Although it's not shocking that companies like Gensler have automated on/off sensors in their lighting grid to save energy when no one's in the office, it's slightly less comforting to realize that many companies are now using sensors to monitor when employees are at their desks, if they're... View full entry
Nicholas Korody, published HGTV Theory: Tiny House Hunters, Debt Resistors. Wherein he ponders "Are tiny homes the pots of today? Are tiny homeowners the Diogenes of the 21st century? Their lifestyle, a hyperbolic negation of some of the dominant values that define contemporary domesticity, draw... View full entry
Interviewed by Paul Goldberger, the New York architecture critic who advised the Obama Foundation on the architect selection process for the library, Williams and Tsien revealed conceptual ideas for the project, said Obama critiqued an early plan of theirs as too quiet [...]
"He said it was too unflashy," ArchDaily quoted Tsien as saying. "He looked at what we did and he said, 'I said you could be sort of quiet, but I think you're a little too quiet.'"
— Chicago Tribune
Amid the dust and clamor is the steel skeleton of Aitken’s “Mirage,” which takes the form of a 1960s-style suburban California ranch house. The seven-room structure, to be fully mirrored on the outside and inside, is perched on a hillside with city and desert views, which are key to the piece. The structure has gaping holes where doors and windows might be, and its interior walls are built on angles to reflect the sky and contrasting surrounding terrain... — The L.A. Times
What does the desert in Riverside County have to offer aside from a massive annual music festival, the sleek modernism of Palm Springs, and the ethereal vista of untrammeled nature? Well, starting on February 25th, it has the Desert Exhibition of Art, or Desert X for short. Exhibitors in the... View full entry
Two 58-story towers, eighteen years and two billion dollars make up the fundamental elements of Herzog & de Meuron's city-like mixed-used development "6 AM," which, while beginning its first phase of construction in 2018 in downtown L.A.'s Arts District, won't be finished until its principal... View full entry
As cities densify and the global population increases, much has been made of reclaiming physical spaces: but how does one reclaim a place that is bound up in tragedy, whether that tragedy was natural or man-made? On March 3rd and 4th, Parsons the New School for Design will host a symposium... View full entry
According to a press release from Apple, it will take six months to move all 12,000 employees into the 175-acre campus, which will officially open for occupancy in April. In addition to the 2.8 million square foot, naturally ventilated Foster + Partners'-designed "spaceship" building, the campus... View full entry
At an estimated $1.5 billion, the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago may end up costing more than three times what the George W. Bush Museum cost, according to new reports. This is primarily due to the fact that the center will house not one institution but two—both a presidential... View full entry
For the first time ever, the Carlson-Reges House designed by Michael Rotondi is up for sale. A collision of industrial materials and a 1920’s era power plant, the home is an iconic work of Los Angeles architecture that was awarded an American Institute of Architects award. It is listed for $... View full entry
Ian MacGregor, the president and chief executive of North West Upgrading Inc. and a self-described “guy who works in the oil business”, is reportedly planning to fund and develop a cluster of architectural icons in the idyllic foothills of Alberta. Dubbed the Carraig Ridge, the community will... View full entry
The intent is to not ask what the structure does, but how it imagines new possibilities
It has been said that play is the exultation of the possible. The Five Fields Play Structure then, is the fullest realization of this theory on play. Matter Design, an interdisciplinary design practice founded in 2008 by Brandon Clifford and Wes McGee, collaborated with FR|SCH, an architecture and... View full entry
Since they founded Duvall Decker nearly 20 years ago, the Deckers, as they’re known, have focused mostly on neglected corners in and around Jackson, Mississippi’s capital. To pay the bills, the two have redefined for themselves the ambit of a small architectural practice. They have become developers and even branched into building maintenance: a soup-to-nuts strategy that has allowed them more than just financial breathing room. — The New York Times
Helping impoverished Mississippi communities? Check. Making money while creating a business model that empowers you with the decision-making powers of developers? Check. Being notable and effective enough to earn your own profile in The New York Times by Michael Kimmelman? Done, done, and done for... View full entry
In pavilions you can test things you cannot do within buildings -Rem Koolhaas
Naomi Milgrom has appointed high-profile architects Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of Netherlands-based architecture firm OMA to design the fourth MPavilion temporary culture venue for Melbourne. MPavilion is Australia’s leading architectural commission and design event conceived and created... View full entry
The joint effort led to aesthetics that showcase a sleek, stylish yet minimalist concept...new digs are steeped in functionality...The improvements were the result of research...The ceilings are reminiscent of flowing table cloths, both for aesthetics and practical use, as they obscure equipment on the kitchen’s ceiling. — San Francisco Chronicle
Justin Phillips goes inside the French Laundry’s new $10 million kitchen. The expansion/revamp/upgrade was a collaboration between Chef Thomas Keller and Snøhetta. View full entry
They were basically city blocks that functioned as gated communities, with guards manning the front entrance. The whole essence of old Shanghai was that life was lived horizontally — all the activity happened at street level...Commissioned mostly by Western developers, the first shikumen appeared in the 1870s...local contractors who built them drew upon the interior floor plans of traditional Chinese courtyard homes and local decorative motifs. — NYT
Taras Grescoe pens a paean to shikumen, alleyway complexes entered through a stone-framed kumen (gateway), which at one point housed approximately 80 percent of the population of Shanghai. While fewer authentic examples remain, the city has in recent years begun redeveloping, "fake vintage"... View full entry
