Situating The Mound of Vendôme, the current exhibition on view at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, requires looking back into Paris' history after the French Revolution. For a tumultuous two months in 1871, the city was under the control of the Commune de Paris, a socialist revolutionary... View full entry
The Russian architect Yuri Grigoryan, and his firm Project Meganom, have been chosen for the long-delayed 22bn ruble ($640m) expansion of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. The new design replaces a controversial proposal by the British architect Norman Foster that required the destruction of historic buildings, upsetting preservationists. Foster pulled out of the project last year. — theartnewspaper.com
Previously: Lord Foster withdraws from Moscow museum expansion View full entry
According to data compiled by the firm PropertyShark, since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors [...] “The global elite,” says developer Michael Stern, “is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.” — New York Magazine
"[...] In this project, we're using a living organism as a factory. So the living organism of mycellium, or hyphae, which is basically a mushroom root, basically makes our bricks for us. It grows our bricks in about five days with no energy required, almost no carbon emissions, and it's using basically waste— agricultural byproducts, chopped up cornstalks. This mushroom root fuses together this biomass and makes solid bricks which we can kind of tune to be different properties." — The Creators Project
Here are a few more photos of Hy-Fi, the locally-sourced, virtually waste-less biostructure by The Living, which just debuted in the courtyard of MoMA PS1. Photos by Andrew Nunes. In the video below, David Benjamin talks with The Creators Project about building the structure from agricultural... View full entry
A dramatic architectural landmark—two large concrete and aluminium cubes towering above a transparent glass base—opened its doors to the public this weekend in the north-eastern Spanish city of Zaragoza. The building is Spain’s seventh CaixaForum, one of a string of cultural centres financed by La Caixa, the foundation of the Barcelona-based savings bank. — theartnewspaper.com
Putting aside Rocky—though that's hard to do these days—there's a bigger problem looming over Gehry's expansion plans. That problem is Gehry. Not for all the reasons that Gehry's critics like to cite, chapter and verse, about why he doesn't deserve to be an ambassador for cool architecture. In fact, Gehry's critics may find plenty to admire in his plans for the Art Museum. Frankly, it's not very Gehry. — citylab.com
Previously: Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition to reveal Frank Gehry’s renovation plan this summer View full entry
Human Rights Watch said that, along with the Crystal Hall, stage of the 2012 Eurovision song contest, and the park-cum-shopping mall of the Winter Garden, the centre is one of the city's many oil-fuelled grand projects that have seen local people evicted by force. — theguardian.com
From earlier today: Zaha Hadid wins the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year Award 2014While almost 250 homes were cleared to make way for Hadid's building, (questions have also been raised about the rights of those who built it. In 2010, while the project was under construction, the global... View full entry
Zaha Hadid is the first woman to win the Design Museum's Designs of the Year Award 2014 with her Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan. Another first in this year's competition is that the Heydar Aliyev Center is the first architectural project to win the widely recognized award. — bustler.net
The competition began with 76 nominations in the categories Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Product, and Transport, followed by the selection of the seven Category winners.Any thoughts on the jury's selection? Share 'em in the comment section below. View full entry
A group of students at the Eindhoven University of Technology are trying to build a new, temporary version of the monumental church well before then, but with some notable differences. At just over 123 feet tall, their Sagrada Familia will be a 1:4 model of the original. It will be erected on a site in Finland, almost 2,000 miles north of Barcelona. It will take them three weeks to build it this winter, rather than a century. And instead of stone, it will be constructed out of ice. — qz.com
This, if it is a harsh way to describe the British Museum's attempts to update itself over the last two decades, with the help of the most famous architects in the land and hundreds of millions in generous donations, nonetheless reflects what's going on. Like large cultural institutions everywhere, the museum finds itself dealing with similar pressures to those of commercial players in the fields of leisure and entertainment [...] and it reaches for similar solutions.. — theguardian.com
Philip Johnson lovers rejoice! It was just announced that the city will put aside $5.8 million to restore the dilapidated crown jewel of the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Funding for the restoration of the “Tent of Tomorrow” came via Mayor Bill de Blasio, who contributed $4.2 million to the project, while the rest was provided by City Council and Borough President Melinda Katz... Efforts to restore the project will begin soon, but a bumpy road lies ahead… — 6sqft
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
Filling up the ole’ gas tank is not a glamorous job, and usually not a task that leaves one marveling at the surrounding architecture. But in 1927, Prairie-style extraordinaire Frank Lloyd Wright put together plans for a fuel filling station in Buffalo, New York that would leave even the most seasoned driver awe struck ... 90 years later, the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum has realized Wright’s vision. — 6sqft
While Renzo Piano's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens (SNFCC) is still under construction, it didn't keep the first performance from being staged last Wednesday on the site. Based on Renzo Piano's own idea, the Greek National Orchestra scored a 15-minute "dance" performance... View full entry
The Moscow city government is asking citizens to weigh in on the fate of the Shukhov radio tower, a rusted icon of Soviet constructivist architecture that’s threatened with demolition. [...]
The vote, which began this week and runs until July 6, is being held on Active Citizen, an iOS and Android app released by the city last month. The app polls citizens on topics such as street-tree planting and changes to daylight savings time.
— qz.com
UPDATE: Moscow Puts Iconic Shukhov Tower on Protected Landmark ListPreviously: Architects Try to Save a Tower in Moscow View full entry