Alessandra Cianchetta, a partner at AWP, the firm mapping the master plan, acknowledges the enormousness of her task. “La Défense as a concept is a bit obsolete,” Ms. Cianchetta said. “There is no interaction, no hospitality here.” — NYT
Georgi Kantchev reviewed plans by the public agency that manages the district to upgrade it's public spaces. The firm AWP wants to add entertainment sites to the main public plaza and build footbridges to connect it with the surrounding neighborhoods. View full entry
Yin Zhi, head of Beijing Tsinghua Urban Design Institute, said, "The technique that Broad Group uses has no precedent in the world, and the cost they promised is very low. So they either have some record breaking techniques or it’s a lie. They are gambling. If they win, they will change the history of world architecture, but that's one chance in a million." — news.xinhuanet.com
In China’s Hunan province, ground was broken for the next "world's tallest skyscraper". It was a brave ambition. The developer Broad Group planned to build an 838 meter tower with 202 stories, in just 10 months. The tower would surpass the current tallest skyscraper, Dubai’s Burj... View full entry
“We’re not willing to back down on this.They can put forward as much pressure as they would like but I’m very committed to this program and I’m very committed to the well-being of our neighborhoods.” - Gayle McLaughlin, Richmond’s mayor — NYT
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times The power of eminent domain has traditionally worked against homeowners, who can be forced to sell their property to make way for a new highway or shopping mall. But now the working-class city of Richmond, Calif., hopes to use the same legal tool to... View full entry
“Urban Innovation” are two words I hear in tandem a lot these days, along with “civic hackathon” and “crowdsourced urbanism.” Contrary to what you might think, these buzzwords have not been coined by urbanists attempting to appear more innovative. They’ve been coined by tech innovators attempting to be more urbanist. — nextcity.org
The public is invited to vote for their favorite entry from a field of six finalists in the Flinders Street Station Design Competition, an international, high-profile architectural competition to rejuvenate and restore the historic Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Australia. The shortlist sports some big names, including Pritzker Prize winners Zaha Hadid and the team of Jaques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. — bustler.net
Voting opened this week and is accessible via the competition website until Monday, August 5th, 2013. UPDATE: HASSELL + Herzog & de Meuron Win Flinders Street Station Competition View full entry
“Ultimately people can’t get around conveniently because they are far away from everything.” And it is this observation that for me epitomizes the problem of the driverless car — it’s the worst kind of solutionism. By becoming so enamored with how technology might transform the car, we’ve neglected to adequately explore how getting rid of cars might transform how and where we live. We’d do well to heed Gorz’s exhortation to “never make transportation an issue by itself.” — opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
It's a given that America continues to be a car-obsessed society despite the more painstaking reality of driving a car in many major cities of today. In The New York Times, editor Allison Arieff of SPUR points out that the U.S. is still fixated on selling, using and enhancing the car when... View full entry
Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey built the Aluminaire House in 1931 for an exhibition in New York City mostly out of mass-produced building materials donated by manufacturers. The project became recognized as an exemplary prototype of modern building forms and techniques at the time, while also... View full entry
Antiterrorist paraphernalia litter parts of nine square blocks, or at least a dozen acres -- all to protect the New York Stock Exchange from attacks.
Where Broadway opens to Wall Street, jaw-like truck barriers and a plastic-tent guard booth block the street. A fence squeezes pedestrians into one narrowed sidewalk.
Concrete Jersey barriers posing as planters are particularly hideous, part of a new antiterrorist aesthetic that afflicts courthouses and City Hall.
— bloomberg.com
Esteemed Chicago architect Jeanne Gang unveiled the design plan for the new University of Chicago North Campus Residence Hall and Dining Commons this past Tuesday. Created by Studio Gang Architects and Mortenson Construction, the stunning $148 million project is expected to open in the fall of... View full entry
Why does the layout of cities matter so much in mobility?
Harvard's Raj Chetty says he and the other authors of the study were struck by the amount of variation in mobility across areas.
— marketplace.org
For the latest edition of the Working out of the Box series, Archinect spoke with Spain-based Brazilian Creative Director/Creative Consultant Gustavo Almeida-Santos of studiogaas. Therein, we learn Mr. Almeida-Santos is currently attending ETSAM in Madrid, where he is enrolled in a... View full entry
Far from being anchored in the local context, the project (the disastrous City of Culture of Galicia outside Santiago de Compostela, designed by Peter Eisenman) has decapitated Monte de Gaias and replaced it with a phony landscape with curves like those of a fun-fair roller coaster. These cynical intellectual manipulations cannot mask the reality of structures resembling supermarkets twisted about with algorithms and camouflaged with a thin veneer of granite (imported from Brasil!). — Uncube
In a short sweet and illustrated article writer historian William J.R. Curtis puts several Bilbao effect projects in the trash can. It might as well be called "f..k content." View full entry
UNStudio has recently been named winner in the Yongjia World Trade Center competition in Wenzhou, the Chinese city in the Yangtze River Delta region. The concept proposes 5 towers of various heights and programs, including office spaces, commercial areas, hospitality and residential. — bustler.net
Four finalists have just been chosen from Phase I of the two-phase “For a Resilient Rockaway” (FAR ROC) design competition. The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), L+M Development Partners, The Bluestone Organization, Triangle Equities, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIA New York) and Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. (Enterprise) made the announcement at the Center for Architecture in New York City. — bustler.net
Launched in April, the FAR ROC competition sought ideas for developing an 80+ acre site called Arverne East into a new mixed-use, mixed-income, sustainable and storm-resilient community that will meet the new physical and regulatory challenges of waterfront development while maintaining the... View full entry
In a letter accompanying Thursday's filing, Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder...said...residents needed a clear exit from the "cycle of ever decreasing services".
"The only way to do those things is to radically restructure the city"
— BBC News
Jonny Dymond analyzes the news that Detroit has become the largest American city ever to file for bankruptcy, with debts of at least $15bn. View full entry