Scientists and engineers from the Faculty of Ocean Engineering and Ship Technology at Gdansk University in Poland have teamed up with other Polish scientific and R&D institutions to come up with a landmark underwater hotel.
The Water Discus Underwater Hotel, as it is called, may not be the first but plans for the Dubai venue call for the biggest site of its kind.
— DesignBuild Source
The residential development District//S in Beirut, Lebanon has been awarded the Francis Tibbalds Prize for best Practice Project at the UK's National Urban Design Awards 2013. The prize was presented to the designers of the project, London-based Allies and Morrison Architects, at a ceremony held last night at London’s Royal Overseas League. — bustler.net
Musician, DJ, photographer and architecture blogger Moby riffs on LA architecture in this video about the Getty-led initiative Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. — pacificstandardtimepresents.org
Luxury fashion will meet Roman architecture as Italian fashion house Fendi has pledged €2.1 million to restore five of Rome’s beloved fountains, including the iconic Trevi Fountain.
Fendi, founded in Rome in the 1920s, is now part of French luxury giant LVMH. The fashion house opted to invest in restoring one of Rome’s architectural treasures due to a self-described “deep bond with the Eternal City.”
— DesignBuild Source
A five-member jury has selected the winner of the Town Branch Commons Design Competition in Lexington, Kentucky. The brief calls for the creation of a long, serpentine park following the path of a historic stream in downtown Lexington.
From a shortlist of five finalists, the entry "Reviving Town Branch" by SCAPE / Landscape Architecture team was chosen as the winning proposal.
— bustler.net
Other finalists were Coen+Partners, Minneapolis; Civitas, Denver; Inside Outside: Petra Blaisse, Amsterdam; and JDS / Julien De Smedt Architects, Copenhagen. Previously: Five teams shortlisted for Town Branch Commons in Lexington, Kentucky View full entry
Reaching 637 feet, the tower features a faceted facade filled with 428 residential units. Last month the creative team at Selldorf posted a video showing the louvered façade system, a "second skin" controlled by each individual dweller, and described thusly: "Cloaking the façade, a system of operable terracotta louvers animates the building with its changing configurations and reflectivity." — Curbed NY
Selldorf Architects unveiled a prismatic tower design for a site just south of the World Trade Center at 22 Thames Street. The 54-story building would replace a 10-story brick structure that sold last year. The first five floors would hold retail and residential amenities, which would be topped... View full entry
Science Channel’s upcoming series, Strip the City, uses oversized CGI effects to take a very deep look into the engineering behind some of the most iconic municipalities and the potentially disastrous natural elements they must overcome. Working with architects, engineers and historians, the producers have unearthed the specific elements that help San Francisco’s bridge survive tremors and Dubai’s towering skyscrapers stand firm in soft, unstable desert sands. — wired.com
The redevelopment of the Richardson Olmsted Complex will...transform the former Buffalo State Hospital from a place of healing to one of hospitality.
The design builds upon Olmsted's original intent while conserving existing resources, preserving the fabric of the space, and creating connections and purpose.
— Buffalo Rising
The first-ever, integrated mixed-use destination in Russia designed by the Jerde Partnership, a U.S. architecture firm renowned for creating experiential destinations, is under construction in central Moscow. Kuntsevo Plaza – a vibrant new live, work, shopping and entertainment... View full entry
The design competition to bring fresh life to San Francisco's Fort Mason Center has been won by a team that proposes such twists as a floating pool and a pedestrian bridge to Marina Green. — sfgate.com
Making a mess of the built environment and the politics of space, one issue at a time. — SOILED
With the arrival of a new year, SOILED has big plans. Building on our first three issues, Groundscrapers, Skinscrapers, and Platescrapers, we aspire to elevate our forthcoming issue No. 4 Windowscrapers: more dynamic, more tactilely pleasurable, and filled with more ephemera for you to soil... View full entry
In New York City, an elevated freight rail lane in west Manhattan became the High Line, a celebrated linear park running through a busy part of the borough. Design firm Workshop Architecture hopes that one of Toronto’s hydro corridors can be similarly transformed into a continuous recreation area for Toronto’s pedestrians and cyclists, and that an international contest soliciting ideas for the space will help hasten the process. — torontoist.com
In 2009, Dennis Maher... bought an abandoned property from D’Youville College for $10,000...After he sorted through the junk he found inside, he began to build, reconfiguring the pieces of things like a home entertainment center...and dollhouse furniture... He attached the structures he created to the floors, walls and ceilings, like Joseph Cornell sculptures run amok...You can sense dust bunnies everywhere swelling with importance. — New York Times
It all leads one to ponder the what-if Los Angeles, to imagine the city that would exist today if the best proposals for remedying its ailments had been realized. Los Angeles would now include a ring of thousands of acres of urban and regional parks, a bold, space-age airport, a winged nature center for Griffith Park and hillside housing developments sculpted to the contours of the landscape rather than sitting on graded and terraced scars. We would be living in a very different city. — latimes.com
Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell talk about their co-curated show, Never Built: Los Angeles, which is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. View full entry
... calling the Lowline a "park" isn't totally accurate. It would be a culture park that hosts art shows, performances, and events, and it would be tied to the neighborhood gallery scene. Preliminary designs call for a densely planted "ramble," but this would be accompanied by a gallery, plaza, and connecting grassy common. The whole site is currently dotted with support columns, and the design would remove ten of these to created a 5,000-square-foot column-free plaza. — ny.curbed.com
