If San Franciscans like to describe their city as “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world. Imagine a grand casino on Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge. — Architecture and the City Festival
San Francisco is a small yet fierce city; its 7x7 mile girth is home to a rich history of social activism, tech start-ups, foodies, artists, composting programs and absurdist housing rates. Given its compact and hilly terrain, any addition or subtraction would drastically impact the city’s... View full entry
The Case Study Houses have finally made the National Register of Historic Places (well, 11 of them have). [...]
The LA Conservancy's Modern Committee spent nearly a decade trying to get some of the CSHes recognized and last month the National Park Service officially listed 10 of the houses [...]; an eleventh "was determined eligible for listing but not formally listed due to owner objection," according to the Conservancy.
— la.curbed.com
Related: Why list Case Study houses on the National Register? View full entry
We have to admit, we haven't spent much time ogling the architecture of public pools. But those days are over, at least after catching a glimpse of Franck Bohbot's hypnotic photos of empty swimming vessels. [...] He is, he expressed, "interested in the relationship between the water, the architecture and the individual." — huffingtonpost.com
If you are in love with Franck Bohbot's photographs as much as we are, go and check out the Archinect In Focus feature we did with him in 2012. View full entry
Votes have been open for the Carbuncle Cup's annual naming and shaming since May. And now, here's the shortlist for the ugliest building of the year – from a swirly vertical pier to faux-fronted student flats. — theguardian.com
Click here to cast your vote in the poll for the UK's ugliest building of the year, hosted by The Guardian. In the running for this year's award are: Avant Garde tower, Bethnal Green, London UCL student housing, 465 Caledonian Road, Islington, London Porth Eirias Watersports Centre, Colwyn Bay... View full entry
Everyone makes mistakes. But when seemingly minor blunders are made in designing and building structures, the results can be catastrophic. Read about some of the more infamous architectural failures in history, and what we have learned from those mistakes. — NewSchool of Architecture + Design
[via NewSchool of Architecture + Design] View full entry
Any definitive insight into the formative stages of Roman architectural hubris lies irretrievable beneath layers of the city’s repeated renovations through the time of caesars, popes and the Renaissance [...] Now, at excavations 11 miles east of Rome’s city center, archaeologists think they are catching a glimpse of Roman tastes in monumental architecture much earlier than previously thought, about 300 years before the Colosseum. — nytimes.com
The New York Times recently reported on the ongoing excavations of Roman monumental remnants from the city's pre-Colosseum era at the Gabii digging site not far from the capital. Since last summer, a team of archaeologists and University of Michigan students led by classical studies... View full entry
Modern homes, both real and fake, as featured in the movies. — vimeo.com
The pre-fabricated, flatpack homes of Pritzker laureate Richard Rogers are a centerpiece for his 50-year retrospective, “Richard Rogers: Inside Out”, currently at London's Royal Academy of Arts until Oct. 13. The homes, which are an adaptation of his 2007 Oxley Woods housing... View full entry
The project – also comprising student accommodation in the form of gently angled big brick structures that meander down the hillside – is the work of Dublin-based Grafton Architects. The firm have created a sublime ensemble that's now in the running for best building of the year, having been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling prize. It would be my choice to win, given how radically it has reinvented two building types often consigned to dismal mediocrity. — theguardian.com
Click here to see other contenders for this year's RIBA Stirling Prize. Grafton Architects are also being featured in the upcoming exhibit Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined at London's Royal Academy of Arts. View full entry
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg penned the review A Panel Discussion for A+D Museum's "Never Built: Los Angeles". Attempting to answer the question "What's Next?" for LA, she suggested "The immediate goal is then to push urban design and architecture into daily conversations -- through political... View full entry
Though it features adult-film star James Deen and some explicit sex scenes, the only porn in "The Canyons" - the new movie directed by Paul Schrader and written by Bret Easton Ellis - is architecture porn. [...]
The Canyons also spotlights a different kind of architecture - the ugly, impersonal design of multiplex cinemas. The decrepit facades and interiors of these abandoned cineplexes form the visual chapter markers of a movie that is, in many ways, about the death of traditional moviegoing.
— latimes.com
Since we first announced that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was chosen to design the new federal courthouse in Downtown LA, construction for the new cubic courthouse at the corner of First Street and Broadway began on August 8. The approx. 600,000 square-foot building was proposed back in... View full entry
The eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was supposed to be the crowning glory of the bridge-builder’s art, gracefully echoing the rolling hills surrounding San Francisco Bay.
Yet as the project heads for a Labor Day opening after $6.4 billion and 15 years, the country’s most daringly iconic highway bridge stands as a poster child for those who think major infrastructure projects are wasteful.
— bloomberg.com
Previously: Bolts along Bay Bridge bike path fail View full entry
“We have beaten the odds and the obstructionists over and over again,” the mayor triumphantly declared in his State of the City address in March. He chose an appropriate venue: the Barclays Center, the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, which was a lightning rod for his all-out development policy. A vigorous opposition was beaten in the courts and the City Council in much the same way he often steamrolled opposition to his comprehensive rethinking of development. — nytimes.com
While Mayor Bloomberg has attracted media attention recently for his contentious opinions on "stop and frisk" policing and city-wide bans on soda, it's hard to argue with the New York Times' interactive infographic on Bloomberg's twelve-year mayoral run, highlighting his... View full entry
They look like shelters for hikers in a national park, but these wooden sheds in Switzerland have a rather less innocent purpose – they provide a discreet location for men to have sex with prostitutes. — telegraph.co.uk
In an attempt to "regulate prostitution, combat pimping and improve security for sex workers", Zurich has opened nine "sex boxes" in the former industrial zone of Zurich. The boxes are accessed by drivers following signed routes, where customers will find up to 40 prostitutes waiting to offer... View full entry
