Diller Scofidio + Renfro was announced as part of the winning team who will design and build the new U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum and Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colorado...the $60 million project will display artifacts, media, technology, tell the stories of American Olympic and Paralympic athletes, and share the historical significance and national pride spurred by the Olympic Games. — bustler.net
The winning team includes:Diller Scofidio + Renfro from New York (design architects)Anderson Mason Dale Architects of Denver (architect of record)Gallagher and Associates from Washington, D.C. (exhibit designers)Pacific Studio of Portland, Oregon (exhibit fabricators)GE Johnson of Colorado Springs... View full entry
The Finnish Committee for the Restoration of the Viipuri Library with the Central City Alvar Aalto Library in Vyborg recently won the 2014 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize for restoring Alvar Aalto's historic Viipuri Library in Vyborg, Russia. Established in 2008, the prize is awarded biennially for an innovative architectural or design solution that has preserved or enhanced a modern landmark or group of landmarks. — bustler.net
The biennial Knoll Prize will be presented at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City on December 1, followed by a free public lecture from the winners. The prize includes a cash award of $10,000 and a limited edition Mies van der Rohe-designed Barcelona Chair from Knoll.The Viipuri Library, c... View full entry
Yesterday, during a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria, Chinese architect Ma Yansong of MAD Architects unveiled his design concept for the future Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts and told reporters that his concept — a seven-story, dome-like structure that gently slopes towards a halo-like observation deck — represents a "new type of architecture." That may be an understatement. — chicago.curbed.com
Learn more about the design in the Museum's announcement. View full entry
The whitewashing and subsequent demolition of Long Island City graffiti mecca 5Pointz was painful enough for the arts community, but now G&M Realty, the developer responsible for the loss, wants to trademark the 5Pointz name and use it for their new residential towers at the site. And artists are not happy, saying the developer is trying to bank off their name. — 6sqft
Friday, October 31:New Plan for Architecture School at Wright Foundation: Facing the loss of its accreditation in 2017, the school is considering independent incorporation in order to continue operating.Thursday, October 30:Archinect's Lexicon: "Anthropocene": Recognizing that "Architecture... View full entry
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled a new presidential palace on the outskirts of Ankara. The immense project has been built at a reported cost of $350m. The building has been denounced by ecologists as an environmental blight and by the opposition as evidence of Erdogan’s autocratic tendencies. Supporters say the palace is a symbol of what the president touts as his drive towards a ‘new Turkey’ — The Guardian
The question is that Turkey having few (1, 2, 3) historically significant presidential residences, why would anybody tore down forest areas and historically significant farm to build this make do palace? Showcase of power? Well maybe they can put up visiting American diplomats within reach. View full entry
“Condé Nast’s arrival puts a stiletto in the heart of the outdated notion that Lower Manhattan is stuffy and gray,” said Jessica Lappin, president of the Downtown Alliance, a local business organization. “They will accelerate the transformation that’s well underway and create additional demand-side pressure for more cool restaurants, art galleries and bars.” — nytimes.com
Thirteen years after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, and a fair share of construction delays, 1 World Trade Center is open for business. While the tower's 102 floors are currently only 58% occupied, mostly by media giant Condé Nast (of Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, and... View full entry
His favored collaborator was the British architect George Leopold (Tug) Wilson, whose travels had exposed him to Parisian Art Deco and the latest American skyscrapers...His clean designs, though not the first time modernism came to Shanghai, brought a touch of Gotham to a city whose architectural face had hitherto had a stodgy, neo-Classical cast. — NYT
Taras Grescoe explores the architectural remnants of pre-revolutionary Shangha built by Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon, the third baronet of Bombay. View full entry
Some of the damage could be repaired, he said. Still, “it won’t be the same,” he said. “Once you have blown down a building, it is blown down.” — NYT
Graham Bowley draws attention to the list of cultural treasures in Syria and northern Iraq, that have been; destroyed, damaged or looted, as a result of three years of war. For more information, see previous coverage here, here and here. View full entry
In Screen/Print #26: an interview with Jessica Walsh, currently half of design firm Sagmeister & Walsh, was excerpted, from the 2nd issue of Intern Magazine (devoted to "intern culture" in the creative industries). Darkman was confused "Strange choice to interview the most hated... View full entry
By the end of next year one-in-three of the world’s 100m+ skyscrapers will be in China, as its state-orchestrated urbanisation drive prompts a megacity building bonanza [...]
China now has over 140 cities of more than one million people; America has nine
— theguardian.com
Los Angeles' vast freeway system is incomplete — at least by the standards of its architects. In the 1940s, freeways were sketched through Santa Monica Boulevard, along Melrose, Highland and La Brea avenues, and near the Griffith Observatory. Many of L.A.'s freeways were built during the 1960s, but a combination of a freeway revolt, skyrocketing costs and a failure to increase the gas tax doomed the expansion of the freeway system during the 1970s. — LA Times
Whew. View full entry
This would be the first U.S. tower for Snøhetta, founded in Norway but on the rise in the United States since being selected in 2004 to design the pavilion for the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.
Snøhetta will replace an even better-known architect for the corner: Richard Meier, the Pritzker Prize-winning designer of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, whose firm has been working on a tower in the same location since 2008.
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The site in question is directly adjacent the Civic Center's metro stop on Market St., and a large part of the developer's plans revolve around shifting this existing stop one block north, to avoid (in the SFGate author's words) the "squalid even by neighborhood standards" area. The residential... View full entry
When we last checked in with Eli Broad’s eponymous downtown museum, its fall 2014 debut had been pushed back to some time in 2015. Today it was announced that the institution will open in fall 2015, although no precise date was given. [...]
The multi-story building, designed Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is still in the midst of construction. When it opens it will join two MOCA facilities and the Japanese American National Museum, making the northern end of downtown something of a museum hub.
— lamag.com
Previously:Los Angeles cultural boom gives city’s artists spaces they can call homeEli Broad’s Art Showcase in Los Angeles, Still Unfinished, Sues Over DelaysEli Broad's art museum, designed by DS+R, to open in late 2014 and will offer free admission View full entry
Between 1893 and 1919— 3-decade run referred to as the Golden Age of the American public library system—Carnegie paid to build 1,689 libraries in the U.S. These seeded the DNA for nearly every American library built before the end of World War II. That may explain in part why there is no central accounting for Carnegie's libraries, which were built without any oversight from a formal program or foundation: Even libraries that aren't historical Carnegie libraries share their aesthetic philosophy. — citylab.com