Wynn’s hotels are famous for having brought a luxurious, five-star approach to Vegas. But their real achievement may be psychological: they have remade the architecture of gaming itself. The received wisdom of modern casino design was codified by a former gambling addict named Bill Friedman in his book “Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition.” — The New Yorker
Jonah Lehrer pens a piece in this week’s issue of the New Yorker, in which he visits Roger Thomas, the head of design at Wynn Resorts, who has revolutionized casino design in Las Vegas. View full entry
China, of course, is not new terrain for international architects. Many top American firms have run offices inside China for a decade or more. The new arrivals, though, come not by invitation or out of curiosity but because they need work. They are, as Michael Tunkey, head of the China office for the North American firm Cannon Design, says, “refugees from the economic crisis.” — New York Times
In its latest issue #15 Rotterdam-based MONU magazine set out on a daring journey to investigate, as chief editor Bernd Upmeyer proclaims, “one of the most fascinating and biggest issues of our time and in culture, or what is left of it: the non-ideological – or better... View full entry
UPSTATE was created [as a] framework for sustained collaboration with the community and the city—in our case a post-industrial city in upstate New York that's been grappling with a shrinking population, eroding tax base, crumbling infrastructure, underfunded schools, cash-strapped services. The challenges aren't new—they're the challenges of cities all across the rust belt—but they're real, and they're intensifying. — Places Journal
Continuing a series on university design centers, Places editor Nancy Levinson interviews Julia Czerniak and Joe Sisko of UPSTATE at Syracuse University. The slideshow features work by Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Cook+Fox, ARO and Della Valle Bernheimer, Onion Flats, the Near West Side... View full entry
Swiss star architect Peter Zumthor has lost a battle for ownership of the spa and hotel complex in Vals, eastern Switzerland, which he designed.
The commune, which owns the complex, decided on Friday night to sell it to 35-year-old property developer Remo Stoffel.
— swissinfo.ch
The Self-Assembly Line is a large-scale version of a self-assembly virus capsid, demonstrated as an interactive and performative structure. A discrete set of modules are activated by stochastic rotation from a larger container/structure that forces the interaction between units. By changing the external conditions, the geometry of the unit, the attraction of the units and the number of units supplied, the desired global configuration can be programmed. — http://sjet.us
Skylar Tibbits and Arthur Olson, have presented a large-scale installation, The Self-Assembly Line, at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. The Self-Assembly Line is a large-scale version of a self-assembly virus module, demonstrated as an interactive and performative structure. A... View full entry
Limah Design Consultants begins Wayfinding for the 4.8 million sqm Knowledge Economic City (KEC) Madinah, Saudi Arabia. The City will feature residential, hospitality, commercial centres, research facilities, museums and shopping areas. The City will be positioned to serve Saudi Arabia’s... View full entry
Many of us evaluate a restaurant based on the food; after all, restaurants are about eating. But how many of us stop and think about the design--like the look of the interior, the materials used, and the color scheme--when it comes to our food experiences?
This is the question that the Chicago Architecture Foundation wants you to think about through their series Appetite for Design.
— gapersblock.com
Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface [...]. — good.is
Iker Gil's MAS CONTEXT relaunched this week - hot new site, hot new issue on OWNERSHIP...check it -> http://www.mascontext.com View full entry
NEWARK — Work has begun on an education-centered community featuring three charter schools and affordable housing for teachers in the city’s decayed downtown, with much of the design work done by the noted architect Richard Meier. The development, called Teachers Village, is expected to cost $149 million when it is completed two years from now. — The New York Times
Contemporary architecture and urban planning seem to address uncritically the conditions and context in which this discourse on health is developing. In most cases, the design disciplines rely on an abstract, scientific notion of health, and very literally adopt concepts such as “population,” “community,” “citizen,” “nature,” “green,” “development,” “city” and “body” into a professionalized, disciplinary discourse that simply echoes the ambiguities characteristic of current debate. — Places Journal
In its latest exhibition and book, Imperfect Health, the Canadian Centre for Architecture critiques what curators Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi call a “new moralistic philosophy: healthism.” Zardini and Borasi trace the long relationship of environmental design to shifting social... View full entry
Mr. Chakrabarti said the firm is determined to shake things up in the world of architecture, development and planning. “Most master planning, you use pretty pastel drawings that rarely have anything to do with what gets built,” he said. “Planning has been static, it hasn’t been performative. Most of these plans, they get implemented over 20 or 30 years. Think of how much a city and the world changes in that span of time.” — New York Observer
The former city planner, developer and current chair of Columbia's real estate development program, the Center for Urban Real Estate, joins the hotshot New York firm. View full entry
Got a brilliant design idea in the live/work realm that is ready to take the world by storm? Well, now is your time to shine: Our friends at Dwell teamed up with Design Within Reach and launched the Live/Work Design Contest, which challenges designers to create a workspace “classic of tomorrow” – a new home-office solution that DWR could potentially manufacture and sell. Dwell will host the DWR-sponsored contest through the end of June [...]. — bustler.net
We are rarely roused by the day-to-day, brick-by-brick additions that have the most power to change our environment. We know what we already like but not how to describe it, or how to change it, or how to change our minds. We need to learn how to read a building, an urban plan, a developer’s rendering, and to see where critique might make a difference.... We need more critics — citizen critics — equipped with the desire and the vocabulary to remake the city. — Places Journal
Places features an essay from Alexandra Lange's new book Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012). Lange takes on a classic text by Ada Louise Huxtable — a review of SOM’s 1967 Marine Midland Bank... View full entry