Smart city infrastructure can augment the ability of managers, planners, designers and engineers to define and implement a fundamentally better next generation of buildings, cities, regions — right? Maybe. For that to be a serious proposition, it’s going to have to be normal for planners and designers not only to collaborate productively with engineers, but to do so with the full and competent participation of the only people they mistrust more than each other ... customers. — Places Journal
"A city is not a BMW," writes Carl Skelton. "You can't drive it without knowing how it works." In a weighty think-piece on Places, he argues that the public needs new tools of citizenship to thrive in a "new soft world" increasingly shaped by smart meters, surveillance cameras, urban informatics... View full entry
"The protests in Istanbul indicated one simple thing for architects. We need new definitions for architecture in situations when architecture is removed from architects." -Yelta Köm, the organization founder — #occupygeziarchitecture
Group of architects are documenting the temporary structures that were destroyed by the police in Gezi Park, Istanbul. Take it from the Turks, the original nomads from Central Asia. View full entry
"We mustn't let ourselves be imprisoned by a 'heritage vision' of the city," Ms Hidalgo told the news magazine L'Express. "We are working towards a "genero-city" which is to say a city that is open, convivial and in vibration." — BBC News
John Laurenson talks with supporters and critics sparring over plans to build 12 new skyscrapers in Paris. The issue has generated enough controversy that Laurenson believes it will likely play a role in deciding the next municipal elections. View full entry
Dubai ceremony marks inauguration of world's highest twisted tower.
Saudi developer Cayan inaugurated late Monday the opening of the 73-story, one-thousand-and-seventeen-foot (310-meter) tall Cayan Tower in Dubai's prestigious Marina district.
Inspired by the structure of human DNA, each floor of the 272-million-U.S.-dollar (1 billion-Dirham) tower is rotated by one-point-two degrees to achieve the full 90-degree spiral, creating the shape of a helix. Dignitaries from diplomatic corps and Corporate Dubai joined the celebrations which... View full entry
“Cities today have become far too large,” Wang said in an interview while visiting New York in April. “I’m really worried, because it’s happening too fast and we have already lost so much.”
Wang, a sturdy 49-year-old, has built his small architectural practice as a riposte to this heedless destruction. With his wife, architect Lu Wenyu, he runs a 10-person firm called Amateur Architecture Studio in Hangzhou, a picturesque lakeside city southwest of Shanghai.
— bloomberg.com
I call these projects urbicide because of the social and ecological damages they cause, such as land speculation, expulsion of the lower-middle classes from the urban center, and the zoning of green areas for development. Among the projects is a third bridge over the Bosphorus, a canal bisecting Istanbul in the north-south axis near its western border, and the redevelopment of Taksim Square. — researchturkey.org
The Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Architecture Foundation recently announced the winners of the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition - NEXT STOP: Designing Chicago BRT Stations.
An exhibition of winning designs and all competition entries is currently on view at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Atrium gallery (224 S Michigan Ave) until June 28.
— bustler.net
See also: Hurry Up and Slow Down - 2013 Burnham Prize NEXT STOP Citation View full entry
SPIEGEL: Mr. de Meuron, Mr. von Gerkan and Mr. Ingenhoven, architecture's reputation in this country is worse than ever. How much of the blame do you bear? — Der Spiegel
Stuttgart's train station, Hamburg's concert house and Berlin's airport: Three projects in Germany are currently competing to be seen as the country's most disastrous. SPIEGEL spoke to the star architects behind the construction sites. View full entry
We cannot expect big American cities to reach their potential when the very professions that purport to defend and perpetuate urbanism recoil at the presence of towers. Left rudderless by the experts, we are forced to inhabit the bleak consequences of a poorly regulated marketplace, analogous to a population that must operate on its own cancers due to the confused surgeons who keep cutting away at the healthy tissue. — Places Journal
Americans are famously conflicted about urban development: somehow we've demonized both sprawl and density. But today there is a new conversation about the future of cities, driven by diversifying social desires, evolving technologies, and pressing environmental constraints. On Places, in an... View full entry
Emerging London-based firm Baharash Architecture has been selected to design phase 2 of the 46-hectar Dubai Sustainable City development. The practice is set to open an office in Dubai following the victory against international anonymous teams from the United States, Lebanon, Jordan, UK, and UAE. — bustler.net
The protest was an effort to save a park by occupying that very park; it was not a symbolic or ideological demonstration like the Occupy Wall Street movements, but a primal struggle between human bodies and bulldozers, that made the political discourse all the more potent... — Hyperallergic
Jesse Honsa, (an architect and urban designer in Istanbul, and is co-founder of OpenUrban), has written a short piece, in which he shares his experience over the last days of the protests in and around Taksim Square. h/t amlblog View full entry
Since 2011, Studio-X Rio has been bringing together professionals, academics, decision makers, students, and the general public to confront the city’s most pressing challenges. — Domus
It might seem like a mismatch: the Dolans, veterans of many public brawls, against Kimmelman, an urbane trained pianist who previously wrote primarily about art. But such is the power of the Times when it’s given to a crusading voice. — NY Magazine
A new boutique hotel perched on top of one of Rio's previously most dangerous favelas is about to open. And yes, there is a jazz club and yoga, too.
These are new services catering to a new kind of favela resident.
"It's actually very conveniently located for my work," says Natalie Shoup, a 22-year-old American who lives in a favela called Babilonia, or Babylon. "This has a good amount of transportation to every part of the city. It's nice. It worked out really well."
— npr.org
On the other hand: Remaking Rio: turning an urban dystopia into an Olympic playground (The Verge) Previously on Archinect: Olympic Displacement: Atlanta 1996 to Rio 2016 Before Olympics It's Demolition Derby View full entry
Here is your first look at models and details of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor's proposed new building for LACMA. See these for yourself, along with a look at LACMA's architectural history and an overview of other Zumthor projects, in THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST: PETER ZUMTHOR RECONSIDERS LACMA, on view July 9-September 15, 2013 — facebook.com/lacma
For more information, visit lacma.org/zumthor. View full entry