A Syrian boy hand-built a model of what his hometown might look like after the country’s civil war, and now “Future Aleppo” is on display in Los Angeles. [...]
As he watched his city get demolished, Mohammed carefully crafted his vision for a future Aleppo using paper, wood, colored pencils, and glue. He lovingly recreated destroyed landmarks, like the medieval Citadel and his favorite park, and added imaginary, forward-looking buildings and design features [...].
— KCRW Design & Architecture
"While much of his model was destroyed when Mohammed and his family fled to Turkey, the surviving portion was brought to the U.S. by Alex Kalman, founder of Mmuseumm, a pop-up gallery in Manhattan." KCRW's Design & Architecture host, Frances Anderton, talks to Kalman about the model's... View full entry
The wing of an airplane is a mechanized form. But it’s also a shape, like the wing of a bird, that we understand from the living world. Last spring, eight students from the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design — part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at... View full entry
In 2016, 42 percent of new AXP participants and 30 percent of new ARE candidates identified as non-white—up three percentage points for both groups. However, diversity among newly licensed architects and NCARB Certificate holders remained the same. For comparison, 38 percent of the U.S. population identifies as either non-white or Hispanic, according to 2015 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. — NCARB
There are now more women and non-white participants in architecture as of 2016 according to the NCARB, which has just released its 2017 "By the Numbers" report. As NCARB notes in a press release: “While several groups remain underrepresented within the profession, these trends point to growing... View full entry
Hudson Yards has been making headlines in recent months...But immediately to the northwest, another tower that’s been in the making for an equally long period of time may have just received a boost to become the tallest of them all. A new rendering of the Moinian Group’s 3 Hudson Boulevard has surfaced, showing both an updated design for the building itself, as well as the addition of a 300-foot spire, that would make the supertall the tallest in the neighborhood. — New York Yimby
Despite years of vigorous effort in the Hudson Yards, the Related Companies may not have the tallest skyscraper of them all, thanks to FXFOWLE's proposed spire-tastic tower on 3 Hudson Boulevard. Nothing's final as of yet, but as YIMBY notes, "Back in 2012, YIMBY heard speculation that the tower... View full entry
Tina Lam and Michael Cheng snatched up Presidio Terrace — the block-long, private oval street lined by 35 megamillion-dollar mansions — for $90,000 and change in a city-run auction stemming from an unpaid tax bill. They outlasted several other bidders.
Now they’re looking to cash in — maybe by charging the residents of those mansions to park on their own private street.
— San Francisco Chronicle
When the annual $14 city tax bill for the street on Presidio Terrace went unpaid for a little over thirty years, the frustrated municipality held an auction to recoup its lost monies. A savvy couple who live in the decidedly less swanky South Bay snapped it up and now are causing all of the... View full entry
"Over the last 20 years, the [Nanjing] government has made real efforts to establish national laws, local laws and regulations so we can pursue this work," [architect Zhou Qi] said, of his optimism for the city's heritage preservation efforts. "It has just become common sense." — CNN
Amid the rapid urban development across China, Nanjing's government is making an effort to preserve and restore more of the city's historic buildings. Although some restorative projects expectedly attract some criticism, architect Zhou Qi — who has worked on restoring over 100 of the city's... View full entry
Instead of the usual snap of people lounging in the sun in Bryant Park, visual effects artist Rod Bogart has created a Voronoi diagram of the outing and posted it to his Twitter account. When asked how he had placed the center points of the diagram, Bogart tweeted that "I used Illustrator to drop... View full entry
A major Roman settlement discovered south of Lyon in France is the “most exceptional excavation of a Roman site in 40 or 50 years”, says the chief archaeologist working on the project. Benjamin Clément, who works for the Swiss conservation company Archeodunum, is leading a team of 15 archaeologists at the dig in Saint Colombe, a small town near the city of Vienne. — The Art Newspaper
The well-preserved ancient Roman neighborhood, dubbed "Little Pompeii" by the archaeologists, covers an area of almost 7,000 square meters (75,000 square feet) and was discovered during construction of a housing complex near the city of Vienne. View full entry
The point is, skaters made that area safe; in the old days it was cardboard city. That is what skating does: it fills the cracks in society left by capitalist development … that is where skating exists. It’s like a fungus, it’s like moss, it just grows in the corners where no one else wants to be. — The Guardian
Back in 2004, two-thirds of a popular skateboarding site at the Southbank Centre in London was destroyed. In 2014, the final third of the site was on its way to closure when the property management changed hands. Seeing the turnover as an opportunity, a campaign—Long Live Southbank—began that... View full entry
Each of the settings on display in the exhibit capture that promise of the future balanced with the starkness of reality. The settings also celebrate a disappearing craft—hand-drawn animation. The anime industry long resisted the shift to computer-generated art that took hold in the West starting in the 1990s, but as technology has advanced, fewer and fewer artists practice the craft traditionally, making the art on display especially striking. — The Smithsonian
London's House of Illustration is currently displaying “Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan”, an exhibition that showcases over 100 of the intricate paintings and drawings used in the production of iconic dystopian anime films like “Ghost in the Shell” and “Akira”. View full entry
But as Canadian Catholic News reported, some individuals were far from impressed with the 65-foot-long spider, which rises 18 feet when at rest and over 42 feet when in motion. Critics expressed their outrage on the archbishop Terrence Prendergast’s Facebook wall, with one woman reportedly describing Kumo as “disturbing, disappointing, and even shameful.” Others apparently referred to it as “demonic” and “sacrilegious.” — Hyperallergic
Canada celebrated its 150th anniversary over the weekend of July 27th. Part of the celebration featured giant robots put on by La Machine, a street theatre company that constructs unusual objects for performances in public spaces. The company built two robots, a mechanical dragon-horse hybrid and... View full entry
Nipton, California has all the makings of a stoner heaven. There’s a general store, a hotel, a campground, an endless supply of delicious water, and—for those late-night giggles—a Castle Butt Road. Perhaps that’s why American Green Inc., an eight-year-old self-described marijuana “seed-to-sale innovator,” decided to purchase the 80-acre town (population six) and turn it into “the country’s first energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination.” — Quartz
The Gold Rush was the largest mass migration in U.S history with over 300,000 people arriving in California hoping to reap its benefits. Well over a century and a half later, many of the towns along the coast, once vibrant, have been left as ghost towns as anyone taking a road trip along the 5 can... View full entry
Launched in 1999, the inaugural Pickathon Music Festival was not so much a festival, but rather a small fundraiser for KBOO—a non-profit community radio station. Held in the woods nearby Portland, Oregon, the now annual summer event has grown into a sellout affair with lineups including Beach... View full entry
This week we're joined with Anthony Morey, LA-based theorist, designer, educator, writer, and curator. Readers of Archinect will probably recognize his name from his curatorial work with the exciting annual architecture show "One Night Stand", and his relatively new series on Archinect... View full entry
Longtime DTLA developer and landowner Joseph Hellen has released a revised design for a proposed 40-story, 420-foot tall apartment tower at 525 South Spring Street. — Urbanize.LA
What would downtown Los Angeles' historic core look like with a 40-story apartment building with a wavy white exterior? Probably a great deal like the rendering above, which was created by TSK Architects working with Steinberg Architects (who are carrying through to produce the design in an... View full entry