In an international design competiton for the rapid development of satellite cities along Chinese high speed rail corridors, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Beijing Bohai Innovation City master plan has just been named the winning submission. — bustler.net
Foreclosed, a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, shows ways of radically rethinking suburbia, homeownership and housing. But are such drastic measures what the suburbs really need? — Next American City
Also, see on Archinect: The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream View full entry
At the urging of billionaire Paul Allen, planners are considering raising the height limit for new buildings in certain areas of the city — bendbulletin.com
Winners have been announced at the Bab Al Bahrain Open Ideas Competition with the proposal "Pearl Dive" by Swiss architect Lukas Lenherr taking home the $15,000 First Prize. [...]
Significance was added to this competition by the recent political events that have taken place across the region, encouraging questions about social representation, public identity, urban integration, sense of place, and historic importance.
— bustler.net
![Old Town Village West townhomes, a new mixed-income development, ca. 2009; looming in the background is the William Green Homes high-rise, part of Cabrini-Green, demolished 2011. [Photo: Lawrence J. Vale]](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/kp/kpvptyeghskwwe9j.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=514 "Old Town Village West townhomes, a new mixed-income development, ca. 2009; looming in the background is the William Green Homes high-rise, part of Cabrini-Green, demolished 2011. [Photo: Lawrence J. Vale]")
The saga of Cabrini-Green compels us to engage some hard and fundamental questions. It is not enough to ask: who benefits from public housing redevelopment? We must also ask: how we measure such benefits and who gets to do that measuring? — Places Journal
When the last of the Cabrini-Green towers was demolished by the Chicago Housing Authority a year ago, where did the residents go? Urban historian Lawrence Vale looks at the politics and policies of subsidized housing in the city and interviews the developer of the mixed-income "village" that... View full entry
ARTIST Damien Hirst has unveiled plans to build more than 500 landmark eco-homes in Ilfracombe, which he hopes will regenerate the town and provide a national blueprint for environmental housing.
Architects working for Hirst, said to be the richest living artist in the world, hope to submit a planning application for the development at Winsham Farm in six months.
— thisisnorthdevon.co.uk
Mr. Soleri, however, will discuss his marvelous, flawed creation with disarming frankness. Has Arcosanti, for instance, lived up to its potential? “No. Don’t be silly,” he said, and then laughed. — NYT
Michael Tortorello recently visited Arcosanti to check in on the status of the famed, Utopian urban laboratory. He finds it in transition as last fall, Mr. Soleri finally retired (at age 92) as the president of the Cosanti Foundation. Jeff Stein, 60, formerly dean of the... View full entry
In a few cities, such as coastal Wenzhou and coal-rich Ordos, the collapse in property prices has sparked a full-blown credit crisis, with reports of ruined businessmen leaping off building rooftops; some are fleeing the country. — Foreign Affairs
Prospects just few years ago looked great and China had jobs for everybody who were laid off in American market. But now the wind has changed direction. People who were speculating in Ordos and the like places are no where to be found and the bubble is about to burst. View full entry
What’s the best place to build a wetland? How about at the site of an old MTA bus lot in South Los Angeles? It took more than $26 million and nearly three years to complete the transformation from parking lot to urban wetland. Open to the public as of February 9, the new South Los Angeles Wetland Park that doesn’t only efficiently process storm water runoff–it also provides crucial community green space. — blog.archpaper.com
Who needs a fancy designer when builders all over the country know how to construct a peaked-roof single-family house?
The Museum of Modern Art’s small but magnificently ambitious new show “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream” makes an overwhelming case that the two camps need each other now. Today’s suburb has little to do with the outwardly tidy, seething, monochrome world of Updike or Revolutionary Road.
— nymag.com
Related, on Archinect, The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream View full entry
About 200 meters east of his doorstep, behind a high red wall under the perennial watch of large, uniformed men in unmarked vans, was Zhongnanhai, a sprawling, closed compound home to the offices and reception halls of the central leadership of China. "They must have run out of space," Sun said, flicking away his cigarette. — The Atlantic
Prompted by the recent destruction of 24 Beizongbu Hutong Jonathan Kaiman examines the preservation challenges faced by Beijing's hutongs. Specifically, the historic neighborhoods adjacent to Zhongnanhai, a sprawling, closed compound home to the offices and reception halls of the central... View full entry
From CBC TV's "The Way It Is" program, circa 1969, urbanist and author Jane Jacobs compares late 1960s Toronto and Montreal on how they have been planned and built, while condemning major highways planned for GTO. — Youtube
Global warming will make New York spectacularly vulnerable to flooding. Some researchers even suggest that in 200 years, Manhattan could look like Venice. Does that mean 8 million people oughta start packing their bags? Of course not. But experts agree the city should do something. Enter Tingwei Xu and Xie Zhang. The U Penn students think New York can protect itself the way a guy cracking lobster protects his tie: by strapping on a bib. — fastcodesign.com
I assumed someone would be working to preserve it. I called around and thought the American Institute of Architects or the Municipal Arts Society would be working on this. So many things in New York have preservation groups attached to them. But pretty quickly I found no one was doing anything for the High Line and that it was actually going to be demolished. — dirt.asla.org
Some 600,000 commuters, riding Amtrak, Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit, now suffer Penn Station every day. That makes it probably the busiest transit hub in the Western world, busier than Heathrow Airport in London, busier than Newark, La Guardia and Kennedy airports combined.
To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation.
— Michael Kimmelman, nytimes.com
