"In the late 1960s, designer Jens Risom sought an affordable vacation home for his family on Block Island, off the coast of Rhode Island. Now some 45 years later, the prefab cottage still exists to serve the needs of the growing Risom brood." dwell
Some child-development experts and parents say decades of dumbed-down playgrounds, fueled by fears of litigation, concerns about injury and worrywart helicopter parents, have led to cookie-cutter equipment that offers little thrill. The result, they say, is that children are less compelled to play outside, potentially stunting emotional and physical development and exacerbating a nationwide epidemic of childhood obesity. — online.wsj.com
A public symposium will be held in February where the final proposals will be displayed. The final design will be chosen by a jury. "People can expect some high-level proposals", said Speaks. "We will be the beneficiaries, and the city will get a high-quality project." — Archinect / UK/CoD
The lead firms on each of the five teams are: Civitas, a Denver-based firm of architects, urban designers and planners Coen+Partners, a landscape architecture practice based in Minneapolis. Inside Outside, a design firm with offices in Amsterdam, Netherlands, that addresses interior and exterior... View full entry
Noted Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy suggested that “before investing or proposing new mechanical solutions, traditional vernacular architecture should be evaluated and developed to make them compatible with modern requirements.” — DesignBuild Source
With a growing understanding between the correlation between space and productivity, designers and major companies are now working together to maximise the potential of office spaces and make the daily grind a little more palatable to workers. — DesignBuild Source
"In 2009 we built two timber houses, the Oberhus and the Unterhus, in the hamlet of Leis, just over 1,500 m above sea level in the community of Vals in Grisons. From 1 December 2012 onward we are letting out the Unterhus for vacations. A third timber house, the Türmlihus, will soon complete this little ensemble. The Türmlihus will welcome its first guests in autumn 2013.
We are very much looking forward to having guests in our timber vacation homes in Leis.
Annalisa and Peter Zumthor"
— ZTH blog
peter and annalisa zumthor are, apparently, getting into the hospitality business. one - and soon to be two houses, designed by zumthor and located in the small town of leis, will be able to be leased out beginning next week. both houses appear to be located adjacent to a house designed for... View full entry
PLANT partners Lisa Rapoport, Chris Pommer, and Mary Tremain have been awarded the 2012 Faculty of Engineering Team Alumni Achievement Medal from the University of Waterloo. The awards ceremony took place on Thursday 22 November 2012 at the annual Dean of Engineering Dinner in Waterloo, Ontario... View full entry
Libraries are increasingly the places in which culture is produced as well as collected and disseminated. The Ambient Exchange promotes a culture of collaboration, creative inquiry and community engagement through provision of functional and exuberant spaces that engage the strong cultural... View full entry
HELSINKI CENTRAL LIBRARY THE STORYTELLING TREE The book is an everlasting memory. It is like a hundred-year-old tree that tells us stories and tales, from here and elsewhere. This is where we start from. Just as the roots of the trees are deeply anchored in the ground, the books and their pages... View full entry
Carved out of shipping containers, these LEGO-like, stackable apartments offer all the amenities of home. Or more, since they are bigger, and brighter, than the typical Manhattan studio. It’s the FEMA trailer of the future, built with the Dwell reader in mind. — New York Observer
Ever since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans six years ago, the Bloomberg administration has been quietly at work on creating a disaster housing that meets the needs of New York City's unique density and geography. They have created a model system using shipping containers, and while it... View full entry
To fund the Bubble, the museum originally turned to Bloomberg, planning to call it the Bloomberg Balloon in honor of a $1 million (or greater) gift. But, perhaps tellingly, the Hirshhorn has not consistently referred to the Bloomberg Balloon as such, suggesting there may still be room—or the need—for a larger donor. Diminishing federal support certainly won’t fund the Bubble, and to date, the museum's board has not stepped up to bridge the funding gap. — tnr.com
“I would hate to stop the process and lose the momentum, especially since a lot of time, money, and effort has been expended on this memorial,” he wrote. “However, given the continued opposition with the Eisenhower family, I question whether we can ever resolve the differences ... and whether it would be in our best interest to continue to move forward.” — washingtonpost.com
Frank Jacobs is the map-obsessed blogger behind “Strange Maps.” [...] Aaron Schachter talks to Jacobs about his attraction to maps and how they’ve evolved over the centuries from a tool for navigation to a venue for artistic expression and weird facts. — theworld.org
Developers in San Francisco are loath to take architectural risks because the city’s approval process for new development is long and rigorous, perhaps the most onerous in the country, architects say.
It’s hard to fault their caution when you consider how small San Francisco really is — 47 square miles (Manhattan alone is 23 square miles) — with much of the area consumed by neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes.
— The New York Times
Led by Architekturzentrum Wien director Dietmar Steiner, the curators traveled around the former Soviet Union over a three-year period in search of their often elusive and quickly decaying subjects. Focusing on the former republics—from Estonia to Belarus, Armenia to Uzbekistan—they interviewed the still-living actors of the time and foraged in bookshops for archive material. They eventually uncovered major Soviet typologies... — online.wsj.com