Originally built as the U.S. Pavilion in the memorable World Expo of 1967, the steel structural frame of Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere remains standing to this day as a sole landmark in Montreal's Parc Jean-Drapeau. In planning for the 50th anniversary of Expo 67 as well as Montreal's 375th... View full entry
Shelve your "bigger than a breadbox" jokes—literally. The BrickBox, a storage unit made from marine grade birch plywood, can be used a shelf, a room-divider, or even as porous furniture.Each unit has cut-out handles and nylon connectors that can lock into the grooves of other units without the... View full entry
Squalid, chaotic, overwhelmed: Piraeus is the first port of call for the thousands now trapped in the capital, on the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis. Since the closure of Greece’s northern border and with it the Balkan migrant trail – a move that has resulted in more than 46,000 stranded on the Greek mainland – it has been emblematic of the country’s inability to cope with a situation few had envisaged. — The Guardian
"In passenger terminals never built to deal with a humanitarian crisis, facilities have been rudimentary, tensions high, and resources vastly overstretched."The article notes that the growing refugee population is putting pressure on Athenian society, which was already tense as the country... View full entry
Forget the life and death drama of heart transplant surgery—what about the insane pressure to expertly fold a piece of origami in under 15 minutes? Located in Japan's Okayama prefecture, Kurashiki Central Hospital is holding fierce recruitment competitions in which surgeons must assemble tiny... View full entry
I’m on a walking tour with two dozen international architects and urban designers, as we imagine a theoretical future for Havana. The walk is part of a charrette—an exercise that gives professionals and community members a voice on urban development when there is no formal mechanism to do so, as has been the case in crumbling Havana. [...]
As the Cuban government slowly loosens restrictions on private enterprise, one wonders if the gentrification of Havana is inevitable.
— Hakai Magazine
Related stories in the Archinect news:China and US compete to invest in a newly-opened CubaSelling Cuba (Gehry's already there)Airbnb now open for business in Cuba, despite anemic internet access View full entry
All the radar systems, lighthouses, barracks, ports and airfields that China has set up on its newly built island chain in the South China Sea require tremendous amounts of electricity, which is hard to come by in a place hundreds of miles from the country’s power grid.
Beijing may have come up with a solution: floating nuclear power plants.
A state-owned company, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, is planning to build a fleet of the vessels to provide electricity to remote locations [...]
— nytimes.com
Previously in the Archinect news:New satellite images show progress in China's island-building projectChina is busy building islands in the South China Sea View full entry
Harnessing the collective intelligence of plant behaviour, the reEarth project explores new forms of bio-cooperative interaction between people and nature, within the built environment.
Echoing the architecture of Buckminster Fuller, the geodesic sphere, is both exoskeleton and ecological iconography. Its core of twelve garden modules, each carrying native British species on outwardly-extending linear actuators allow the structure to become mobile by shifting its centre-of-gravity.
— interactivearchitecture.org
Find relating articles here: Science Nonfiction: bringing emerging technologies into the UK's architecture educationInnovation with a heart: Guto Requena's technological and emotional designsThis augmented reality helmet could revolutionize the construction site View full entry
Cities are mankind’s most enduring and stable mode of social organization, outlasting all empires and nations over which they have presided...it is not population or territorial size that drives world-city status, but economic weight, proximity to zones of growth, political stability, and attractiveness for foreign capital. In other words, connectivity matters more than size. Cities thus deserve more nuanced treatment on our maps than simply as homogeneous black dots. — Quartz
Global strategist Parag Khanna gives his outlook on the economic future of the world's megacities.More on Archinect:Connectivity, not territory: why we need to make a new map for the USHow neoliberalism is changing us (for the worse)These are the most economically distressed cities in the United... View full entry
Every April, music fans venture in droves to the High Desert outside of Los Angeles for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival – a veritable rite of spring for the selfie era.And, like with any good spring bacchanal, the musical experience is often enhanced through the consumption of... View full entry
Banfield’s dedication to environmental issues was born by chance in 2000, when she moved with her husband and three children to Clayton...Together with Carlos Varela, her legal-minded neighbor, Banfield created a community association to defend the rainforest. She remained on the front lines for years, sacrificed her architectural career and eventually began public campaigns for a variety of environmental causes. — Ozy
Although the Harvard GSD formed the Office for Urbanization recently to study the effects of sea rise and climate change, Vice Mayor of Panama City Raisa Banfield has taken a more direct approach, physically halting flood-prone projects during construction and connecting with like-minded... View full entry
The sudden death of Dame Zaha Hadid could not also mean the end of Zaha Hadid Architects. With major projects still ongoing all over the world, the firm had to keep things running strong, focusing on the future while managing grief. After working with Zaha for nearly thirty years, Patrik... View full entry
From 1917 to 1991 in the former Russian Empire, and from 1945 to 1989 in the countries it dominated after the war, there was no real private ownership. No landowners, no developers, no “placemakers” - in half of Europe. Did this mean public space was done differently, and are attitudes to it different in those countries? [...] observed more closely, public space here is every bit as complex as it is elsewhere in Europe. — theguardian.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Owen Hatherley on a Stalinist city's efforts to "de-communize"The New East is where western starchitect dreams come true (or turn into nightmares)Michael Kimmelman on Public Squares View full entry
School of Architecture Dean Norman Millar, who previously taught at SCI-Arc, UCLA, Pasadena Art Center and was active on both the San Diego and Los Angeles campuses of Woodbury, succumbed to pancreatic cancer on April 14. He was 62 years old. Named "Educator of the Year" in 2014 by the AIA|LA... View full entry
Contrary to many, maybe including himself, I do not consider Bjarke Ingels the reincarnation of this or that architect from the past. On the contrary, he is the embodiment of a fully fledged new typology, which responds perfectly to the current zeitgeist. Bjarke is the first major architect who disconnected the profession completely from angst. He threw out the ballast and soared. — TIME
"With that, he is completely in tune with the thinkers of Silicon Valley, who want to make the world a better place without the existential hand-wringing that previous generations felt was crucial to earn utopianist credibility," writes Rem Koolhaas for TIME's 2016 list of the "100 Most... View full entry
We tend to perceive our identities as stable and largely separate from outside forces. But over decades of research and therapeutic practice, I have become convinced that economic change is having a profound effect not only on our values but also on our personalities. Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become normative. — Paul Verhaeghe | the Guardian
"If you’re reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain personality traits and penalises others."In this op-ed, Paul Verhaeghe asserts that neoliberalism has weakened social ties and pitted workers against one another in a... View full entry