Just nine months after a catastrophic earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, killing hundreds of thousands of people, a cholera epidemic broke out. While it became clear shortly after that the epidemic began with U.N. peacekeepers, who had been active in Haiti since 2004 and brought the disease from Nepal... View full entry
After more than four years of wrangling over Frank Gehry's proposal for the Eisenhower memorial, the Eisenhower family has removed its objections to a modified version of the initial design. Although information about specific design changes and compromises was scant, according to Reuters the... View full entry
Exhibitions from our founding in 1929 to the present are available online. These pages are updated continually. — MoMA
Go ahead and dig in! All there, including architecture. Now, that's a museum service. View full entry
The Brock Commons at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver has been topped off, making it the world’s tallest wood building. The 18-story tower, a student residence, was completed in less than 70 days using prefabricated components. The project was completed four months earlier than... View full entry
Chicago’s Union Station is slated to get a $1 billion facelift that could add up to 3 million sq. ft. of new buildings. Amtrak just announced a shortlist of four contenders for the gig, as reported by Chicago Real Estate Daily. The shortlist comprises the development firms John Buck, Riverside... View full entry
Standing assertively in the middle of a 15-acre lawn, between the sharp white obelisk of the Washington Monument and the colossal stone shed of the National Museum of American History, the latest arrival to this hallowed parade ground certainly holds its own. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture erupts from the ground, an inverted pagoda of three angular bronzed tiers on an all-glass base, departing from its neighbours’ sombre palette...with joyous glee. — the Guardian
Like the exhibitions inside it, the museum building embodies its complexities and contradictions, charged as it is with a brief and a site as impossibly fraught as the history it is telling. Despite some clunks, the result has a compelling, spiky otherness, standing on the Mall as a welcome rebuke... View full entry
Big, bold and basket-shaped, the structure, “Vessel,” stands 15 stories, weighs 600 tons and is filled with 2,500 climbable steps. Long under wraps, it is the creation of Thomas Heatherwick, 46, an acclaimed and controversial British designer, and will rise in the mammoth Far West Side development Hudson Yards, anchoring a five-acre plaza and garden that will not open until 2018. Some may see a jungle gym, others a honeycomb. — the New York Times
But Stephen M. Ross, the billionaire founder and chairman of Related Companies, which is developing Hudson Yards with Oxford Properties Group, has his own nickname for “Vessel”: “the social climber.” And the steep price tag Mr. Ross’s privately held company is paying for Mr... View full entry
Following the Olympics’ closing ceremony, and as September’s Paralympic Games continue, international attention has begun to shift to the future of Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic sites. These buildings must be built to evolve to accommodate Paralympic and future athletes, and the success of this... View full entry
During his time in power, as head of state and as leader of the all-powerful, secularist Ba’th party, Saddam would oversee an unprecedented program of monumental development across the historic city of Baghdad. This was not limited to monuments of war and hollow bronze shells, but enormous palatial complexes, museums, art galleries, and civic squares [...] marshal it, awkwardly, unevenly, into the post-industrial age, a modern city shaped by the aspirations and egotistical tastes of a despot. — failedarchitecture.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Iraq honors Zaha Hadid with commemorative stamp — which features rejected Tokyo stadium designDestruction of Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery by ISIS militants went unreported for 16 months View full entry
A glass-bottomed bridge in China that was heralded as a record-breaker when it opened just 13 days ago has closed.
Officials said the government was planning urgent maintenance work in the area and the bridge closed on Friday, with a re-opening time to be announced. [...]
He said there had been no accidents and the bridge was not cracked or broken. [...]
The bridge can accommodate 8,000 visitors a day but the spokesman told CNN that 10 times as many people wanted access daily.
— bbc.com
Yibada reports that the bridge upgrades were going as scheduled and that the attraction was set to re-open to the public this week.Previously in the Archinect news:World's longest and highest glass bridge opens in ChinaChina announces world's longest and highest glass bridge View full entry
Despite introducing what seemed like excellent legislation to help increase the number of affordable housing units in developer-backed housing projects, California governor Jerry Brown's proposal caused so much multi-faceted angst it became political poison, primarily because it gently... View full entry
The $12 million project, managed by Tishman Construction Corporation, came about in May 2014 when an ornamental plaster rosette fell 52 feet from the Reading Room’s ceiling. In addition to recreating and replacing this piece, all 900 rosettes in both rooms were reinforced with steel cables. Other work included the recreation of a 27′ x 33′ James Wall Finn mural on the ceiling of the Catalog Room and the restoration of the chandeliers. — 6sqft
After a two-year restoration, the New York Public Library's historic Rose Main Reading Room and Bill Blass Public Catalog Room will reopen to the public ahead of schedule on Wednesday, October 5th. To mark the occasion, the NYPL has released a series of incredible before-and-after photos. View full entry
A groundbreaking ceremony has taken place in Copenhagen for Foster + Partners’ headquarters for Ferring Pharmaceuticals.
The 39,000 square metre office is located on the urban fringe of the city in Kastrup, near the international airport, where it is possible to see the Swedish city of Malmö, where Ferring was founded.
The structure is made up of a triangular glass building that appears to float above a stone plinth, which also acts as its first line of defence against floods.
— globalconstructionreview.com
Other recent Foster + Partner stories in the Archinect news:Construction begins on major Foster + Partners project in SwedenApple's spaceship campus, by the numbers (including an estimated $5b price tag)What does a $1 million dollar staircase look like? View full entry
“This is the end of the matter, we have ruled out state funding (for Guggenheim) once and for all, for this government, we are not opposed to the project as such, we just don’t think it is something that the state should participate in.” — Hyperallergic
"Champions of the Guggenheim Helsinki don’t plan on giving up. The Guggenheim Foundation said it will continue talks with the government and the city to find other funding options. But without the state’s help, plans for the outpost could now be dead in the water: at an expected cost of... 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... View full entry