The reason for all this quarrying is not the discovery of a coal-rich seam beneath the Wrenaissance streets, but the local enthusiasm for subterranean development. Over the past four years, this local authority alone has granted planning applications for more than 800 basement extensions, refused 90, and has a further 20 outstanding. It is the most densely populated borough in the country, with no room to build outwards, and no permission to build upwards – so the only way is down. — guardian.co.uk
The Ecological Urbanism app adapts content from the GSD’s book of the same name for a tablet. Much more than an ebook, it’s an entirely new way of looking at the information interactively.
With the majority of the world’s population expected to live in cities by the year 2050, Ecological Urbanism addresses the expanding practice of sustainable design. A timely evolution of the book, this iPad app visualizes the growing body of discourse surrounding the design and management of cities
— vimeo.com
"The cities are often designed based on an architects' ideal understanding of what a modern or a sustainable city should be like, but it is the people living in it that eventually make it modern or sustainable," he says.
"How these former farmers adapt to living in a modern city environment is what we still need to wait and find out."
— europe.chinadaily.com.cn
According to the experts — architects, environmentalists and civil engineers — large-scale projects like underwater gates are expensive, cumbersome and difficult to build. More important, they say, such undertakings are binary projects that work just fine until the moment they do not. — NYT
In light of the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, Alan Feuer examined three examples of how to protect New York City from future storms. The designs focus on three especially vulnerable New York neighborhoods and plans included: Marshy Edges, Absorptive Streets proposed by... View full entry
The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) announced today a shortlist of seven design teams that have been invited to submit technical proposals for the development of Hong Kong's first art-themed park, 14 hectares of landscaped public space for arts and culture at the West Kowloon Cultural District, by the waterfront in Kowloon. — bustler.net
The seven shortlisted design teams (in alphabetical order) are: Cook Robotham Architectural Bureau and VOGT Landscape Dennis Lau & Ng Chun Man with Grimshaw, West 8 and ACLA Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with Olin and Urbanus Grant Associates... View full entry
No, this isn’t a beautiful or ingratiating building, but it’s technologically smart, with an underground turntable for trucks that may sound eye-rollingly dull but makes traffic engineers like the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, swoon...SHoP has also spared Brooklyn another retro stadium. — NYT
Michael Kimmelman reviews the new Barclays Center and the surrounding Atlantic Yards project. While he finds the arena by SHoP Architects to be a good start, Kimmelman criticizes the larger plans for Atlantic Yards. He argues that the current plans share the same faults as many other... View full entry
As it turns out, infrastructure really matters. Your chance of injury drops by about 50 percent, relative to that major city street, when riding on a similar road with a bike lane and no parked cars. The same improvement occurs on bike paths and local streets with designated bike routes. And protected bike lanes – with actual barriers separating cyclists from traffic – really make a difference. The risk of injury drops for riders there by 90 percent. — m.theatlanticcities.com
One of the most fascinating things we at MONU recently experienced during a trip to Brasilia had nothing to do with its famous Oscar Niemeyer monuments or the city itself, but with the context surrounding the city.
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, November 2012)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/submit.htm
One of the most fascinating things we at MONU recently experienced during a trip to Brasilia had nothing to do with its famous Oscar Niemeyer monuments or the city itself, but with the context surrounding the city. After two tiring days in the city and having read in a guidebook that in certain... View full entry
Deep in Hong Kong’s core, 17 floors of a run-down building full of transients provide a key to understanding globalization from the bottom up. Gordon Mathews’s Ghetto at the Center of the World (University of Chicago Press, 2011) paints a detailed portrait of life in and around Chungking Mansions, a single property with two common retail/galleria floors with a basement, and three independent towers that rise above them. — urbanland.uli.org
The new buildings will be designed by Gary Handel Architects and Roschen Van Cleve Architects, but these renderings, like the rest of it, are conceptual. Landscape starchitect James Corner Field Operations (of New York's High Line and Santa Monica's Civic Center Parks) will design "extensive open space, street-level plazas, and enhanced pedestrian circulation encompassing approximately 25 percent of the entire site." — la.curbed.com
View more from the Millennium Hollywood website. UPDATE: Massive mixed-use project in Hollywood clears a hurdle View full entry
Jeanne Gang will soon join the likes of Neil Denari, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, and Shigeru Ban with a new project near the High Line in New York City. The roughly 180,000-square-foot office tower will rise along 10th Avenue between 13th and 14th streets, pending city approval. — archpaper.com
Our aim is to examine the city's connection to its underground in a way no one has before: we will attempt to walk from the southern edge to the northern, using only catacombs, telecom tunnels, sewers and other hidden infrastructure. It is a 14-mile trek, every step illegal. — The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine
Will Hunt spent a few days and nights underneath Paris, as part of an expedition led by Steve Duncan, a photographer and urban historian from New York. The group discovered a parallel universe populated by: "cataphiles" - young, bohemian Parisians who use the tunnels as party venues, ossuaries... View full entry
MTA Video Release: Hurricane Sandy - South Ferry and Whitehall St Station Damage. View full entry
Problems...will continue to plague Mumbai as long as the government continues to pretend to put all its faith into a thoroughly planned city-wide manifesto that is ultimately tossed aside... In rethinking the grandiose nature of the Development Plan, perhaps the government can engage in smaller scale implementations and allow new regulations and ideas to...move beyond its paper urbanity. — The Global Urbanist
Towering over Mecca, this is the world's second-tallest building – and it is just a tiny part of a voracious development that has seen historic sites bulldozed and locals forced into shantytowns. — guardian.co.uk
