For now, the austere structure—and everything it symbolizes about the African American experience—awaits for a buyer while it sits quietly in Guernsey’s storage facility in upstate New York. As of this writing, the home’s destiny looks promising if uncertain. “There are 1,500 monuments to the Confederacy, which is absurd,” Mendoza says. “There are 76 monuments to the civil rights movement. Let this be the 77th.” — Artnet
When Rosa Parks' Detroit home went up for auction a few weeks ago, the auction house Guernsey's struggled to find a buyer, despite the wide media attention the house has received. “If all else fails, theatre and visual artist Robert Wilson and his Watermill Art Foundation in Long Island, New... View full entry
The US expends more energy on air conditioning, for example, than the whole of Africa does on everything. Then again, it expends even more energy on hot water, which doesn’t get the same rap. The question then is not whether to condition climate, but how. As long ago as the 1940s the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy demonstrated, with his village of New Gourna near Luxor, how traditional techniques of orientation, ventilation, screening and shading could be revived. — The Guardian
Rowan Moore dives into the history of air conditioning and how the development of this technology shaped architectural design over the years. Rather than condemn its use, Moore advocates for optimizing both old and new techniques for sustainable cooling with the current challenge to scale up for... View full entry
Behold the first prototype of the Brooklyn-based Klein, a new company that wants to make the process of building small houses more affordable all over the world. A45 is a 13-foot-long wood and glass cabin for one, two, or three people (if one of them is tiny) designed by the Danish architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group [...] meant to be the first of many designs [that will fulfill the fantasy] of having a home outside the city... — fastcompany.com
Founder Soren Rose started Klein after leading the firm Søren Rose Studio based in New York and Copenhagen. By providing small, cheap, prefab houses the company aims to make vacation home ownership more affordable to a wider audience. Klein prototype A45 by BIG. Image: Matthew Carbone.While... View full entry
One of Europe’s most visited sites, with about 12 million tourists a year, is in dire need of repairs. Centuries of weather have worn away at the stone. The fumes from decades of gridlock have only worsened the damage. “Pollution is the biggest culprit,” says Philippe Villeneuve, architect in chief of historic monuments in France. “We need to replace the ruined stones. We need to replace the joints with traditional materials. This is going to be extensive.” — Time
Notre Dame faces major repairs as the historic Cathedral's structure decays due largely to pollution. Funding for the repairs needed were difficult to raise as the cathedral is owned by the French government, yet their arrangement allows the Catholic archdiocese of Paris to use it for free. Both... View full entry
A motorway bridge, running above houses, streets and railroad tracks in the center of Genoa, Italy, collapsed this morning dropping dozens of vehicles and leaving at least 35 dead and many more injured. Operations remain underway to clear the rubble as at least 30 vehicles sit trapped. Rescuers... View full entry
This summer’s extreme weather has hit home some stark realities. Climate disaster is not slated to happen in some far-flung theoretical future. It’s here, and now. — MEDIUM
Penned by Nafeez Ahmed, investigative journalist, recovering academic, tracking the Crisis of Civilization, the article points to a more urgent than urgent times in terms of civilisation and not merely the climate change. Also an urgent quote from a friend internalizing the article for... View full entry
Back in 2009, BIG in collaboration with ARUP and Transsolar won the international competition to design Shenzhen Energy Company's new office skyscraper. After six years of construction that began in 2012, the development has been completed at a time when Shenzhen is continuously evolving into... View full entry
Across Hong Kong, where almost half the population lives in government-provided housing, public housing complexes have become wildly popular Instagram destinations. Locals and tourists have flocked to estates around the city, craning their necks to get that perfect social media shot and irritating residents in the process.
The estates have drawn professional interest as well, featuring prominently in marketing campaigns and even a music video by the Korean boy band Seventeen.
— The New York Times
Hong Kong's public housing, largely built in the 1960's and 70's, has attracted widespread public attention for its aesthetic appeal. These modernist style high-rises photograph beautifully with colorful displays of clean lined symmetry. While these buildings are visually engaging, they also play... View full entry
Depending on who you ask, brutalist buildings like the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., are little more than misshapen mounds of concrete. But architecture professor Mark Pasnik says the structures were built with a much deeper meaning in mind.
"People think of them as communistic or as alienating," says Pasnik, who came to brutalism's defense in a recent Boston Globe op-ed.
— wbur.org
Architecture professor Mark Pasnik makes the argument for preservation of brutalist buildings in an opinion piece for the Boston Globe. Pasnik's piece was in response to Trumps recent outcry to tear down the FBI headquarters. He explains the style's history of material honesty, along with reasons... View full entry
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has just announced $13.2 million in grants for cultural infrastructure. 29 U.S. cultural institutions were awarded with matching grants including libraries, museums, archives, colleges, universities, historic sites, scholarly associations... View full entry
Hundreds of Muslims in north-western China are engaged in a standoff with authorities to prevent their mosque from being demolished.
Officials said the newly built Weizhou Grand Mosque in the Ningxia region had not been given proper building permits.
But worshippers refused to back down. One resident said they would not "let the government touch the mosque".
— BBC
The new mosque was completed only last year, and city authorities initially wanted it torn down by Friday, citing a lack of proper planning and construction permits. Amid public outrage, authorities softened their demolition order to a "rectification plan" that demanded a less 'Arab' and more... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles. (Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect profiles!)... View full entry
Thanks to the overwhelming clarity of [Le Corbusier's] positions, the bewitching nature of his epigrammatic style and the already-powerful international movement for Modernism, the impact he had on a rising generation of Japanese architects would prove to be immense. But it would be the nature of that impact to be felt only in conditions of overwhelming ambivalence. — The New York Times
Nikil Saval traces Japan's modernism back to Le Corbusier citing influences on Kunio Maekawa and Kenzo Tange. Japan was the earliest country in all of East Asia to engage with Le Corbusier's work in the late 19th century, and by the 1930's many of his books has been translated into Japanese. The... View full entry
Aecom has been appointed by the United Nations to work on the renovation of its European headquarters in Geneva. [...]
The UN is looking to upgrade the systems at its 100,000 sq m Palais des Nations complex, much of which was built in the 1930s.
Aecom will work with architects SOM and Burckhardt+Partner to renovate the power, cooling, security and IT systems.
— Construction News
Completed in 1938 as the League of Nations HQ, the expansive Palace of Nations building complex has been the home of the United Nations Office at Geneva since 1946 (Switzerland actually did not join the UN until 2002). The Aecom/SOM team is joined by Swiss firm Burckhardt+Partner. View full entry
Construction has begun on a steel net to prevent people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, after years of debate over whether such an obstacle would mar the bridge’s romantic image.
For at least the next two years, crews will toil throughout the night to build a coarse web of marine cable beneath the Art Deco span that is both an international symbol for engineering beauty and a magnet for suicides.
— San Francisco Chronicle
"Oakland companies Shimmick Construction Co. and Danny’s Construction Co. won the contract to design and build the net for $211 million — about three times what the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors had proposed when it put the project out for bid in... View full entry
