Speaking at the V&A last week, the former Foreign Office Architects partner said that she was "dubious" about volunteers who see working in these places as an "easy option". — Architectural Record
Moussavi, who teaches at Harvard and runs her own practice in London, said: "It's quite telling that Harvard students, when they want to be activists, have to go to these areas of the world. It's tougher to be an activist in America. View full entry
Nona Yehia and Jefferson Ellinger established the architectural firm, Ellinger/Yehia Design LLC in 2003 to investigate links between architecture, landscape and technology. In 2004, the firm opened an office in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to further explore these inter-relationships. Architects... View full entry
Built on a temporary site and made entirely from recycled shipping containers, London's latest retail park lays claim to be the world's first ever "pop-up" shopping mall. The aptly-named "Boxpark" opened for business today along a vacant strip of east London's fashionable Shoreditch High Street. It is composed of 60 standard-size shipping containers, stacked two stories high and five rows wide. — cnn.com
Technologies, such as building information modeling and integrated-product delivery, have enabled architecture firms to design better buildings and deliver them more quickly and more efficiently. Yet in today's fiercely competitive global marketplace, efficiency and speed alone are not enough to guarantee market viability. The real differentiator is design—as an engine of innovation and a productive force for creating economic value. — Michael Speaks, archrecord.construction.com
...the city should reverse its approach, zoning neighborhoods like Midtown, Lower Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by thinking first about the shape of public space instead of private development. — New York Times
Lautner's homes have appeared in Hollywood movies, but the architect himself wasn't particularly well-known when he died in 1994. Still, in 2011 — the centennial year of Lautner's birth — his hometown of Marquette, Mich., has honored him with two exhibitions: one at Northern Michigan University's DeVos Art Museum and one at the Marquette Regional History Center. — NPR
John Lautner's homes have been featured in many movies, but few people actually know who the architect was who came up with the designs. His space-age designs were probably a favourite of the cinematic because the designs themselves look like something which might be dreamed up by a set... View full entry
Finally, toasteroven has recently "got word from a couple local arch programs that enrollment has dropped this past year" and asks if anyone else has heard the same? To which jordans99 replies "Based on what I've heard, I expect that applications will be stagnant if not decrease.
In the latest installment of Archinect’s Contours feature EDD DE 1101 I, Guy Horton cops a David Wallace and his writing takes a biographically satiric turn from recent Contours. "Hello! Author here. Just interjecting at the onset of this article to make it clear that, yes, I am... View full entry
Listing some 4.5 meters (15 feet) from the perpendicular, the disused structure is sliding ever closer to collapse. Bad Frankenhausen has repeatedly put forward ambitious and expensive plans, but none could guarantee success, and some could even have damaged the building. — Der Spiegel
For years, the spa town of Bad Frankenhausen, in the eastern state of Thuringia, has fought to save the dangerously tilting tower. But after the state this week rejected the town's latest proposal to stabilize the landmark, citing concerns over the long-term viability of the plan, there is no... View full entry
For many Americans who bought more home than they could really afford in the giddy days before the crash, the big-house dream has become a nightmare in the ashes of foreclosure and regret.
So after all that, how does 84 square feet sound?
— New York Times
Just west of Chaoyang Park, dog walkers, joggers and local residents have been following the strangely curvaceous metal structure slowly writhing into existence. Hong Kong's Phoenix Media has chosen Beijing to create their mainland headquarters, using an architectural design which boldly expresses its intentions to move away from tradition toward the open ideals of the future. — english.cri.cn
If bookmakers put odds on architecture, they surely would have made Chicago architect Jeanne Gang one of the favorites to win the big design competition to remake the public spaces of Navy Pier. [...]
But when Navy Pier officials winnowed 11 semifinalist teams to a list of five finalists last week, Gang, surprisingly, lost out. And she wasn't the only high-profile name who didn't make the cut.
— chicagotribune.com
A group of consultants in Paris has hatched a plan to turn the Eiffel Tower into a giant tree by covering it with 600,000 plants. Their dream is to literally plant the 324 meter tall aesthetic symbol of Paris with 12 tons of rubber tubing, and gradually add bags planted with greenery all over. — Inhabitat
Is it a building filled with art with some people in it, or a building filled with people with some art in it? There needs to be enough social space to make people feel comfortable in what can be an austere environment, the white box. You shouldn’t feel like you need to be quiet in the public spaces. — New York Times
Oftentimes, United States' military men and women carry the physical and emotional wounds of their service home with them, "find[ing] workarounds to cope with their surroundings based on individual capabilities and preferences." Today, IDEO and Michael Graves Associates see their work come alive as the U.S. Army Fort Belvoir and Clark Realty Capital unveil a new model for building accessible homes on military installations: the Wounded Warrior home. — core77.com
The entries in the Pier Design Contest are in, and the options are as interesting as they are different.
The three architectural firms, selected from a field of nine diverse semi finalists yesterday are Michael Maltzan Architecture, West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, and BIG.
— I love the 'burg'