OMA has designed a new masterplan for Columbia Circle in Shanghai. A historically-rich area, Columbia Circle includes preserved colonial-era monuments as well as former industrial buildings. Located on a 4.7 hectare compound, the new master plan is the first urban renewal project in the city... View full entry
Designed by NEXT Architects and Rudy Uytenhaak Architectenbureau in collaboration with Arup and Bureau B+B, the Dafne Schippers Bridge integrates a cycle and pedestrian bridge spanning the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal in Utrecht with a school and public garden. Opening on April 3, the bridge-cum-school... View full entry
Snøhetta has designed a “boat tunnel” that would allow ships to run beneath a mountain in Norway. With a whopping $272 million price tag, the mile-long tunnel would enable ships to safely avert the dangerous waters off the Stad Peninsula.150 feet tall and 118 feet wide, the tunnel would be... View full entry
Segregation is no accident.Nearly five decades after the Fair Housing Act of 1968, American cities remain racially, culturally, spatially and economically divided. Entrenched conditions and persistent biases undermine the policies and priorities that would heal lingering wounds.So argues Catalina... View full entry
...it is not the mall that is declining, but suburbia. The mall, meanwhile, is becoming urban. In fact, a new breed of shopping centre is integrating so seamlessly into its urban surroundings that it can be difficult to draw any line between city and mall whatsoever.
On both sides of the Pacific, the mall is not “dead”. It has simply transformed...[but] “While the idea of the shopping mall becoming ‘urban’ has a certain appeal, the net effect is to turn the city into a shopping mall.”
— The Guardian
Stefan Al, author of Mall City: Hong Kong's Dreamworlds of Consumption, writes about how shopping malls in places such as New York, Melbourne, and Hong Kong are increasingly blending into the cities themselves — transforming into “a new breed of shopping centre”, Al writes. View full entry
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Maricopa County in Arizona had the highest annual population growth in 2016. Home to the city of Phoenix, the county gained 81,360 people, or 222 people per day. More than half were people who moved to the county from another area, while 25,428 were from... View full entry
Judge Lorna G. Schofield agreed with the group’s claim that the Army Corps of Engineers had not conducted a sufficient environmental review on how the 2.4-acre park would affect fish and wildlife. She ordered that work stop at the site and called for a review of alternatives for building along Hudson River Park, a maritime sanctuary. — 6sqft
It's been nearly two years since the City Club of New York first slapped Pier 55, Barry Diller's $200 million offshore park, with a lawsuit. And despite construction starting over the summer, a judge has once again ordered work to stop at the site. View full entry
As if the challenges of politics, engineering, and weather weren't enough, now self-driving cars face another obstacle: purposeful visual sabotage, in the form of specially painted traffic lines that entice the car in before trapping it in an endless loop. As profiled in Vice, the artist behind... View full entry
The historic feud between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses is hitting the silver screen in “Citizen Jane: Battle for the City”, a fairly new feature-length documentary directed by Matt Tyrnauer and produced by Robert Hammond (co-founder and executive director of NYC's Friends of the High... View full entry
I came across MONU during my early doctoral investigations on critical, non-academic publications looking into this arguably poorly unknown, plural and contested entity that is the city. MONU, does not actually qualify as a non-academic outlet, for the breadth and depth of the analysis it offers... View full entry
The days of driving your own car are coming to a close: as many as seven million driverless cars could be making their self-directed way around major urban hubs across the U.S. within the next few decades. So what should cities do to keep up with these changes? This white paper by Arcadis gives... View full entry
Rael writes that one of the most devastating consequences of the wall is “the division of communities, cities, neighborhoods and families, resulting in the erosion of social infrastructure.” When we talked, he wondered how we might create something positive from something so horrible: “Can reform happen through borderland investment? If you build 150 libraries along the border, you’d get a very different outcome.” — The New York Times
The RFP for the border wall is out, but the conscience-bearing architectural community is staying in (and trying to imagine alternatives to this xenophobic concrete smear job). In particular, in this New York Times article they're suggesting building anything but walls, suggesting that perhaps... View full entry
With layered narration from writers and the input of a climate scientist, the 40-foot long table installation known as "Indoor City" designed by Founder Rome Prize Fellows Phu Hoang and Rachely Rotem (MODU) with Jonathan Berger, Hussein Fancy, Christoph Meinrenken, Jack Livings and Matthew... View full entry
Announcing the decisions, Khan said he had fully considered all the evidence available and was “confident” both high-density developments would deliver hundreds of genuinely affordable homes for Londoners.
“Building the homes Londoners urgently need will mean town centres and suburbs becoming denser, so we expect developers to continue to come up with high-quality designs which don’t have a negative impact on their surroundings.”
— Building Design
Overruling councillors in two north London Boroughs, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has approved an Allies and Morrisson scheme in Tottenham Hale and another in Harrow by Moss Architecture; both will be high-density housing developments which together will deliver 691 new homes for Londoners within... View full entry
The 1922 contest drew 263 entries from 23 countries and led to the construction of a landmark neo-Gothic skyscraper. In 1980, Chicago architects Stanley Tigerman and Stuart Cohen organized a "Late Entries" version of the legendary contest...Now, the curators of this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial are putting together what might be called the "Late Late Entries" to the Tribune Tower competition. — Chicago Tribune
Although the names of the sixteen designers picked to create a new "Tribune Tower" at the Chicago Architecture Biennial haven't been announced quite yet, according to this article their designs are already being value-engineered in order to be as feasible as possible for potential construction... View full entry