Although Steven Holl Architects' design for Copenhagen harbor's pedestrian bridge linking twin skyscrapers won the city's competition back in 2008 and has already been honored with a 2010 Progressive Architecture Award, the rather tight-lipped global economy delayed its construction. However, the... View full entry
The long-rumored Apple store at the gateway to the North Michigan Avenue shopping district won't be a 2.0 version of the famous glass cube that forms an iconic entry into the retailer's Fifth Avenue flagship in Manhattan. It will be more like a high-tech version of Frank Lloyd Wright's quintessentially Midwestern Prairie Style homes, with river views to boot. — The Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune obtained a draft report from Chicago's Department of Planning and Development that details plans for a new Apple store alongside the river and adjacent to the Michigan Avenue bridge. Moving away from the iconic minimalism of its flagship Manhattan store, the Foster +... View full entry
The Ark Encounter is a full-sized replica of Noah’s Ark, as described in the book of Genesis. [...]
the actual ark will be 510 feet long ... 85 feet wide and more than 50 feet tall, and that's before you add the sail. It can house up to 10,000 people in a pinch, and when finished will be the largest wooden timber structure in the world. [...]
“People expect the quality of a Universal Studios and we’re going to give it to them.”
— cincinnati.com
Perhaps not surprisingly, other riffs on Noah's Ark have already been built (although they probably aren't scaled to cubits):Chinese man spends whole life savings building very own 'Noah's Ark' over fears of impending apocalypseOpening Noah's Ark View full entry
[Sara Zewde] argues that while the traditional monument commemorates a singular event or individual by placing an object in a space that is a break from its surroundings, the 400-year practice of African enslavement demands a different approach.
“For Afro-descended people, you wake up every day with the legacy of slavery,” she says. “How do you deal with that spatially?”
One approach is to translate cultural practices into spatial ones.
— Next City
But this year’s champion bathroom, crowned by voters on Cintas’ website, is not nestled inside some upscale restaurant in a major city. It’s a public restroom in Minturn, Colorado.
A collaboration between the town of Minturn, LaN Architecture’s Monika Wittig, LGM 3d Studios, and Noble Welding, the restrooms are meant to resemble a passageway into a Rocky Mountain mine. “The town rallied together and showed the value of a restroom that’s creative and memorable for guests,” [...].
— citylab.com
From the America's Best Restroom Contest website:Founded in 1904, Minturn is rich in mining history and its new public restrooms reflect its past. The unique digitally fabricated shape of the men’s and women’s restrooms resemble an adit (horizontal passage way) into a Rocky Mountain mine. The... View full entry
In suburbs, cities and rural areas, [big-box stores] can present a reuse and rehab conundrum, particularly as retailers become more sophisticated about controlling leases and redevelopment. [...]
With the big-box model, stores are rarely remodeled. [...]
A kind of “retail cannibalism” emerges, where companies compete for market share with ever-shinier facades that leave aging stores behind as the asphalt fades.
— minnpost.com
More on the fading development of big-box stores:A supermall grows in fracking countryFor in that death of malls, what dreams may come? Archinect Sessions #32, featuring special guest co-host, Nam Henderson!Dead Malls and Shopping DinosaursDead-malls and the return of Main Street View full entry
Last month, Seth Pinsky, Executive Vice President at RXR Realty, shared a presentation regarding the development of the long-planned rehabilitation and conversion of Pier 57 aka “SuperPier.” According to him, the 450,000-square-foot development will invest $350 million of private capital to redevelop the structure, and in return create hundreds of jobs, generate millions of dollars of revenue for the Hudson River Park Trust, and create a new destination for New Yorkers and visitors alike. — 6sqft.com
Throughout its history, Kitchener has often imagined big plans for its urban development, but since the 1960s most of these grand plans for downtown Kitchener only ever found form in the Market Square Shopping Centre. Market Square is the most complete and concrete repository of Kitchener’s attempts at re-imagining itself in the postwar period. — Numéro Cinq
Nathan Storring, a writer, artist, designer, and assistant curator of the Urbanspace Gallery in Toronto, writes a thorough critique of the redevelopment, destruction, and rebirth of the downtown core in Kitchener, Ontario. The issues and concerns, raised in his essay in microcosm, can be applied... View full entry
For those former guests and architectural buffs who lamented the demolition of the iconic Hotel Okura Tokyo, they can soon preserve a piece of it in their homes.
Hotel officials plan to sell on the Internet some of the furniture and fixtures used in the guest rooms and restaurants during the main building's 53-year history, with the proceeds going to charity. [...]
The 11-story main building, which opened in May 1962 [...], was called “a masterpiece of Japan’s modernism architecture.”
— ajw.asahi.com
Previously:It's lights out at the old Okura: reconstruction of the iconic Tokyo hotel starts next weekAs the Okura says sayonara, Tokyo doesn't seem to care muchFarewell to the Old Okura View full entry
A set of maps from designer Archie Archambault might help us rebuild the mental maps of cities that we're starting to lose. Instead of a literal grid of streets, he maps out neighborhoods and the basic parts of a city the way someone who lives there might think of it, or at least the way they probably did before Google Maps existed. — Fast Company
How did people live—or at least find their way to all of the events, parties, and work-related meetings—before they had smartphones and GPS? You could ask a friend, just as Archie Archambault did when he first visited Portland and didn't know his way around. Since then, he has started drawing... View full entry
Special guest Susan Surface, former Archinect editor now at Design in Public, joins us on Archinect Sessions to talk about recent developments in the state of gender inclusive design – specifically, in public restrooms.As the binary model of gender begins to slowly dissolve in the popular... View full entry
"Nobody really reads books," Niami says, "so I'm just going to fill the shelves with white books, for looks." Stepping past the nightclub's outdoor lounge area where circular banquettes will seem to float next to a two-story waterfall, he says: "I really think that this house is going to do a lot for L.A. Anybody who lives in the area is going to be proud to be near it." — DETAILS
Go ahead and hate! About half of the tennis court had to be built on pilings to account for the land's contours. This niche will have a covered viewing area and a fire pit.The infinity pool for the guesthouse, which, when built, will be 5,000 square feet itself.The motor court and the main... View full entry
The times—specifically, the sea levels—are a changin'. Luckily, Harvard's Graduate School of Design has just launched a new initiative, the Office for Urbanization, to start amassing design research for new urban realities for cities around the world. The Office is described as being "a venue... View full entry
Transport bosses have unveiled the first official map showing the walking times between central London's Tube stations.
The comprehensive plan highlights the time it takes to travel on foot between almost all of the stations on London’s Underground network.
[Transport for London] Chief Executive Gordon Innes said: “The Tube is the most used transport method by visitors in London, stations for many of our top attractions are within walking distance of each other.
— the Evening Standard
You can download the new map here. View full entry
But some designers are toying with another idea—that there’s a different way to build that exploits randomness rather than avoids it. This kind of building will rely on new kinds of granular materials that when tipped into place, bind together in ways that provide structural stability. [...] Sean Keller at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago explain how this kind of “aleatory architecture” is finally becoming possible. — technologyreview.com
That will have a profound effect on the process of design. “As a result, preplanning is freed from considering the local structural detail,” say Keller and Jaeger. “Instead, the main task now becomes generating the proper particle shapes as well as the overall boundary and processing... View full entry