An architectural homecoming is in store for Rice University as one of Houston’s native sons has returned to his alma mater with a new arts facility unveiled this past week by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. DS+R Partner and Rice alumnus Charles Renfro will be the lead architect on the new Susan... View full entry
Relph’s collection might be described as the first post-internet expression of the genre. The images mostly show buildings that are, in one sense, real or in the process of becoming so. But the rendering posters, created by design firms and developers, are also highly fictive, cinematic branding documents created to comply with a city law requiring public images of buildings under construction. — The New York Times
The arch flaneur Nick Relph has been documenting the city’s whirlwind transformation since the Gulliani administration and, for the past seven years, incorporating a VuPoint digital scanner into his work to produce a physical record of the changes that first made its debut in 2015 in MoMA... View full entry
Mecanoo has shared updated imagery of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. the firm revamped together with OTJ Architects. Photographers Robert Benson and Trent Bell have provided new photos detailing the modernization of the landmark building that was completed in... View full entry
The debate surrounding Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle is picking up this week amidst news that the €670 million ($757 million) project will begin construction within the next month in spite of a torrent of backlash that has beset the development since its announcement in 2008. As the plan... View full entry
Goettsch Partners has announced the completion of the Pepper Family Wildlife Center, a $41 million renovation, restoration, and expansion of the historic lion house at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. Image: © Tom Harris The new 54,000-square-foot facility nearly doubles the size of the... View full entry
With the spiritual and material well-being of its next-generation patients in mind, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine has opened an inpatient facility from Foster + Partners and others that is being heralded as a “hospital of the future.” Located on Penn’s... View full entry
Staples Center is getting a new name for Christmas: Crypto.com Arena. The downtown Los Angeles venue — home of the Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Sparks — will wear the new name for 20 years under a deal between the Singapore cryptocurrency exchange and AEG, the owner and operator of the arena, both parties announced Tuesday. Crypto.com paid more than $700 million for the naming rights, according to sources familiar with the terms, making it one of the biggest naming deals in sports history. — Los Angeles Times
The arena’s new logo will debut on December 25th, and all of the Staples Center signage will be replaced by June 2022. The partnership between AEG and Crypto.com may see the integration of cryptocurrency and online payment into the arena. A 3,300-square-foot section at the entrance of the arena... View full entry
An excellent example of the New Formalist style is now available for the relatively low price of $4.3 million. Local news outlets are reporting the recent addition of Minoru Yamasaki’s Michigan State Medical Society to the real estate market in East Lansing. Image courtesy Michigan State... View full entry
MVRDV has designed a playful, mixed-use apartment building shaped like the letter O. Located in the German city of Mannheim’s Franklin Mitte neighborhood, the building is one of four letter-shaped apartment complexes that together spell out the word HOME. The 15-story building mixes... View full entry
One of America’s premier folk art institutions is getting a major expansion for the first time thanks to a newly-unveiled design from Rogers Partners. The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art opened in 1980 and is dedicated to outsider and folk art. Orange Show traces its origins to... View full entry
An ambitious new athletic facility for the University of Washington’s men’s and women’s basketball programs has got the ball rolling thanks to a design from Gensler. The newly-approved Basketball Training & Operations Facility and Health & High Performance Center is seen as an enhancement of... View full entry
Higher prices and longer wait times do not appear to be turning buyers away from the nation’s homebuilders. With demand still surging, homebuilder confidence in the market for single-family homes rose more than expected in November, to the highest level since last May — CNBC
According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), builder sentiment in the market for newly-built single-family homes moved three points higher to 83 in November. Readings above 50 indicate that more builders view conditions as good than... View full entry
In Meerstad, a neighborhood in the Dutch city of Groningen, De Zwarte Hond is designing a multi-use supermarket made entirely of wood. Called the SuperHub, the project is labeled as a sustainable and flexible building that is also a host to a variety of social functions. Meerstad... View full entry
Following up on recent superlative creations in Poland, Kenya, and Chile, Studio Daniel Libeskind is back with a proposed design that would bring a new media arts complex to the German city of Potsdam, just south of Berlin. Developer Jan Kretzschmar tapped the firm to create a... View full entry
The storage has been forced to fit the quirks of the building, rather than the other way around, which seems like an odd way to design an art store. — The Guardian
The Guardian critic interviewed MVRDV frontman Winy Maas to find out if the inspiration for Rotterdam's new open storage museum came from a €3.99 salad bowl, noting its mirrored exterior affects the opposite of its intended invisibility and is also rather difficult to clean. “The... View full entry