Arcosanti, some 42 years after it first was begun in 1970, is just a tiny fragment of what it intends to become — a town for a few thousand people. Right now, we’re at a population of a little less than 100. It’s pretty easy at that small scale to join architecture and ecology, but we have in mind some bigger ideas. While they certainly come from Paolo Soleri, they also come from Henry David Thoreau. — dirt.asla.org
Whatever happened to Ordos100? is a question MovingCities receive at regular basis. After our embedded stint in 2008, we kept on regular basis tracking its rumors, gossips and attempts to resurrect its intentions. The intentions were rather ego- and megalomaniac – inviting 100 international... View full entry
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is pleased to announce that it has completed a master plan for Chengdu Tianfu District Great City, a self-sustaining, environmentally sensitive 1.3-square-kilometer satellite city scheduled to begin construction this fall on an approximately... View full entry
In 2006, the developers of Olive 8 — a swanky hotel/condo complex planned for downtown Seattle — were looking for a way to build beyond the 300-foot height limit that zoning allowed. Doing so required some compromises — but not the kind of backroom deal residents of Chicago or Baltimore might assume. — grist.org
A few days ago, we reported about SOM's and Foster + Partners' proposals for The Next 100, a design challenge for the future of the public realm around NYC's Grand Central Terminal. Here is now also the entry by the third of the three firms that were selected to submit their visions, New... View full entry
Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon of Boston firm Höweler + Yoon Architecture are the winners of the Audi Urban Future Award 2012. The team won with the project "Shareway," a proposal calling for the reinvention of the Boston-Washington, D.C., metropolitan region called Boswash. The Audi Urban Future Award 2012 is an international architecture competition that focuses on specific mobility scenarios in five metropolitan, regions Boston/Washington, Istanbul, Mumbai, Pearl River Delta, and São Paulo. — bustler.net
Richard Florida...thinks it needs a “robust community process,” in which an outside group could help build consensus with the surrounding community and create a plan that takes their wishes into account. “You can have serendipity,” he said. “But when you’re building a community, you also need a strategy.” — NYT
Timothy Pratt profiled Tony Hsieh and his Downtown Project for the Sunday NYT Magazine. The project began when the chief executive of Zappos decided to lease the former City Hall, instead of buying land and building the typical Silicon Valley corporate campus. In order to provide an... View full entry
The latest Archinect ShowCase featured Cassia Co-op Training Centre by TYIN tegnestue Architects. The project is located in Sungai Penuh, Sumatra, Indonesia. NewsThe New York Observer reported on Cornell’s plans (unveiled this week) for a brand new 12.5-acre tech campus on Roosevelt Island... View full entry
The winning design, easily the most ambitious of three finalists announced last month, calls for a repeating series of concrete arches that both refer to and exaggerate the Butler design as the bridge stretches from downtown Los Angeles on the west to Boyle Heights on the east, spanning the L.A. River and the 101 Freeway on its way. — latimes.com
A 1,070-foot tower that will become the largest skyscraper on the West Coast received its final approvals from the Planning Commission on Thursday. — sfexaminer.com
Clarke also showed the Planning Commission the actual metal and glass that will be used on the exterior of the building. He explained that the skin of the building has been augmented to add metalwork that will grow deeper and denser at the bottom of the tower. Clarke said adding the metal to the... View full entry
Chakrabatri is proposing that the city basically double the width of the medians along 11 blocks of Park Avenue, between 46th and 57th streets, and run a 12- to 15-foot-wide pathway up the middle, thereby creating 2.24-acre promenade surrounded by the sort of lush gardens and sculptures that already occupy the medians. — capitalnewyork.com
Within the station, the proposal creates wider concourses, with new and improved entrances. Externally, streets will be reconfigured as shared vehicle/pedestrian routes, and Vanderbilt Avenue fully pedestrianised. The proposal also creates new civic spaces that will provide Grand Central with an appropriate urban setting for the next 100 years. — fosterandpartners.com
Perhaps to palliate our worst Kafka-esque architectural nightmares, the city invited three renowned architecture firms, WXY Architecture + Urban Design, Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), and Foster + Partners, to imagine “the next 100 years” of Grand Central Station (which is fast approaching its 100th birthday) and the surrounding Midtown cityscape. — blogs.artinfo.com
“The authorities would have us believe this is urban planning when we are in the middle of a war” — France 24 International News
Journalist Sarra Grira alerts us to the latest turn of events in the ongoing Syrian crisis. The government of Bashar al-Assad has begun selective implementation of Law Number 66. While the law’s official goal is demolition of buildings built in southern Damascus without state approval, for... View full entry
The building’s exact design is not final, but Craig Dykers of Snøhetta said it would be a lozenge-shaped building constructed with a façade primarily consisting of semi-opaque glass with a whitish frit, or dotted, pattern. The exterior is meant to make the building translucent and light-colored but also environmentally friendly by limiting some of the direct sunlight streaming in, he said. — sfexaminer.com
