estimates that by 2060-70, skyscrapers will not only produce more energy than they use, they will produce food. — enr.construction.com
In the international architectural ideas competition for the new design for the National Museum of Afghanistan, the entry by Spanish team AV 62 Arquitectos was selected for the First Prize. The Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture and the US Embassy recently announced the results at an awards ceremony in Kabul. — bustler.net
Cartoons have been a major genre of popular entertainment in Japan dating back to 1917. The country’s unique style of animation, or anime, came into its own in the 1960s — notably in the pioneering work of Osamu Tezuka. In the 1990’s, a generation of architects, who came of age watching anime cartoons on television, were granted license to build fantastic creations fueled by the excess and lack of restraint that characterized Japan’s asset bubble. — japlusu.com