As the United Kingdom continues to make progress in its efforts to decarbonize its buildings, the country’s liberal party has unveiled a trail-blazing “Warm Homes for All” plan that could bring roof insulation, double-glazed windows, renewable technologies, heat pumps, solar thermal systems... View full entry
The London fire brigade’s readiness for the Grenfell Tower fire was “gravely inadequate” and fewer people would have died if it had been better prepared, a long-awaited public inquiry report into the disaster that killed 72 people has concluded ... [despite] “compelling evidence that the external walls of the building failed to comply with requirements” of building regulations governing fire safety. — The Guardian
The Fire Brigades Union published a damning report in September that accuses former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's deregulation — followed, and reportedly amplified, by Tony Blair — of having gutted building and fire safety regulations. At the same time, firefighters are blamed for... View full entry
Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals, the hotel and spa in Switzerland, was designed intentionally devoid of clocks so that visitor's sense of time would be suspended and immeasurable. Completed in 1996, there is a legend about a mountain in the village of Vals that is said to have a mountain that... View full entry
The Rocco Design Architects-designed tower, which will hold the Wesleyan House Methodist International Church, sits on a teardrop-shaped site in Wan Chai, Hong Kong. With 800 square meters of plot and 11,000 square meters of program, the task proved challenging for the design team. The resulting... View full entry
Stacked onto a compact site along Arlington's Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Virginia, The Heights by BIG and executive architect LEO A DALY is a new 180,000 square-foot academic building that brings two existing secondary schools under one roof. The Heights is BIG's first U.S. public school &mdash... View full entry
The cracks discovered beneath the rooftop park were classic brittle fractures. The tapered 4-inch-thick steel beams—2.5 feet wide and 60 feet long, with a horizontal flange on the bottom—undergirded the 5.4-acre park on the building’s fourth level, and buttressed the roof of the bus deck on the second level. By themselves, the cracks formed a point of weakness with potentially hazardous consequences. But they also suggested the possibility of a larger crisis. — Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics offer a detailed recap of the events following the discovery of two cracked structural steel beams in the brand new $2.2 billion, Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco in 2018. View full entry
Nearly two years after opening its Bjarke Ingels-designed LEGO House to much media fanfare, the LEGO Group now inaugurated the first phase of a new corporate campus at its headquarters in Billund, Denmark. While the buildings and the campus concept, planned by Danish firm C.F. Møller Architects... View full entry
A new set of renderings have been unveiled for the controversial Obama Presidential Center (OPC) designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) on Chicago's South Side. The latest views present a more transparent and animated complex that has been tweaked to address ongoing... View full entry
Visitors finally took their first steps inside the American Dream mall on Friday.
The mall, located by MetLife stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was once called “the ugliest damn building in New Jersey and maybe America,” by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Construction has been on and off for several years, after hitting several road blocks in everything from funding to lawsuits from the NFL.
— CNBC
The American Dream complex is located at the Meadowlands in Bergen County, New Jersey. The mall is designed by GH+A Design and Adamson Associates Architects and will ultimately dedicate 55-percent of its floor area to entertainment uses and 45-percent to retail. Eventually, the mall will... View full entry
Parts of the current terminal look dated, and Apple, a modern technology giant known for sleek design, uses United as its corporate airline to shuttle thousands of employees around the world. United accidentally revealed last year that Apple spends $150 million annually with the company on flights, including 50 business class seats a day from San Francisco to Shanghai. — Bloomberg News
The talks, according to Bloomberg News, are in the early stages and the details regarding the types of upgrades that could come into being are currently unclear. Linda Jojo, executive vice president at United Airlines Holdings Inc. told Bloomberg News, “The Apple team in San Francisco... View full entry
What would a picture of architecture, devoid of people, automobiles, animals, and all of the other urban seasonings we experience each day look like? 'Edge of the West Village' 'Hudson on My Mind' In his exhibition New York Unseen, on view at ClampArt through mid-November, the... View full entry
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is studying the ways in which it can update its departmental building standards in order to make military bases and other sites less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including the increased frequency and intensity of natural... View full entry
Katherine Guimapang profiled architect Paul Preissner for an edition of Studio Snapshot. Therein Preissner explained his interest in "Making normal things weird, and popularizing the idea that boring can be valuable too." spamdeleter wondered "I'm not sure if it's because of the slightly dry... View full entry
Built at the foot of the Andes near Santiago, Chile, the Baha’i Temple of South America by Hariri Pontarini Architects has attracted over 1.4 million visitors since opening in 2016. Tonight during an awards ceremony in Toronto, the RAIC announced the temple as the winner of their... View full entry
The former Longaberger basket building on the eastern edge of Newark will be open for business again, although it will be a place to spend the night instead of work in an office.
In a couple years, the seven-story basket building will open as a luxury hotel with 150 rooms, a restaurant and indoor pool.
— Newark Advocate
Formerly the quirky headquarters of The Longaberger Company in Newark, Ohio, the building has been sitting empty since 2016 and was eventually sold to developers in late 2017 (previously on Archinect). Cleveland-based Sandvick Architects will be designing the landmark's transformation into a... View full entry
