Who would have thought cathedral accounts on social media would be so entertaining? Some social media users were certainly amused earlier this week when St Paul's Cathedral in London, boasted about how, on World Architecture Day, England's cathedrals "have got this well covered". — BBC
St Paul's Cathedral in London initiated a church face-off on social media for architecture day. Churches and Cathedrals responded bragging about their buildings and mocking fellow churches. Religious architecture has never been so funny. ... View full entry
Designed by Foster + Partners, Bloomberg L.P.'s new European headquarters in London has been dubbed as the “world's most sustainable office building”, the architecture firm announced. Housing Bloomberg's 4,000 London employees, the office building was rated as “Outstanding” in the BREEAM... View full entry
Seattle's 55-year old landmark Space Needle is undergoing a $100 million renovation headed by Seattle-based design firm Olson Kundig. The venture's aim is to reveal the historic tower’s internal structure and harken back to the original concept sketches, all while expanding and improving the... View full entry
Vishaan Chakrabarti‘s Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) has revealed a new set of renderings for the refinery building at the three million-square-foot Domino Sugar Factory mega-development in Williamsburg. The new plans are brighter and better connected than those previously... View full entry
LEGO fans of all ages are flocking to the BIG-designed LEGO House since it opened last week in the heart of Billund, Denmark. The 130,000 square-foot building offers visitors plenty to explore: LEGO art galleries, color-coded experience zones, and the public LEGO Square — which includes... View full entry
Officials at the Louvre have been accused of censorship after withdrawing a work from its Tuileries Gardens in Paris for being sexually explicit. The work by the Dutch art and design collective Atelier Van Lieshout, entitled the Domestikator, was due to go on show later this month as part of the Hors les Murs public art programme organised by representatives of the Fiac contemporary art fair (19-22 October). — The Art Newspaper
The Art Newspaper explains: "[...] the erotic nature of the large-scale architectural structure, the outline of which depicts a couple having sex, prompted the Louvre’s decision to bar the work from the gardens which are overseen by the museum." Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez tried to defend... View full entry
While most of Apple's new Cupertino campus is still under construction, a small crown jewel, the Foster + Partners-designed Steve Jobs Theater, already attracted the world's attention when it hosted the unveiling of the latest iPhone models last month. Now we've received new, fascinating... View full entry
Last week we mentioned the Canadian National Holocaust Monument celebrating its grand opening in Ottawa. The stock of available imagery has been very limited for the last years and consisted of mostly the same aerial rendering in a few variations. Now we've received new photographs that give a... View full entry
That an architect and an artist as different as Cai and Gehry have had any ongoing creative dialogue at all is remarkable; that the most complete expression of that dialogue is a weekend home hidden in the New Jersey countryside is even more so. And yet Gehry’s house for Cai, designed in collaboration with his former student Trattie Davies, is a kind of brick and mortar reflection of Cai’s character: by turns boisterous and understated, flamboyant but ultimately serene. — NYT
M.H. Miller visited Morristown, NJ to spend a day with Cai Guo-Qiang at his Frank Gehry-designed country home. View full entry
The move would raise fascinating questions about the need to replicate habits that are tied to the layout of the current chamber – voting by trooping through “aye” and “no” lobbies, for example. Archaic linguistic protocols might seem doubly peculiar when expressed in a more modern setting. People’s behaviour is shaped by their environment and it is unlikely that parliamentary culture could be unaffected by transplant to a space unlike the unique one in which it has been nurtured. — The Guardian
The Palace of Westminster has been in a state of advanced disrepair for many years now. Though a plan for the building's massive £3.5bn refurbishment headed by BDP was announced last year, the government has avoided taking the decision to proceed. The main reason for the delay in action on... View full entry
This is the question a new case-study, '72 Hour Cabin', seeks to answer. Launched by Sweden, the experiment will investigate the effects of living in nature on health by taking five participants with some of the most stressful jobs and placing them in a custom-built glass cabin. During the day... View full entry
The film academy on Wednesday drummed up excitement for its forthcoming museum on the Miracle Mile, releasing a batch of new renderings [...]
Pritzker-Prize winner Renzo Piano and architecture firm Gensler are restoring and reworking the Streamline Moderne-style department store built in 1939 to house a 288-seat cinematheque and spaces for exhibitions, an entire floor devoted to an “Oscars experience,” restaurants, and special events.
— Curbed LA
Sitting right next to Renzo Piano's other LA projects, the expansion buildings for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the new — and not entirely uncontroversial — film academy complex on Wilshire Boulevard is further coming along. While construction of the 130-foot tall 'bubble' theater... View full entry
Broken gargoyles and fallen balustrades replaced by plastic pipes and wooden planks. Flying buttresses darkened by pollution and eroded by rainwater. Pinnacles propped up by beams and held together with straps. — New York Times
The historic French monument, Notre-Dame de Paris, has suffered due to time, rain, pollution and wind. Built from 1160 to 1345, with restorations and additions in the mid 19th century by architects Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc, the cathedral attracts 14 million visitors per year. Image... View full entry
Hannah Wood reflected on MoMA’s retrospective of Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘Unpacking the Archive’, in a conversation with architect, cultural historian and Wright scholar Mabel O. Wilson. stevenvansteenhuyse "enjoyed this article for its challenging view of Wright's legacy as America's greatest... View full entry
This year’s house marks the 50th project built by first-year students in the Yale School of Architecture’s professional degree program. Since it started in 1967, the building project has produced structures for communities around New Haven, including the Bridgeport band shell, pavilions in East Rock Park and Lighthouse Point Park, and since 1989, affordable housing units for over 30 families. — Yale News
First-year graduate students at Yale School of Architecture and Design have built a family house in New Haven. The two units are separated by a walkway but under the same roof. The project was realized in collaboration with Columbus House, a New Haven-based homelessness services provider. Most of... View full entry
