As Sadiq Khan arrived for his first day at work as London’s new mayor, architects urged him to be bold in tackling the city’s housing crisis.
They warned that his policies alone won’t be enough to solve the problems and advised him to widen his approach.
“Bold strategic moves are what’s required, and I therefore hope the new mayor has the stomach for a fight,” said Russell Curtis of RCKa.
— bdonline.co.uk
There are high hopes for Khan, find out more about some of the issues he will have to tackle in his new position: £950 for a mouldy 'central' flat? Welcome to London.The root of London's housing crisis lies beyond its bordersLondon's housing crisis is creating a chasm between the rich and... View full entry
The Art Fund’s Museum of the Year shortlist was announced...with Bristol’s Arnolfini; the Bethlem Museum of the Mind in south London; Jupiter Artland near Edinburgh; London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and the York Art Gallery in the north of England being nominated for the £100,000 prize. — theartnewspaper.com
Relating articles:The price of keeping Britain's 'Downton Abbeys' from crumblingV&A East project updateUtopian dreams; London's first Design Biennale reveals its opening theme View full entry
While the buyer’s name and official selling price will be kept anonymous until June, the real estate agency behind the sale, Kurfiss Sotheby’s International Realty, confirmed that the new owner is from the area and apparently wants to preserve the property as it has been maintained thus far. The last known price of the house was $1,500,000 back in March. — Chestnut Hill Local
Previously:No guarantees for historic residential architecture in "real-estate limbo"Golden Years: Saluting joint creativity with Denise Scott Brown, on Archinect Sessions #45The Vanna Venturi House is for sale View full entry
The architecture of forced displacement is the subject of “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter,” a forthcoming exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit will assemble work by architects, designers, and artists responding to the global refugee crisis.
Curated by Sean Anderson, MoMA’s associate curator for architecture and design, with curatorial assistant Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, “Insecurities” will include works of design built to help alleviate suffering inside refugee camps.
— citylab.com
↑ Interior of a Better Shelter prototype in Kawergosk Refugee Camp, Erbil, Iraq. (Image: Better Shelter, 2015)Related stories in the Archinect news:Ai Weiwei documents life in Greek refugee camp on social media"Nobody thinks about the safety of these women": the harrowing experiences of female... View full entry
Bardell and Howe have been working together for the past decade and have started executing guerrilla-style living sculptures in the river, a project they call the River Liver Series. [...]
“One of the things that keeps us here is how exciting we think the next 10 years is going to be,” Howe says of L.A. “When they actually do this river revitalization, it’s going to be L.A.’s Central Park. Culturally, I think it’s the spot to be on the West Coast.”
— laweekly.com
Related on Archinect:Los Angeles River revitalization: prosperity for all or just a chosen few?Mayor Eric Garcetti on Frank Gehry's plans for the LA River: "a cooperative, collaborative, regional approach"Take a look at "6," an experimental documentary that memorializes the recently-demolished... View full entry
London Eye designers Marks Barfield Architects and Davis Brody Bond have created a new aerial cable car for Chicago. The plans, which are being sponsored by Lou Raizin and Laurence Geller CBE, have yet to gain approval from any official city agency, but in the meantime here are a few... View full entry
Façadomy is new publication that looks at contemporary identity through the lenses of art and architecture. Façadomy's inaugural issue, Gender Talents explores the landscape of self-determined gender. It builds off the work of progressive sexologist Esben Esther P. Benestad, who has observed seven distinct genders in their practice as a therapist in Norway. Three prominent voices in contemporary art and architecture reflect on these seven themes... — Façadomy
Conversations around gender and identity – long excluded from the "gentleman's profession" of architecture – are seeping more and more into architectural discourse.For example, the AIA announced recently that they would cancel their conference in North Carolina because of the passage of HB... View full entry
It's not clear where or when this wooden slat revival started exactly, but it was roughly a decade or so ago and has been creeping through Los Angeles like kudzu ever since. In decades to come, it'll be a signifier for the exhaustive pace at which the city has changed in the past 5 to 10 years—for better or worse. And even though it can be spotted throughout the greater L.A. area or other markets entirely, architectural designer Marc Cucco finds the slat to be "specific to Eastside L.A." — laist.com
More news on gentrification in Los Angeles:How a group of Boyle Heights residents are fighting gentrificationAs LA densifies, its iconic roadside restaurants disappearVenice Beach's ongoing grapple with the tech titan invasionWith gentrification, the end of racial segregation moves into LA's... View full entry
New York's iconic Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay rights movement took root, will become the first national monument honoring the history of gays and lesbians in the U.S. under a proposal President Barack Obama is preparing to approve.
