The Basketball Arena, by architects Wilkinson Eyre, is one of two venues that can be taken apart into kit form and transported. This one, which seats 12,000, consists of a tent-like membrane stretched over a random arrangement of curved forms. The chief of the 2016 Rio Olympics has expressed an interest in taking it to Brazil — Guardian
From a octopus-tentacle shooting range to a multicoloured rubber bridge, Steve Rose looks at the hidden architectural highlights of London 2012 Olympics. While three major venues have dominated public and media attention; the main Olympic Stadium, the Aquatics Centre, and the Velodrome, Rose... View full entry
The winners of the 2012 Housing Tomorrow competition were just announced. The annual competition promotes the exploration of contextual, cultural, and life cycle flows that offer new housing strategies for living in the future.
Sponsored by New York-based d3, the competition invites architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore innovative approaches to residential urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects.
— bustler.net
The authorities think progress is demolishing our community just so they can host the Olympics for a few weeks — NYT
Brazilian government is evicting people and demolishing thousands of homes to stage the Olympics and the World Cup. “These events were supposed to celebrate Brazil’s accomplishments, but the opposite is happening,” said Christopher Gaffney, a professor at Rio’s... View full entry
Dick Clark's Malibu hideaway makes crawling under a rock seem like an attractive proposition.
The home, which looks as if it were carved from one massive megalith, sits atop a mountain and almost 23 acres of land (zoned, of course, for horses and a pool).
— huffingtonpost.com
Just in case you were already thinking about getting a nice Flintstones style weekend retreat, there you go. You're welcome. View full entry
Viennese architectural firm Wolfgang Tschapeller ZT GmbH has won the First Prize in an international competition that seeks to overhaul the campus of the Angewandte, a group of buildings that house the University of Applied Arts, as well as the Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
Tschapeller's winning entry, together with fourteen finalist submissions, will be on view in an exhibition at the Museum for Applied Arts from March 9 through 25.
— bustler.net
We are rarely roused by the day-to-day, brick-by-brick additions that have the most power to change our environment. We know what we already like but not how to describe it, or how to change it, or how to change our minds. We need to learn how to read a building, an urban plan, a developer’s rendering, and to see where critique might make a difference.... We need more critics — citizen critics — equipped with the desire and the vocabulary to remake the city. — Places Journal
Places features an essay from Alexandra Lange's new book Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). Lange takes on a classic text by Ada Louise Huxtable — a review of SOM’s 1967 Marine Midland Bank... View full entry
Global design firm Fentress Architects recently announced the winning designs for the 2011 Fentress Global Challenge, an international competition launched last fall for architecture and engineering students to present their visions for the Airport of the Future. Expert jury members narrowed the 200 submittals to 16 finalists, and then to the top three with two honorable mentions. — bustler.net
Swedish furniture company IKEA, has collaborated with Oregon architectural firm Ideabox, to launch its first line of prefabricated houses in the U.S., named the “Aktiv.” The IKEA-themed dwelling is a one-bedroom home centered around space-saving furniture and products. The hip and modern house was outfitted taking into consideration the demands from Pacific-Northwest homeowners, and is designed to be eco-friendly. — psfk.com
The Aktiv, Swedish for active, is expected to be priced at US$79,500. View full entry
You can’t just focus on housing and transit in the core of a city, you need to focus on the physical needs of manufacturing, development and the needs that go along with them. That will clearly have a huge effect not only on the city but regional level. — Wired - Autopia
Jason Kambitsis recently interviewed Bruce Katz, the founding director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program. The two spoke about Katz's belief that optimizing economic structure, not urban form, is the key to revitalizing depressed cities and strengthening thriving ones. View full entry
In theory the mechanism is really quite simple:
1. A sensor detects the rumblings of an earthquake.
2. Within .5 to 1 second an air tank pushes air in-between an artificial foundation and the actual structure of the home, lifting it as high as 3cm off the ground.
3. While the earth below violently shakes, the levitating home quietly and patiently waits, returning back to the ground once the tectonic plates have settled.
— spoon-tamago.com
The innovation offered by a new tech campus on Roosevelt Island is not limited to New York’s technology sector but the design one, as well. Almost every bid had soaring renderings and flashy flythroughs, most notably the winning entry from Cornell. Now the upstate university has announced six of the world’s top firms, including a few local favorites, are in the running to design the new tech campus. — New York Observer
Making the shortlist are SOM, OMA, Morphosis, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Steven Holl and the dark horse Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, which maybe makes sense if they're looking to mind Apple engineers. View full entry
The venerable 200 year old Städel Museum has just reopened after a major 3 year remodeling which, from the exterior, is a no more than a modest if not unique pokadotted lawn. Frankfurt’s hometown architecture firm schneider+schumacher used a subterranean program to provide 3,000 square meters of space for post war and contemporary art. Like massive portals the 195 circular skylights connect the underground space directly with sky creating a tension between landscape, form and light. — eVolo
Los Angeles architect Francois Perrin (anyone remember the face-melting Skateboard House?) has shared with us his recently completed project, a private residence in the Hollywood Hills here in sunny Southern California. Project Description from the Architect: This private residence is located in... View full entry
After I mentioned attending a screening of the new documentary film, Unfinished Spaces, about the National Art Schools in Havana, [my dinner companion] burst out: “What is it about the Art Schools? Why do foreigners love them so much? There’s nothing Cuban about those buildings. They’re ridiculous architecture for Havana and I always hated them.” — Places Journal
On Places, architect Belmont Freeman reconsiders the National Art Schools in Havana — the subject of John Loomis's groundbreaking book Revolution of Forms, as well as a new documentary film and an opera, and a cult favorite among architecture buffs. Does the North American obsession... View full entry
The “Small House” designed by Unemori Architects, is … small. It’s footprint is only 4 by 4 meters and it is 9 meters high. Apparently a family of three lives is this house in Tokyo. — todayandtomorrow.net
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