Take Korea's Incheon International, for example. Built on top of a landfill 40 miles outside of Seoul, it features its own skating rink, cultural museum, and an assortment of other lavish amenities — all worthy investments for an airport that transported 34 million passengers and 2.5 million tons of cargo last year. — artinfo.com
He is one of the experts commissioned by the government to produce a "master plan" to overhaul the city's infrastructure. Singapore is his role model, and he favours big projects to clear slums and build bridges, roads and out-of-town settlements. — BBC News Magazine
Joe Boyle visited Dar es Salaam, Tanzania one of the world's fastest growing cities. The dramatic influx has pushed the city's population up from roughly two million two decades ago to four million today, which has led to a huge growth in "informal settlements". As well as economic division... View full entry
From the eroded optimism of the heroic building-monuments in east-Europe, to the monochromatic banality of housing developments in the Canary Islands, the photographs of Simona Rota appear to be talking to us about the aspirations and shortcomings of architecture in both its megalomaniac and its... View full entry
The Hong Kong Institute of Architects and Hong Kong Arts Development Council will participate in the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia with an exhibition focusing on the vital urban, architectural and cultural regeneration of Kowloon East, Hong Kong SAR. The exhibition is titled “Inter Cities / Intra Cities: Ghostwriting the Future”. — bustler.net
Click here to see more Archinect News posts related to the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. View full entry
"Regional governments enjoy the possibility of spending and inaugurating public works but they don't run the political risk or cost of raising taxes. — BBC News
Pascale Harter visits Spain where regions are clamouring for money from central government - and one of the reasons for this is their lavish spending on white elephant building projects, such as the airport at Ciudad Real, south of Madrid. View full entry
"How do we revitalize a neighborhood? Put a train station there!" he questions. Yet he cautions that design can't fix social problems. "Infrastructure has fallen out and we expect public spaces to pick up the slack." — Oakland Local
C B Smith-Dahl talked with Walter Hood about the work his firm West Oakland-based Hood Design has done redesigning Lafayette Park in Old Oakland and Splashpad Park by Lakeshore. The discussion also touched on the topic of gentrification and the importance of an urbanism of diversity. View full entry
Could the entire mood of a neighborhood depend on something as simple as street width? That was the question David Yoon, a writer, designer, photographer, and self-confessed urban planning geek living in Los Angeles, asked himself after returning from a trip to Paris. He started documenting existing streets of Los Angeles and narrowing them to see the effects that his manipulations had on the city. — mascontext.com
the city-as-a-system approach described earlier can be applied as a methodology to identify how complex problems that may appear unrelated...interact with each other in the context of a given city or threat network. Taking this approach may allow planners to identify emergent patterns within the complex adaptive system of a relevant city, make sense of the system logic, and thus begin to design tailored interventions. — Global Trends 2030
David J. Kilcullen (former Senior Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq in 2007 and author of the bestselling books The Accidental Guerrilla and Counterinsurgency) analyzes three megatrends; urbanization, littoralization and connectedness as well as their implications for future conflict. View full entry
At the 1928 Amsterdam games, athletes were accommodated in spare rooms in boarding houses and aboard ships. The first Olympic Village was built in 1932, in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, but it was dismantled after the games and virtually no trace survives today. Not until the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki did host cities began to plan and develop permanent structures for housing athletes. — Places Journal
When the Olympic Games open next week in London, showpiece venues like Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre and Populous’s Olympic Stadium will be the center of the world’s attention. But when the games are over, the greatest impact on London urbanism will be from the 2,800 new... View full entry
In the international competition for the New Harbor Service Building in the major Taiwanese port city of Keelung, a shortlist of five teams has just been released. Among the nominees are well-known firms like Asymptote Architecture, Neil M. Denari Architects, and Mecanoo architecten. The international jury also included American architects Aaron Betsky and Michael Speaks. The final competition winner will be announced in September. — bustler.net
The cycle superhighway, which opened in April, is the first of 26 routes scheduled to be built to encourage more people to commute to and from Copenhagen by bicycle. More bike path than the Interstate its name suggests, it is the brainchild of city planners who were looking for ways to increase bicycle use in a place where half of the residents already bike to work or to school every day. — nytimes.com
Unveiling a new building in 99 degree weather with no air conditioning doesn't sound ideal - unless, that is, said building is the first one in NYC that can power itself. Dubbed the Delta, the self-sustaining residential property was opened to the press last night by green developers Voltaic Solaire, and the balmy conditions in the city just happened to be the perfect opportunity to showcase its smart design. — Inhabitat
Green developers Voltaic Solaire unveiled New York City's very first self-powered building last night. View full entry
England's prestigious Cambridge University yesterday announced the team of preferred architects for a first phase of its proposed development at North West Cambridge. The architects were selected following an architectural competition and include established UK and international practices, as well as local and smaller, new practices. — bustler.net
What About the Last Suprematist? When one speaks of revolutionary art, two kinds of artistic phenomena are meant: the works whose themes reflect the Revolution, and the works which are not connected with the Revolution in theme, but are thoroughly imbued with it, and are Colored by the new... View full entry
Gruen’s idea transformed American consumption patterns and much of the environment around us. At age 60, however, the enclosed regional shopping mall also appears to be an idea that has run its course — theatlanticcities.com
