"Personally when I did the project of the Art Museum in São Paulo my basic concern was to make an ugly architecture...A poor architecture with free spaces that could be created by the collective...Most people find that the museum is poor, and it is. I wanted to make a poor project. That is, formally and architecturally ugly, but that would be a usable space, that would be something that could be taken over by men". - Lina Bo Bardi — Cosmopista
A recent opinion piece in O Estado de S.Paulo proposed fencing in the wonderful open plaza of Lina Bo Bardi's MASP, as one solution for addressing concerns that the space is becoming a mini cracolândia. This situation it is argued has negatively impacted the MASP and it's cultural prestige... View full entry
Shivihah Smith’s East Baltimore neighborhood, where he lives with his mother and grandmother, is disappearing. The block one over is gone. A dozen rowhouses on an adjacent block were removed one afternoon last year. [...]
For the Smiths, the bulldozing of city blocks is a source of anguish. But for Baltimore, as for a number of American cities in the Northeast and Midwest that have lost big chunks of their population, it is increasingly regarded as a path to salvation.
— nytimes.com
In light of yesterday's decision to allocate a chunk of the $13 billion JPMorgan Chase mortgage settlement to anti-blight measures across the country, I also recommend this NPR interview with Jim Rokakis, director of the Thriving Communities Institute in Cleveland, Ohio. NPR host Melissa Block... View full entry
Have a closer look into the Zaryadye Park design scheme by TPO Reserve with Maxwan Architects + Urbanists, Latz + Partner, and Buro Happold. The team recently won second place in the international Zaryadye Park competition in Moscow. — bustler.net
Previously: Diller Scofidio + Renfro wins Zaryadye Park competition in Moscow View full entry
A year after gathering ideas on how a eurozone country could leave the single-currency bloc, the organisers of the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize are plunging into Britain’s highly politicised housing debate and challenging people to design a garden city.
Offering £250,000 in prize money, entrants are required to answer: “How would you deliver a new garden city which is visionary, economically viable and popular?”
— FT.com
"Queensway Connection: Elevating the Public Realm," the sixth biennial competition from the AIANY's Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) committee is open for submissions until January 6th, 2014. The competition will support the feasibility study — currently being conducted by WXY... View full entry
For other cities, order comes easily. Washington, D.C. was built all at once on the Potomac River to the specifications of the 1791 L’Enfant Plan; a half-century later, Paris was gutted and remade, top to bottom, per Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s instructions. Things in Toronto have always been a little less tidy—instead, we’ve got “messy urbanism,” as American urban planner James Rojas has called in. — thegridto.com
Click here to view the full size image View full entry
Diller Scofidio + Renfro has won the Zaryadye Park competition in Moscow. Set in the historic district of Zaryadye in downtown Moscow, the design competition was established to find an architecture and landscape plan to transform the 130,000 sq.m. former site of Hotel Russia into a multi-functional public park.
Coming in second and third place are TPO Reserve and MVRDV, respectively.
— bustler.net
See also: 2nd-place Zaryadye Park competition entry by team TPO Reserve Master plan. First-place entry by Diller Scofidio + Renfro Entrance from the Red Square. First-place entry by Diller Scofidio + Renfro Postcard Moscow. First-place entry by Diller Scofidio + Renfro Panorama. First-place entry... View full entry
Eric Ho watches the boom on the Lower East Side...and sees...Detroit. Specifically...vacant storefronts — more than 200 of them in the area east of the Bowery and south of 14th Street.
How was it possible, he thought, that in a neighborhood where space was at such a premium, so much of it was sitting idle? ...an architect who once intended to design housing for disaster zones,, he thought: What could be done with them?
— New York Times
This Saturday, the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design will hold its annual ForumFest fundraiser, this year honoring Michael Maltzan. Operating as both educational and artistic platform, the LA Forum has helped shape the critical perspective on Los Angeles urbanism since 1987. In... View full entry
For those who do not believe travelers’ tales, there is the Chinese government’s own report, from 2010, concluding that home ownership rates in China were then nearly 90%. This compares with a world average of 63% and a U.S. average of 65%. — Forbes
Anne Stevenson-Yang (co-founder and research director of J Capital Research Ltd.) penned an op-ed regarding the status and future of the Chinese housing market. The gist - massive urbanization has led to a vast oversupply according to the governments own figures and she predicts that "these... View full entry
The default recourse to data-fication, the presumption that all meaningful flows and activity can be sensed and measured, is taking us toward a future in which the people shaping our cities and their policies rarely have the opportunity to consider the nature of our stickiest urban problems and the kind of questions they raise. — Places Journal
What do corporate smart-city programs have in common with D.I.Y. science projects and civic hackathons? “Theirs is a city with an underlying logic,” writes Shannon Mattern, “made more efficient — or just, or sustainable, or livable — with a tweak to its algorithms or... View full entry
Following a strong architectural language of repetition, movement, rhythm, and proportion the ‘weeksville heritage center’ designed by American firm caples jefferson architects PC serves as a gateway to a 19th century african-american freedman’s settlement. the sustainably built complex is located in brooklyn, new york and features a new two-story, 23,000 sq ft building and 41,000 sq ft of landscape that redefines the site’s context. — designboom.com
Weeksville Heritage Center is a new sustainable cultural center designed by Caples Jefferson Architects PC. It is a two-story, 23,000 sq ft new building and 41,000 sq ft interpretive landscape, located at the intersection of Buffalo Avenue and Bergen Street in the Crown Heights neighborhood of... View full entry
Five teams were selected for the second stage of the international architectural "Russia" theme park competition. The Jury, the Expert Council, and "Russia" park representatives met this past September to begin searching for the concept and financial model for the theme park.
Twenty-six submissions out of 180 registered applicants from 41 countries made it to Stage I, which was then narrowed down to 18 after the Expert Council made further evaluations.
— bustler.net
Out of those 18 submissions, only 5 finalists were selected to move on to Stage II: BBDB: Balmori + base4+ DBA Proekt Citymakers Cushman & Wakefield HOSPER Mosproject-5 View full entry
We've updated the Archinect iPhone app with a subtle user interface refresh for iOS 7 users. We've also made a few other minor style updates and bug fixes. Left: main "highlights" screen / Right: article screen As with the previous releases of the Archinect app, we've focused on simplicity... View full entry
ABITARE China magazine invited MovingCities to guest edit its 34th issue on the topic of "(re) Design Heritage – Strategies of Urban Renewal and the Chinese City." Published in October 2013, MovingCities took this opportunity to address one of the most urgent issues to discuss when dealing... View full entry