"The Student Learning Centre will provide bright, open, technologically rich, barrier-free spaces for individual and collaborative study that will accommodate our students' different learning styles and our faculties' different teaching practices..." — Provost Alan Shepard
The 155,463 sq. ft. Student Learning Center will feature a facade system that passively adjusts natural light levels and a roof that's at least 50% green. In addition, the school hopes to attain LEED Silver status. Expected to be completed by 2014, the center is designed for everyone in mind... View full entry
"There’s not one bit of drywall or plasterboard or anything like that, so everything has a material that is itself." — When A Building Makes You Who You Are: Jen Graves
Jen Graves interviews artist Leo Berk, who claims his childhood home, the Ruth Berk house by "not-quite-legitimate architect, in a good way, Bruce Goff", was the formative experience that made him become an artist. View full entry
Top management with the Division of the State Architect – the chief regulator of school construction – for years did nothing about nearly 1,100 building projects that its own supervisors had red-flagged. Safety defects were logged and then filed away without follow-up from the state. — Corey G. Johnson, California Watch
In the wake of the arrest of AI Weiwei, his objections and criticism regarding school construction safety in China were not taken lightly by anyone including the Chinese people and the Chinese government.A similar case is unfolding in the State of California. California Watch is covering a... View full entry
A global architect based in Boston, Mr. Safdie wants Toronto’s planners and politicians to explode conventional thinking and dream big like the visionaries writing the design manifestos in China and Singapore, where Safdie Architects were lead designers of the just-completed $5.7-billion Marine Bay Sands hotel, casino and art science museum complex. — theglobeandmail.com
The Globe & Mail interview Moshe Safdie about his ides for Toronto. View full entry
David Chipperfield’s revamp of the Neues Museum in Berlin has won the 2011 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – the Mies van der Rohe Award. — BDOnline
BDonline broke the news that architect David Chipperfield has received the Mies van der Rohe award for his working on the restoration of the Neues Museum in Berlin: a cash prize of 60,000€. The 2011 jury included Mohsen Mostafavi, Ole Bouman, Annette Gigon, Yvonne Farrell, Zhu Pei and Tarald... View full entry
Linked Hybrid is designed with the clear intent of carving public space out of "monofunctional" private housing — and formally constructed in porous fashion to signal and direct this — yet the social and cultural patterns which overlay, occupy and appropriate the built form deny this idea entirely. This is most obvious in the form of gun-toting guards; more subtle again in the expensive furniture shops that dominate the ground-plane. — City of Sound
After visiting Holl's super-structure Hill was struck by the difference between the intended urban porosity in terms the architectural design and the reality of the tension between public/private development in contemporary Beijing. View full entry
Members of this organization begin the narrative process by examining city neighborhoods and commercial districts for compelling structures that appear to have fallen into disuse—“hidden gems” of the built environment. In varying states of repair, these buildings suggest only stories about the past, not the future. — bldgblog.blogspot.com
The 1941 Maxwell house by Richard Neutra, one of Southern California's most celebrated residential architects, is being moved in pieces from Brentwood to a vacant lot in Angelino Heights, the neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles best known for its restored Victorians. Photographer Brian Thomas Jones was on the scene as the first part of the 1,700-square-foot wooden structure made the journey down Sunset Boulevard to its new home. — LA Times
The LA Times covers the moving of Neutra's Maxwell house. View full entry
Norwegian practice A-lab won the open international ideas competition on climate efficient urban development on Furuset area in Oslo. — bustler.net
The project goal is to condense the suburb Furuset i Groruddalen outside Oslo with 2,500 new homes and 1,500 new workspaces, and to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2030. The project provides a district that stands for sustainable urban development. View full entry
Paris town council has given the green light to a controversial "Triangle" tower rising 590ft above Paris which critics say is an "attack on the beauty of the French capital". — telegraph.co.uk
Earlier this year, a UVA architecture program took top prize in an international housing competition sponsored by ARCHIVE (Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments). — c-ville.com
Contestants developed sustainable and affordable homes that could offer attainable relief to a portion of the estimated 1 million Haitians left homeless after a massive earthquake devastated the region in January 2010. The UVA program, Initiate reCOVER, beat out 146 teams and received a $... View full entry
Peter Zumthor has unveiled his plans for a secret garden for this years Serpentine Pavilion. — Guardian
In collaboration with the Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, Zumthor will create a contemplative garden courtyard enclosed by lightweight black-clad structure. View full entry
But one of the firm’s smaller clients, the city of Elk Grove, population 153,000, recently conjured far different kinds of aquatic life when members of the City Council and the public chose words like “squid,” “octopus” and “starfish” to describe the latest renderings for a proposed civic center. — nytimes.com
Inhabitat has shared with us a story they've covered today about Frank Gehry's new 8 Spruce Street residential tower in NYC setting neighboring buildings ablaze from the extreme reflects off its shimmering facade. Disney Concert Hall all over again. Sounds a little more serious this time... View full entry
Cal Poly Pomona professor Michael Fox and his orbiting group of students explore the 'Economically Viable Space Stations' with boldly growing interest in space tourism. Go check-in. Cal Poly Pomona professor Michael Fox and his orbiting group of students explore the 'Economically Viable Space... View full entry
