Leagues and Legions (aka LGNLGN, a think tank at the intersection of architecture and publishing) and the Institute for Urban Design (IfUD) are asking critics, practitioners, academics, community organizers, and the general public to weigh in on one of four questions dealing with issues of... View full entry
Curved buildings with mushroom roofs! Giant 3D printers spewing out ships! Swarms of high-tech workers making electric cars!
It’s all part of “Super Dock,” a futuristic science park designed by radical eco-architect Mitchell Joachim.
“There are no walls,” he said. “We’re merging architecture and land into the water. The entire area becomes a ballast for Brooklyn, so it can absorb water, clean it and filter it back into New York.”
— brooklyndaily.com
Apple Inc.'s ailing chief executive Steve Jobs is officially stepping down from the helm of the company, an historic shift that hands the reins to chief operating officer Tim Cook. The company said Mr. Jobs submitted his resignation to the board of directors on Wednesday and "strongly recommended" that the board name Mr. Cook as his successor. — online.wsj.com
We hate to see you leave, Steve. View full entry
Five years ago, local architecture and urban-design firm Farr Associates was asked to solve the problem. The company built a 2,600-square-foot house that is now “very, very close” to generating all of its own power, architect Jonathan Boyer says. The owners and designers continue to tweak the tech, and he’s expecting net-zero energy use in the next year-end report. — Wired Magazine
Wired Magazine in a collaborative partnership with Architectural Digest explores the Windy City’s first, (almost) net-zero-energy home. The home employs a butterfly roof and other smart design ideas to help it unplug from the grid. View full entry
Following a drop of almost a full point in June, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) fell again by more than a point in July. allSTAR believes "its time to get creative with business strategies and contracts. also not a bad time to hire risk managers"
News Following a drop of almost a full point in June, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) fell again by more than a point in July. allSTAR believes "its time to get creative with business strategies and contracts. also not a bad time to hire risk managers" The Cupertino City Council... View full entry
This is the first research practice dedicated to the ontology of space defined by mathematics. — designtopology.com
The Futuro was designed by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the 1960s for mass production as a kit of prefabricated parts, which can be assembled, taken apart and reassembled anywhere. — NYT
Alice Rawsthorn visits a prototype of Mr. Suuronen’s mobile house which is now on view at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in “Futuro: Constructing Utopia,”. She writes that the exhibit "offers both a whistlestop tour of the history of form in design and an... View full entry
If you love Apple and fine ingenious design as much as we do, you will be thrilled to hear that the beautiful, environmentally-aware Foster + Partners designed new Apple Campus is now one step closer to becoming a reality. The Cupertino City Council has just announced that Apple Inc. has submitted a development proposal for their new Apple Campus. — openbuildings.com
New images of Jean Nouvel's Torre Verre were revealed. George Showman comments "It's frustrating they cut this thing down so it wouldn't offend the tourists on the Empire State viewing platform (well, I love that view too, but always wish there were more tall buildings to look at). The new version is not nearly as beautiful, taken as a monolith...Finally: can't believe there is still the money in high-end real estate to pay for this kind of ridiculous building."
The newest ShowCase features Butaro Hospital in Rwanda designed by MASS Design Group. Besides the locally-sensitive design of the complex, the project is noteworthy for it's emphasis on social design through capacity-building. "Beyond providing access to first-rate healthcare... View full entry
What we are finding is that what we want is access to things...Our cities I would put to you are stockpiles of surplus capacities...What we probably will find is that turning these products into services that we have access to when we want them is a far smarter way to go. In fact even space itself is turning into a service. — TED
How can cities help save the future? In this TED talk Alex Steffen discusses why he thinks if we view climate change as a problem of "clean energy generation" we are setting ourselves up for a problem. He suggests the future lie in fact in "the shareable future of cities". He... View full entry
After a very quiet day, Archinect is back online after almost 12 hours (!) of downtime. The data center that Archinect's servers are located, in Dallas, TX, suffered a major power failure today causing thousands of websites to go down. Unfortunately we were one of those affected. Thanks for... View full entry
We've just discovered Apple will be updating their iconic Cube structure at their midtown Manhattan retail location, replacing the current cube of 90 panes with just 15 massive, and I mean massive, pieces of glass... The slabs will be roughly 10 feet wide by a whopping 32 feet high, and held together using some sort of secret, proprietary connector that will reportedly be embedded within the glass itself, rather than being comprised of mere external clips. — core77.com
Zaha Hadid's website just received an extreme makeover. A much needed one at that! Her previous website was a commonly-used reference in the "architects have horrible websites" argument. This new one appears to be a huge improvement based on the few minutes I've surfed around. View full entry
Google has hired Ingenhoven Architects, a German firm that specializes in sustainable architecture and has completed award-winning green designs from Sydney to Stuttgart, to develop plans for what could total nearly 600,000 square feet of space. Google currently owns or leases about 4.3 million square feet of space in Mountain View, according to its securities filings. — mercurynews.com
Orhan Ayyüce comments "as simple as it is, one of the most beautiful houses i have seen in this age of dwell magazine and ikea type of joint business deals which tend to glorify form and materiality to boredom.."
Archinect's newest Showcase features the House in Geumsan. The project is located in South Korea and designed by Hyungnam Lim, Eunjoo Roh + studio_GAON. With the project the designers tried to highlight the element of Korean architecture that distinguishes it from Japanese or Chinese... View full entry
