Les Architectes FABG is the winning firm in the architecture competition for a new cultural venue adjacent to the St. Lawrence River in Montreal's Verdun Borough. The project includes a professional theater and also provides for redevelopment and expansion of Verdun's circus school, the École de cirque de Verdun. — bustler.net
Liang Sicheng (1901-1972) is known as China’s “Father of Modern Architecture,” but he expressed strong sentiments throughout his career when it came to preserving the country’s heritage and identity. In the 1950s, when Beijing was selected as the nation's capital, he lobbied to keep its ancient buildings intact and urged the government to build an entirely new city instead. The ruling party disagreed, and ancient Beijing has become a distant memory. — artinfo.com
The Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei collaboration – the 12th pavilion – breaks the mould of the sequence so far as the criterion for the commission had been for an architect not to have built in England. But Herzog & de Meuron are also deeply engaged in the art world, having built the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They are currently working on art museums in New York, Miami and Kolkata. — ft.com
“A replica will be built,” one official unapologetically told the state news media. — NYT
Preservationists in Beijing awoke last weekend to find that the house of the famous architects and intellectuals Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin has been reduced to rubble. The two architects educated in America returned to China and established an architecture school in the northeastern city of... View full entry
Designers in Buffalo have proposed stripping down a mall to its foundation and reinventing it as housing, while an aspiring architect in Detroit has proposed turning a mall’s parking lot there into a community farm. Columbus, Ohio, arguing that it was too expensive to maintain an empty mall on prime real estate, dismantled its City Center mall and replaced it with a park. — nytimes.com
Construction was completed on a new straw bale building for the University of Nottingham which brings together the School of Biosciences and the School of Veterinary and Medical Sciences. The project is the first stage of a 20-year visionary masterplan for the university's Sutton Bonington Campus. — youtube.com
View The University of Nottingham - The Gateway Building in Make's Archinect profile. View full entry
The project of Lacaton-Vassal-Druot is a brilliant contemporary example of working within built-up heritage, solving with an exceptional industrial and even adaptable solution the problem which many European cities face. — Domus Magazine
While European cities present very low demographic growth today, they have extraordinarily urban and even agriculturally built environments. Adding to these circumstances circumstances certain environmental and social sustainable values, and bearing in mind the current economical situation, you... View full entry
Now the Palais Stoclet, considered the best surviving realization of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total work of art," faces an uncertain future as it marks its centennial. For the past decade this Jugendstil masterpiece has been a battleground for the four sisters who inherited it, even as they seek to protect the coveted private property from the ravages of decay, pollution, theft and the prying eyes of the public. — online.wsj.com
...will re-examine the built environment of the arid and semi-arid west as a vast field of opportunities for design innovation at a range of scales, from building systems to infrastructure and landscape spaces. The conference will present and debate a portfolio of design strategies generated in response to the challenges set forth in ALI's Drylands Design Initiative... — Arid Lands Institute
Registration is currently open for the forthcoming Drylands Design Conference being held March 22-24 at the Woodbury School of Architecture. This event is the conference part of the Drylands Design Competition you can see the work by the winners at the competition website here. View full entry
About three-quarters of the people who spoke favored renovating the existing pier or picking a "Mediterranean-style" design for a replacement. The ultra-modern design of "The Lens" did not draw support from most of the people who spoke.
"We are paying for $50 million for a sidewalk over the water," one commenter said.
"I wanted Mediterranean style. (I) feel we are being locked into (a design) that doesn't have any local flavor."
— oldnortheast.patch.com
Los Angeles architect Yaohua Wang - many may still remember his Nanjing Lab proposal - has sent us his latest project, a schematic design proposal for the experimental Xianghong Theater in Taiyuan, China. — bustler.net
“I’m never trying to be disparaging to these other communities in any way,” says Bill Browne, a local architect on Indianapolis’ host committee who has looked at what other Super Bowl cities have done. “But we came away with the sense that they’re putting on an event. We’re certainly putting on an event here, but we are absolutely trying to transform a number of elements of our community as a part of this.” — theatlanticcities.com
The board's long-range planning committee chose Holl, based in New York City and Beijing, after reviewing site-specific concepts from three internationally known architecture firms, including Snøhetta and Morphosis, according to a statement from board chair Cornelia Long. — chron.com
"You can have a grand dome and grand minaret, but if it doesn't really serve the purpose, if it only has a large prayer space and nothing else, then you're not really fulfilling the needs of the community," he says. — BBC News
In post 9/11 America the construction of new mosques in the US has sometimes sparked controversy and even confrontation. Is that why some new Muslim houses of worship are being built without the most recognisable features of Islamic architecture - minarets and domes? View full entry
“You should know that Frank and I had a conversation backstage,” the mayor said at the opening of the Signature Theater today, “and we both committed to each other that we would get 10 more Frank Gehry projects going here—in the next 700 days. If my math is any good, Frank, that is one every 70 days, so we should meet some time later today to get going.” — observer.com