Cramped rooms with low ceilings and one small window facing directly on to a brick wall. If you crane your neck, you can just about see the outside world. It could be a description of the cells in Pentonville Prison, but these are the conditions enjoyed just down the road from the Victorian jail in a new student accommodation block for University College London – today announced as winner of the Carbuncle Cup by Building Design magazine, for the worst building of the year. — theguardian.com
Previously: Britain's worst buildings of the year - vote now for your (least) favorite! View full entry
Architects Alice Kimm, FAIA; John Mutlow, FAIA; Lorcan O’Herihy, FAIA; Warren Techentin, AIA; Patrick Tighe, FAIA; and Ed Woll, Ph.D. will present housing projects in development and discuss the potential of micro-housing units, transit oriented development and changing lifestyles to create livable density in LA. — USC Architecture
This past Wednesday, I attended a panel discussion of architects at the University of Southern California about the future of housing in Los Angeles -- an exciting and highly debatable topic nowadays, as transit networks expand and neighborhoods densify. Presented in conjunction with two... View full entry
China is home to 60 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings now under construction. But the skyward aspirations of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, have inspired incredulity tinged with hostility. [...] the project’s scale and speed have set off a burst of national introspection in recent days about whether Chinese municipal leaders and developers have gone too far in their increasingly manic reach for the skies. — nytimes.com
Previously: Sky City, world's tallest building, stops construction due to lack of government approval View full entry
Bolles+Wilson was commissioned to redesign the historic Hanomag "U-Boat Hall" into an RS+Yellow Furniture Outlet in Hanover, Germany—yet another example in the repurposing of unused industrial spaces and fusing the past with the present. The contemporary furniture pieces and the U-Boat... View full entry
[It] is the same technology as we use in Holland. It’s made up of concrete caisson, boxes, a shoebox of concrete. We fill them with styrofoam. So with [these] you get unthinkable floating foundations [...]
The house itself is the same as a normal house, the same material. Then you want to figure out how to get water and electricity and remove sewage and use the same technology as cruise ships."
- Koen Olthuis
— The Atlantic Cities
Dutch architect Koen Olthuis sees the future of architecture floating out to sea -- quite literally. Responding to undeniable ecological shifts of rising sea levels and seasonal flooding, Olthuis has proposed floatable-projects all along the social spectrum, designing prefabricated multi-use... View full entry
The fate of five Picasso murals on buildings damaged in the Anders Breivik bombing in Oslo in 2011 has led to a heated debate in Norway.
A panel of experts has recommended demolishing the buildings and removing the murals.
But art experts say that as the murals were designed by Picasso for those specific buildings, they should remain where they are.
The artworks were Picasso's first attempts at concrete murals.
— bbc.co.uk
Adrian Scott Fine, the conservancy’s director of advocacy, spoke with us about the importance of this national recognition, what it means for the historic houses and why an 11th home, Case Study House No. 23A, was deemed eligible to be listed but wasn’t because of the owner's objection. — latimes.com
Previously: LA's Most Famous House Finally Makes the National Register View full entry
Wiels Arets Architects recently won the competition to design the Europaallee 'Site D' building in Zurich. The building features repurposeful office and retail space with future plans for a conversion into residential units. 'Site D' is described as a key enhancement for the growing district of Europaallee. Construction will begin in 2017. — bustler.net
The first thing you notice when walking into Gallaudet University’s newest residence hall is how utterly familiar it looks. [...] Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. is home to nearly 2,000 students who are deaf or hearing impaired, and its recently built dorm was designed with them specifically in mind. — wired.com
Hard by the Yangtze River, ten miles from Nanjing, a giant, glowing hollowed-out trapezoid hovers above the trees. The otherworldly Sifang Art Museum, designed by the American architect Steven Holl, [...] an edgy sign of the ancient city’s rapid modernization. — smithsonianmag.com
A military bunker in Brdy that reportedly housed Soviet nuclear warheads during the years of the Cold War has been turned into an Atom Museum. It opened to the public last week attracting military buffs and historians from far and wide. — radio.cz
OMA's New York office will design the Bogotá Centro Administrativo Nacional (CAN), led by partner-in-charge Shohei Shigematsu in collaboration with local Columbian firm, Gomez + Castro. Winner of an international design competition, OMA's CAN will firstly serve as a new civic center... View full entry
Welcome to the world’s tallest slum: poverty-ridden Venezuela’s Tower of David. Squatters took over this very unfinished 45-story skyscraper in the early 1990s, and they’ve been there ever since. The tower was originally intended to be a symbol of Caracas’ bright financial future, complete with a rooftop helipad, but construction stopped because of a banking crisis and the sudden death of the tower’s namesake, David Brillembourg. — vocativ.com
In the latest edition of the Student Works feature, Building Soft takes on the L.A. River's infrastructure, students from SWA’s Summer Student Program presented projects such as; Topo-Infrastructure for Health, Stairway to the Hill, or Performative Punk Playground. NewsJustine Testado... View full entry
That the Antinori family embraced a more ambitious project, allowed Archea to design everything down to the furniture and fittings, then paid the bills after the budget more than doubled from its original $45 million, and also endured years of delays because of construction problems, shows how much fine, successful architecture depends on the right client. — New York Times
