So far, Broad has built 16 structures in China, plus another in Cancun....The company is in the process of franchising this technology to partners in India, Brazil, and Russia. What it’s selling is the world’s first standardized skyscraper, and with it, Zhang aims to turn Broad into the McDonald’s of the sustainable building industry. — Wired
Photo by Noah Sheldon Lauren Hilgers traveled to Hunan, China where she had a chance to interview Zhang Yue, founder and chairman of Broad Sustainable Building. Broad gained internet "fame" earlier this week by erecting a 30-story building built in 15 days, using prefabricated and... View full entry
Bud Goldstone (1926-2012), a former aerospace engineer who worked for over 50 years to save Watts Towers, has died at the age of 86.
In 1959 he devised the test to prove the Towers were structurally sound and stopped the City of Los Angeles from demolishing them. He was a founding member of the Committee for Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts, Inc., which successfully sued the city in 1985 to save the Towers from the city's neglect.
— kcet.org
Precisely one year ago, Bustler reported on the topping out ceremony of the new 6,000 m² (64,583 sq ft) academic building for the Amsterdam University College, designed by Delft, NL-based Mecanoo architecten. One year later, this past Friday, September 21, the building was officially opened by Amsterdam councilor Lodewijk Asscher. — bustler.net
Neither is this switcheroo exactly new. That is a big part of the reason the City Planning Commission works so hard to ensure certain design flourishes and details in ambitious projects like the Riverside Center. — New York Observer
Yet again—the World Trade Center, Atlantic Yards, the Williamsburg waterfront—a New York City developer has dumped his high design stalking horse when it actually comes time to build their project. This time, Christian de Portzamparc was used to get the eight-acre Riverside Center... View full entry
"Around the world, architects and designers are finding innovative ways to evoke emotion through bold use of color," says Jackie Jordan, director of color marketing, Sherwin-Willilams. "From climbing gym to concert hall, the eight projects below demonstrate how vivid, playful hues will... View full entry
in the latest edition of ShowCase: New Keelung Harbor Service Building, Archinect presents the first prize winning project by Neil M. Denari Architects, Inc. (NMDA). The details include; 120,780 square meters, Ground breaking: 2013, Completion: terminal (2015), office building (2017). double o zero immediately noted that "Something like this would have countless comments just a few years ago. Now it is just another thing".
The recent feature Instigating Change with Common Ground, written by John Southern is a critical but largely positive review of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Therein, he put forward the argument that this year’s "Biennale doesn’t have much to be cynical, negative, or nasty about" and... View full entry
... if they do tear down the building, they'll replace it with another architecturally significant structure. When I spoke with Ron Naylor, who works in Facilities Management at Northwestern, he promised a building "the aesthetics of such that people are going to marvel at it." — wbez.org
Rael and San Frantello still have thousands of rods left over, but depending on how big they want to go, Ashley could probably help them out again — he still has a mountain of about 700,000 of them sitting in the parking lot of his Milpitas warehouse. — NPR
Husband and wife design partners Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello have recycled parts of a "boondoggle" into a piece of architecture. Rael San Fratello Architects new(ish) project SOL Grotto uses 1,368 distinctive glass rods, from the failed solar company. The view through the rods... View full entry
I’m no architecture critic, but the word “iconic” keeps popping to mind. In an industry full of soulless suburban campuses, give Jeff Bezos & Co. credit for building this in the city, at least. — geekwire.com
The geeks speak on two new planned tech campuses. Which one do you prefer? View full entry
I do not think the arena’s architecture should relate better to the context. The immediate context is the developer Forest City Ratner’s two cheaply clad, faux-historicist malls across Atlantic Avenue. The larger context is the lowrise brownstone neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Prospect Heights. To relate to the first would be depressing; to relate to the second, impossible. The real building is an exact analogue to the renderings of this site, which... blur and dematerialize the neighbors. — newyorker.com
The building, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a historical landmark but has been expensive and troublesome to maintain. The library’s management, led by D.C. Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper, has been considering whether it can be renovated or expanded in some way, or if the library needs to find a new home for the central library. — washingtonpost.com
Famed filmmaker dedicates Haifa space to his father Munio Gitai Weinraub, a 'Bauhaus refugee' who single-handedly changed the city's landscape. — haaretz.com
Yet women architects in Latin America — as in North America — continue to confront gender-based inequities. Partly this seems due to entrenched cultural attitudes, and partly to the traditional connections between architecture, engineering and capital, which can make it difficult to progress to a less patriarchal culture of building and design. — Places Journal
Places presents highlights from the exhibition Spaces Through Gender, now on view in San Francisco, with exemplary work by Latin American designers Tatiana Bilbao, Fernanda Canales, Frida Escobedo Lopez, Rozana Montiel, Nora Enriquez, Rocio Romero, Galia Solomonoff, Catalina Patiño and... View full entry
Displaced residents will be able to move into the new apartments "as if they had just won first prize in a lottery."
The plans also include "Super-Galactic" residences, which will tempt celebrities including (but not limited to) royal families from Europe, CEOs, and "the wealthy."
— curbed.com
When the plans were first unveiled, the architects said, the roof resembled a “a scarf floating within the space” — a somewhat loaded description, perhaps, considering that last year the French officially banned full veils in public places. The museum’s “luminous veil,” or “flying carpet” as it has also been called, covers some 30,000 square feet of gallery space on the ground and lower floors. — NYT
Carol Vogel reviews the New Islamic Galleries at the Louvre which consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof. The expansion was designed by two architects, Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti, who won the international competition to... View full entry