Like all supertall skyscrapers, Tapei 101 has a mechanism inside to help stabilize itself in high winds. [...]
At 6:59 am, in the winds of Typhoon Soudelor, the damper moved by a full meter from its center position, farther than it has ever moved in the building's decade history. [...]
Soudelor brought sustained winds of 100 mph, with at least one confirmed gust of 145 mph .
— popularmechanics.com
Lafayette Park, the neighborhood northeast of downtown dotted with high-rises and townhouses, and known for its modern architecture, has attained the status of national historic landmark. [...]
The neighborhood consists of a 78-acre housing development designed and realized by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, considered a master of modern architecture. It was founded by developer Herb Greenwald to help keep the middle class in the city.
— The Detroit News
The three other sites that also recently gained landmark status are:George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria, VirginiaRed Rocks Park and Mount Morrison Civilian Conservation Corps Camp in Jefferson County, ColoradoFirst Peoples Buffalo Jump in Cascade County, MontanaMvdR-related... View full entry
The published renderings that accompanied the announcement were not terribly reassuring, as they depicted a very long curved terminal with gangly tentacles raised over plane taxiways that hinted at torsos of praying mantises: an awkward rather than a graceful vault. — 6sqft.com
Related: A new LaGuardia is the "airport that New York deserves", says Gov. Cuomo View full entry
Julia Ingalls reviewed "Work on Work" the current exhibition at Los Angeles’ Architecture + Design Museum, co-organized by Gensler and UCLA’s cityLAB. Therein she writes "This feeling of being at an un-airconditioned business conference is not helped by the next section of the exhibit, in... View full entry
According to the New York Times, the event cost around $1 million to produce and involved 40 stacked 20,000-lumen projectors on the roof of a building on West 31st Street that beamed 5K resolution video onto a space covering 33 floors — roughly 375 feet high and 186 feet wide. — HyperAllergic.com
The Empire State Building took a breather from being an icon last Saturday, and instead became the canvas for a series of projected images of endangered species and other trippy imagery. The event was part of "Projecting Change," an awareness-raising project thought up by noted National Geographic... View full entry
The recent real-life sale of the character Jesse's house from the TV series "Breaking Bad" is a reminder of how many single-family properties have become cinematic icons (and how it's tricky for private residents to live in such public locales). Although the new owners of Jesse's house will... View full entry
Construction of the Bjarke Ingels-designed 2 World Trade Center will come with a $4 billion price tag. The 2.8 million-square-foot downtown tower will top out at 1,340 feet, just 28 feet shy of One World Trade Center, which currently holds the title of the world’s most expensive office building with construction costs coming in at $3.8 billion. — 6sqft
Larry Silverstein, developer of 2 World Trade Center, is looking for $500 million in financing to fund the $4 billion tower’s completion. If all goes according to plan, a lease could be signed by the end of the year and construction could start next year with a 2020 completion date. View full entry
“Musings about a Brutalist building’s friendliness quotient are a distraction” - Anthony Carfello, artist — LA Forum Architecture / Urban Design
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Summer 2015 Newsletter surveys and critiques LA's own collection of high-quality brutalist buildings in a 'must be collected" issue that grew out of its own google map “Brutalism Los Angeles” and other resources. The Newsletter features a... View full entry
The Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth, Taranaki in New Zealand stands as an emblem of the sculptural works and philosophy of acclaimed artist Len Lye, who was a prominent figure in the kinetic sculpture and experimental film movements throughout the 20th century. Celebrating its grand opening late... View full entry
This week, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London announced that “the world’s longest and tallest tunnel slide” will wrap around Anish Kapoor’s “ArcelorMittal Orbit.” When the sculpture went up in 2009 after winning a design challenge, it proceeded to receive mostly scathing reviews — and a spot on the shortlist of the 2012 Carbuncle Cup [...]. Today, Kapoor revealed that the slide is actually a work of art, designed by none other than Carsten Höller at Kapoor’s own invitation. — hyperallergic.com
In other artsy-slide-related news on Archinect:Artist Carsten Höller to install massive slides on London's Hayward GalleryCarsten Höller Is Installing a Slide at New Museum View full entry
ThyssenKrupp's MULTI elevator test tower is happening, indeed — and at a seemingly impressive rate. Less than 10 months after starting construction, the currently 232-meter structure in the German city of Rottweil recently celebrated its topping out. ThyssenKrupp is aiming to have the tower... View full entry
You can still call it the John Hancock Tower, but the company that paid $930 million for New England’s tallest building can’t.
Now that John Hancock’s last lease in the office building has expired, owner Boston Properties Inc. can no longer use the financial services company’s name on the property.
— The Boston Globe
Related:Boston’s tallest new skyscraper in 40 years breaking ground todayBoston’s John Hancock Tower Receives the 2011 AIA Twenty-Five Year Award (on Bustler) View full entry
Architect Frank Gehry has often talked about the influence artists have had on his building designs. [...] An early work from the 1960s by sculptor Larry Bell in the Frank Lloyd show offers a partial template for a Gehry design built three decades ago in Toluca Lake.
Gehry's World Savings and Loan branch at Riverside Drive and Mariota Avenue is a sky-lighted, one-story hall framed by tall facades out front and in the back, as if a full second story had been planned but never built.
— latimesblogs.latimes.com
this is the deluxe rehabilitation package, a stark contrast to the mostly emergency work that's been done through the years to keep the building grunting along. [...]
“It's one of Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest works, and it's a masterpiece of modern architecture ... It's a building that changed a lot of architects' ideas about what architecture could do.”
The $23 million comes from a variety of sources, including part of a $1.75M Getty grant to fix compromised concrete in "Important Modern Buildings", and $200K in federal funds for general repairs. Unity Temple is also one of ten FLW buildings recently nominated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. View full entry
'We are transforming LaGuardia into a globally-renowned, 21st century airport that is worthy of the city and state of New York. It’s the perfect metaphor for what we can achieve with the ambition and optimism and energy that made this the Empire State in the first place, and I want to thank our many partners for joining us to build the airport that New York deserves.' — Gov. Cuomo — governor.ny.gov
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo alongside Vice President Joe Biden officially unveiled the proposed design for the new LaGuardia Airport earlier this week. The $4 billion revamp will transform the airport into a single, structurally unified main terminal, including expanded transportation access... View full entry