Designating the small swath of land will mark a major act of national recognition for gay rights advocates and their struggles over the last half-century.
— AP
Originally built as stables in the 1840s, the Stonewall Inn was the site of historic riots after police raided the LGBT bar on June 28, 1969. While such raids were then common, that night the bar-goers fought back – in the process helping to catalyze the LGBT liberation movement.The news was... View full entry
With the future of a Lucas Museum on Chicago's lakefront in doubt, the city of Waukegan is asking the organizers to look a little to the north.
Waukegan Mayor Wayne Motley reached out to Mellody Hobson, a Chicago financial executive and the wife of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, about locating the proposed museum featuring digital, traditional and narrative art on Waukegan's lakefront, a city spokesman said on Wednesday.
— Chicago Tribune
After a shake-up Tuesday wherein Chicago-based Friends of the Parks (which was taking a 30-day break from suing to prevent the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art from being built) announced that it wasn't going to budge on its anti-LMNA position, George Lucas announced that he was seriously... View full entry
This fall, the Jewish Museum will present what it’s billing as the first United States exhibition devoted to the work of Pierre Chareau, a French Modernist who for decades fell out of the mainstream history of art and architecture [...]
Chareau (1883-1950) was a prolific designer and art collector in France, and best known for his Maison de Verre (“Glass House”), a landmark building in Paris created in 1928 in collaboration with the Dutch architect Bernard Bijvoet...
— the New York Times
The exhibition, entitled "Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design", is the third exhibition in a trilogy of design exhibitions, following surveys of the work of Isaac Mizrahi and Roberto Burle Marx.The French architect and designer also had an impressive collection of art, which will be on... View full entry
If you can afford the airfare, it's getting easier to be a digital nomad. Roam, a new network of co-living spaces, offers a lease that lets you continually move: After a couple of weeks or months in Madrid, you can head to Miami, or Ubud, Bali. By 2017, the startup plans to have 8-10 locations around the world.
These aren't designed as places for vacations. Instead, it's an alternative way to think about home for "location-independent" people who can work remotely.
— Fast Co.exist
"Residents each have their own private bedroom and bathroom, but they also have access to a coworking space and shared communal areas. The point is to meet as many people as possible." Their website includes copy like, "A new way of living: Sign one lease. Live around the world," and, "Show up and... View full entry
I’m blind, so my nose tells me what neighborhood I’m in.
My dog and I – we walk. We’ll walk from 125th down to Houston. The smell of Harlem is definitely different now. It’s more open. There’s a new class of people. The whole thing feels like someplace else.
— The Guardian
To navigate a vast city, people often develop a set of idiosyncratic markers: personal landmarks, favorite coffee joints, or in Craig Taylor's case, the smell of a particular section of town. Should designers start thinking in terms of creating signature scents to help identify their work for a... View full entry
Earlier this year, photographer Baker took us on an odyssey through two icons of Modernism in the UK by Wells Coates: London’s Isokon building and Brighton’s Embassy Court. Now he’s teamed up with director Alex Simpson to create a mini-documentary, The Legacy of Wells Coates.
The Isokon was once home to Soviet spies, Agatha Christie and Modernist émigrés including the founder of Bauhaus school, Walter Gropius.
— thespaces.com
Find more tales of form following function here:A 'hidden' Mies van der Rohe masterpiece receives funding for renovationA tall order? Wooden skyscraper could become Britain's second tallest buildingWorking Out of the Box: Jader Almeida"African Modernism: Architecture of Independence" showcases a... View full entry
Wilmington officials say the cancellation of an architect business conference due to HB2 will cost the city nearly $1 million.
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced Monday it will nix its three-day conference scheduled for later this fall at the Wilmington Convention Center. AIA officials cited the passage of HB2 as the reason for the cancellation.
— WETC
Being a bigot isn't just ridiculous—it's costly! Supposedly pro-business Republican senators in North Carolina have managed to drive away Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and now the AIA thanks to their passage of HB2, which Towelroad describes as a bill that "bans all local LGBT rights ordinances... View full entry