I step out into the street but realize that I’d better not — there’s a current — and as my hallway fills, I remember the electrical panel in the basement. It shorts out, and I hear the breakers fall. Then there is an explosion outside, and the neighborhood goes dark. — Places Journal
In October 2012, as Hurricane Sandy approached New York, Alexandros Washburn defied evacuation orders and stayed fast in his home in Red Hook, watching as his street flooded and became a "full-fledged river." But he had good reason; the city's chief urban designer wanted to observe first-hand... View full entry
"Beyond the Clouds" is a Smart Harbor competition entry by international award-winning experimental team Zuhal Kol, Carlos Zarco Sanz, and Jose Luis Hidalgo. Their proposal was listed as a finalist [...] earlier this year.
Focused on exploring the potential value of the world's harbors, the competition challenged participants to reimagine existing harbor sites into a modern recreational and tourist area -- with the freedom to interpret the meaning of recreation to their own accord.
— bustler.net
I’m going to tell you exactly how I made this map. I hope that people with little or no experience making maps will be able to use this as a guide to getting started on a map of their own hometown. And I also hope expert mapmakers will chime in to tell us how we can improve our maps. — wired.com
Designed by Rem Koolhaas’ architecture firm OMA, the soaring 225-meter tower will be officially inaugurated on Tuesday. It has an open plaza at its base, shaded by a floating three-story podium that juts out 36 meters above ground level. — blogs.wsj.com
My bewilderment quickly yields to a growing sense of dread. How is it that even in the heart of Silicon Valley it’s completely acceptable for smart technology to be buggy, erratic, or totally dysfunctional? ... We are weaving these technologies into our homes, our communities, even our very bodies — but even experts have become disturbingly complacent about their shortcomings. The rest of us rarely question them at all. — Places Journal
Electric car sharing in Paris, dynamic road pricing in Singapore, nationwide smart meters in the UK. “The technology industry is asking us to rebuild the world around its vision of efficient, safe, convenient living,” writes Anthony M. Townsend in an excerpt on Places from his... View full entry
Building Trust International recently announced the winners for their international PLAYscapes Design Competition. As the name states, PLAYscapes challenged participants to propose their ideas to transform neglected city spaces into interactive places of fun for local communities. More than 500 entrants participated, with many of their projects highlighting the use of sustainable materials and the importance of redevelopment and adaptive reuse in their local cityscapes. — bustler.net
The competition-winning project, "Cape Town Gardens Skate Park" was designed by a multidisciplinary team from the City of Cape Town in South Africa. In the Student category, a team from Lusiada University of Lisbon - Faculty of Architecture and Arts won with their entry, "Bring a Pal and have... View full entry
The chaos surrounding the Grand Avenue redevelopment may turn out to be a good thing — at least for Frank Gehry and quite possibly for the project as a whole.
LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina and the Grand Avenue Authority surprised developer Related Cos. last week by severely criticizing and temporarily rejecting its plan for a retail complex crowned by hotel, apartment and condo towers.
— latimes.com
Look outside the world-class offices and luxury homes, and little works – not the sanitation, the power supply, or even the public transport. Every company is like a self-contained island. They have backups for everything – water, electricity and food — BBC Future
Shilpa Kannan visited Gurgaon, the centre of India’s outsourcing and IT services goldrush, to explore the effects of the economic boom. However, despite the economic growth, the city is unplanned and therefore faces numerous challenges when it comes to meeting the basic needs of it's... View full entry
Balancing Meier’s familiar white metal panels with a rich, iron spot brick, the architects were careful to break down the massing of the contemporary buildings, not exceeding a height of 60 feet in front, in keeping with the Newark Living Downtown Plan. — Architectural Record
If green roofs can be seen, they are a constraint for architectural design. Either you acknowledge them or they become an afterthought. — toskovic.com
I attempt to disassemble issues in advocating green roofs. View full entry
While tiny housing of this kind has existed in Hong Kong for many years, it has expanded as soaring property prices have pushed more and more low-income earners out of the market for regular housing in recent years. Rent on these spaces has risen nearly 20 percent in the last four years, and now gobbles up about a third of the residents’ incomes. — New York Times
"We'd like to leave, but the company won't let us," — theguardian.com
"We'd like to leave, but the company won't let us," said one Nepalese migrant employed at Lusail City development, a $45bn (£28bn) city being built from scratch which will include the 90,000-seater stadium that will host the World Cup final. "I'm angry about how this company is treating us... View full entry
The houses in Ben Marcin’s project ‘Last House Standing’ seem oddly misplaced, lost and forgotten. The series reads like a homage to the forgotten solo row house. The Baltimore based self-taught photographers interest ‘in these solitary buildings is not only in their ghostly beauty but in their odd placement in the urban landscape. Often three stories high, they were clearly not designed to stand alone like this’. — ignant.de
The City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Downtown Council announced on Sept. 19 that New York firm James Corner Field Operations and its team have been selected to carry out the $40 million redesign of Nicollet Mall, a major cultural and commercial center in Downtown Minneapolis. The winning proposal, called the "Nicollet Walk", is a 12-block stretch that divides the Nicollet Mall into three sections: Live, Work, and Play. — bustler.net
James Corner presented his team's project at a public event last Tuesday with the two other finalists: Daoust Lestage of Montreal and Tom Leader Studio from Berkeley, CA. View full entry
The project identified nine key trends; More globally than city wide connected communities, Neighbourhoods become more important, Collaborative production as well as consumption, Active aging population, Flexible working, Fragile energy supply and environment, Inequality causing skills and housing divides, Increasing collection and use of personal data and Socially divisive access to communication technologies — Future Londoners
Future Londoners is a series of imaginary characters, created by Arup, Social Life, Re.Work, Commonplace, Tim Maughan and Nesta, to explore the possibilities of urban life in the future. h/t Bruce Sterling/Beyond the Beyond View full entry
