After years of controversy and delays, the 16-acre World Trade Center site is finally taking shape. Construction cranes and exposed steel frames dominate the site, towering over the National September 11 Memorial. Here is an update on the major projects — featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com
If you love Apple and fine ingenious design as much as we do, you will be thrilled to hear that the beautiful, environmentally-aware Foster + Partners designed new Apple Campus is now one step closer to becoming a reality. The Cupertino City Council has just announced that Apple Inc. has submitted a development proposal for their new Apple Campus. — openbuildings.com
What hit me there was the awful anticlimax of repetition. A singular moment, the Big Bang that launched a fearful decade, is marked by déjà vu. “Never forget,” this monument exhorts—and then says it again — New York Magazine
Justin Davidson reviews Michael Arad's almost completed 9/11 memorial. He finds that while the original concept was noteworthy for its poetic simplicity, a thicket of bureaucracies, budgets, rules, security fears, agendas, and political interests have dogged virtually every step of the... View full entry
New images of Jean Nouvel's Torre Verre were revealed. George Showman comments "It's frustrating they cut this thing down so it wouldn't offend the tourists on the Empire State viewing platform (well, I love that view too, but always wish there were more tall buildings to look at). The new version is not nearly as beautiful, taken as a monolith...Finally: can't believe there is still the money in high-end real estate to pay for this kind of ridiculous building."
The newest ShowCase features Butaro Hospital in Rwanda designed by MASS Design Group. Besides the locally-sensitive design of the complex, the project is noteworthy for it's emphasis on social design through capacity-building. "Beyond providing access to first-rate healthcare... View full entry
King Abdullah of Jordan, who was once an extra in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, has given the green light to a $1.5 billion Star Trek-inspired theme park that will boldly take Jordan where no Gulf state has gone before. While the theme park will not be powered by dilithium crystals, it will utilize green technology in order to lower its carbon footprint. — Inhabitat
UPDATE: Hanin Fakhriddin, IP & Brand Protection Manager at Rubicon Group, one of the creators behind the theme park, just contacted us from Amman, Jordan and pointed out that "the Theme Park is not a Star Trek Theme Park, nor a theme park revolving around Star Trek. It will be dedicated to... View full entry
In a week dominated by images of buildings burning to the ground, there have been at least a few people out there still building the things. The press was granted a preview of King's Cross station's new concourse, ahead of its opening in time for the Olympics next year. Designed by architect John McAslan, it is a majestically conceived space which stands alongside the Grade 1-listed sheds and replaces the cramped and grotty 1960s extension that currently serves as the station's entrance. — guardian.co.uk
at its heart, the memorial has come through at least somewhat intact. And at ground zero, that is saying quite a bit. - Christopher Hawthorne — L.A.Times
If anything can be said from a single image above, the upcoming memorial will be highly emotional, meaningful, well visited and worth the wait. View full entry
Ada Louise has a voice (acerbic defender of the city); Goldberger has a voice (the artful company man); Muschamp had a voice (champion of glamour). Nicolai, alas, has no voice. Kimmelman will need to stake out some critical territory for himself, a voice on the subject. … — Observer
Ms. Julie Iovine an ex editor of NYT's Home Magazine whose quotes were relied upon in this article, noted “There’s a worry now, that someone who is known as an art critic—an appraiser of the object—will be tempted to also treat architecture as an object. It ain’t so!... View full entry
I believe with every fiber of my being that God turned the eyes of the world on Crystal Cathedral because God wants to make a big bold statement, he wants the world to know that he is a God who still does miracles — Reuters
Philip Johnson's masterpiece, the Crystal Cathedral is the subject of bidding wars between Chapman University, Roman Catholic Archdiocese and the retailer Hobby Lobby. Sheila Schuller Coleman, director of ministry at the church and the daughter of Schuller also thinks they can raise the... View full entry
The Chapel of St. Lawrence in Vantaa and the famous Temppeliaukio Church in Helsinki are both results of architectural competitions. The competition system has brought around a hundred church buildings to Finland. — yle.fi
We've just discovered Apple will be updating their iconic Cube structure at their midtown Manhattan retail location, replacing the current cube of 90 panes with just 15 massive, and I mean massive, pieces of glass... The slabs will be roughly 10 feet wide by a whopping 32 feet high, and held together using some sort of secret, proprietary connector that will reportedly be embedded within the glass itself, rather than being comprised of mere external clips. — core77.com
If you're going to have a mental breakdown the best place to have it is in Spring and in Cambridge.'These are the words of artist, visionary and outsider architect John Devlin, whose book 'Nova Cantabrigiensis' presents his intriguing vision of a utopian island based on Cambridge, which he considers the ideal city. — Wallpaper
As for the appearance of the building, compared to earlier drawings and renderings, it does look a little bit squatter, but not by much, and the articulation of the tower has changed slightly. Viewed from Brooklyn, across the East River, it would not be invisible, either, appearing somewhere in the lee between One Bryant Park and the old CitiCorp Center. Still, it will not tower over these buildings, either. — Observer
A slideshow of architectural drawings show just how much, yet just how little, Jean Nouvel's Torre Verre has changed. View full entry
Google has hired Ingenhoven Architects, a German firm that specializes in sustainable architecture and has completed award-winning green designs from Sydney to Stuttgart, to develop plans for what could total nearly 600,000 square feet of space. Google currently owns or leases about 4.3 million square feet of space in Mountain View, according to its securities filings. — mercurynews.com
Orhan Ayyüce comments "as simple as it is, one of the most beautiful houses i have seen in this age of dwell magazine and ikea type of joint business deals which tend to glorify form and materiality to boredom.."
Archinect's newest Showcase features the House in Geumsan. The project is located in South Korea and designed by Hyungnam Lim, Eunjoo Roh + studio_GAON. With the project the designers tried to highlight the element of Korean architecture that distinguishes it from Japanese or Chinese... View full entry
