Leagues and Legions (aka LGNLGN, a think tank at the intersection of architecture and publishing) and the Institute for Urban Design (IfUD) are asking critics, practitioners, academics, community organizers, and the general public to weigh in on one of four questions dealing with issues of... View full entry
The facade of Harpa is the work of an artist, the Icelandic-Danish Olafur Eliasson, who gets more attention and a higher billing than the hall's architects, the 52-year-old practice Henning Larsen Architects. They wear sober suits; Eliasson's leather waistcoat and silver-framed shades suggest creative leadership. His job is to provide that service that would once have been performed by Corinthian columns and statues of buxom nudes: to endow the house of culture with meaning and importance. — guardian.co.uk
In the past few days, we've received many exciting entries to the South Korean Busan Opera House competition. The entry "Filtration" from graduates of Columbia University received the second prize in the competition's student category. The design team included Paul Tse, Sarah Chung, Steven Tsai, Xander Lu, and Evelyn Ting. — bustler.net
Fallingwater was as handmade as any of the early Modern experimental structures that, while earnestly seeking the hallowed label of prefabrication, were largely handmade, with lumpy (handcrafted!) white stucco that was smooth only if you were two miles away. Like finally seeing a real Mondrian, with all of its beautiful “imperfections,” much of building today still remains “handmade” even when it means the final connections that make a building sing. — Lamprecht archiTEXTural
Author, preservationist and historian Barbara Lamprecht takes on an earlier WSJ article called, "What's So Great About Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater?" Read her response to second question in the article: Is Fallingwater a work of modernism? View full entry
Architecture students cross the Arts Quad and see the new studio space in Milstein Hall for the first time. Milstein Hall, designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, is the first new building for the Cornell University college of Architecture, Art, and Planning in more than 100 years... View full entry
This morning a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook the East Coast. The quake was felt from Virginia to Boston, even prompting the evacuation of the Pentagon and Capitol Building in Washington, and New York City Hall. Seismologists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have stated that once every 100 years, an earthquake of at least a magnitude of 5.0 rocks NYC. — Inhabitat NYC
Five years ago, local architecture and urban-design firm Farr Associates was asked to solve the problem. The company built a 2,600-square-foot house that is now “very, very close” to generating all of its own power, architect Jonathan Boyer says. The owners and designers continue to tweak the tech, and he’s expecting net-zero energy use in the next year-end report. — Wired Magazine
Wired Magazine in a collaborative partnership with Architectural Digest explores the Windy City’s first, (almost) net-zero-energy home. The home employs a butterfly roof and other smart design ideas to help it unplug from the grid. View full entry
There is one – large – detail. Two-thirds of the original 1,000 council flats will, with the help of public subsidy to the development, now be for private sale. The council says that it's better to have a mixture of tenures than to remake a "ghetto" of council tenants. This follows the current orthodoxy and might be entirely reasonable if the homes were being replaced elsewhere in the city. — Guardian
Rowan Moore reviews Urban Splash's renovation of the 1,000-flat Park Hill estate in Sheffield, the largest listed building in Europe. The renovation of which, has even won the approval of the estate's original architects. However, Mr. Moore finds that the larger cause for concern is not the... View full entry
In its sixth year, the Shaw Contract Group Design Is… Award program honored oustanding projects by architecture and design firms. Through these winning projects, selected from commercial and hospitality spaces from around the globe, design is teaching, inspiring, healing, and uniting. — bustler.net
“If this project is viable, why hasn’t it been done over the years?” asks Deborah Howlett, the president of the New Jersey Policy Perspective. “Why does it take $350 million from the people of New Jersey?” She finds it particularly galling that the financing for the almost $4 billion megamall was arranged in a year when Christie slashed 5 percent of the school system’s annual funds. — New York Magazine
In New Jersey's Meadowlands a mall currently under construction will be one of the biggest feats of construction in history. Being developed by Triple Five, the Alberta-based developer, the mall will be the world’s largest commercial space with at least six zeros attached to all... View full entry
MGM Resorts International on Monday said it wants to destroy its Harmon building — an unfinished condo-and-hotel tower riddled with construction engineering problems. Designed by famed architect Norman Foster, the Harmon is part of the Las Vegas Strip’s $9 billion CityCenter project... — blogs.wsj.com
As we reported 3 years ago, Vegas' Harmon Hotel gets cut in half. View full entry
Following a drop of almost a full point in June, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) fell again by more than a point in July. allSTAR believes "its time to get creative with business strategies and contracts. also not a bad time to hire risk managers"
News Following a drop of almost a full point in June, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) fell again by more than a point in July. allSTAR believes "its time to get creative with business strategies and contracts. also not a bad time to hire risk managers" The Cupertino City Council... View full entry
The World Architecture Festival Awards program has announced its 2011 award shortlist with 281 entries spanning the globe from as far south as Tasmania to the Arctic Circle in Norway with new countries such as Libya, Haiti and Cambodia appearing alongside the USA, UK, Australia, China, Japan, Spain, and Scandinavia. — bustler.net
New for WAF 2011 is the introduction of the OpenBuildings People’s Choice Award which is being supported by our friends at OpenBuildings.com. To view the shortlisted projects, cast your vote and provide comments, visit: http://openbuildings.com/peoples_choice/waf/leaderboard. Votes can be... View full entry
Competition entries to the tremendously popular Busan Opera House competition keep pouring into our inbox these days. Here is another one of our favorites, the proposal "Anisotropia" designed by London-based studio Orproject. The design team included Ho-Ping Hsia, Christoph Klemmt, Rolando Rodriguez-Leal, Rajat Sodhi, Natalia Wrzask, and Christine Wu. — bustler.net
Kubota & Bachmann Architects from Zurich, Switzerland have sent us their entry "Harmony" for the Korean Busan Opera House ideas competition. The design team included Toshihiro Kubota and Yves Bachmann. — bustler.net