The collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is inching closer to safety. The Michigan State Legislature agreed yesterday to contribute $350m over the next 20 years to protect the museum’s works of art and shore up Detroit’s ailing pension funds. The state’s governor Rick Snyder is expected to sign the bill, which is part of a package to help settle the city’s bankruptcy, by the end of the week. — theartnewspaper.com
Previously: Detroit Institute of Arts: $330 million pledged to save the city's art collection View full entry
The flagship museum of the billionaire financier and art collector Eli Broad, still under construction, has filed a $19.8 million lawsuit against a German company for what it describes as delays in fabricating the building blocks for its unusual latticed facade. — nytimes.com
Jersey City-based art center Mana Contemporary—the exhibition branch of the Mana Fine Arts art storage, shipping, and packing empire—is building a street art museum in a former ice factory in Jersey City [...].
In addition to a rotating program of special exhibitions inside the institution, MMUA will boast specially-commissioned murals on its exterior walls, a large billboard where artists will create new works, and a full range of educational and community outreach programs.
— news.artnet.com
Last month, the University of Southern California's School of Architecture hosted its annual Blue Tape event, an exhibition surveying work from all levels and discipline. The massive show of work from first year bachelors to masters thesis levels is a prime chance for students to see what's been... View full entry
Kahn was one of three founding members of IDEA Office, formerly the Central Office of Architecture. He originally opened the office in 1987 together with fellow architects Ron Golan and Russell N. Thomsen. In 2009, he renewed his long-standing partnership with Thomsen to form IDEA Office. Their work includes design at all scales, from graphic design to installations and industrial design, to architecture and urban planning — sciarc.edu
Sad news today from the SCI-Arc and LA architecture community. Eric Kahn, teacher and architect, has passed away at 58. Related: Y-House Showcase feature, by IDEA Office View full entry
With a feature called HomeKit that's coming in iOS 8, iPhones will be able to start controlling smart devices, such as garage door openers, lights, and security cameras. It'll all be controllable through Siri too [...]
It's only a matter of time before major tech companies begin vying to be the thread that connects appliances and devices throughout your home, and this seems to be Apple's first step in the door.
— theverge.com
Alex de Stampa makes tricky and delightful animations of famous contemporary structures, remixing the stale static-images circulated on architectural blogospheres. The animations are part of his "1 Week 1 Project", which you can read more about on Visual News.Mirador Building by MVRDV and Blanca... View full entry
The new library at Dalarna University, Dalarna Media Library, is now officially open to the public. The building that reinterprets the library in a multi functional design is laid out as an approximately 3.000 m2 ’spiral of knowledge’ that naturally integrates into the surrounding landscape at... View full entry
As a result of the violence, the local real estate market has bottomed out. Those who flee the city usually can’t sell their homes and businesses, so more and more buildings, including some of Tampico’s largest and most impressive ones, lie abandoned. Buildings that could easily survive for another century are mere empty shells, with huge trees growing through the roofs and out of the windows. Such levels of abandonment are rarely seen in the centre of a major city. — theguardian.com
In a major adaptation to U.S. licensure rules, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards has proposed a new option for gaining licensure -- simply through the process of an architecture education. As announced in a NCARB press release earlier today, architecture students could... View full entry
A new world record was broken just this week in Hungary, Budapest when LEGO architects placed the finishing Rubik's Cube ornament on the top of the massive Lego skyscraper.
Reaching 34.76 meters (114 feet), the tower was officially registered with the Guinness book of World Records as well as the LEGO Store in Budapest on May 25.
— sobadsogood.com
Montenegro's "Treasures in Disguise" exhibition for the 2014 Venice Biennale looks to the country's former Yugoslavic past to provoke discussion of bringing renewal and examining the future possibilities of Montenegran architecture. The exhibition focuses on four historic buildings constructed between 1960 and 1986 that are perceived as cultural models of late modernism architecture. Built with optimistic intentions, the buildings were neglected and have been left to decay ever since. — bustler.net
Check out the projects in their current and original states.(Pictured above) Dom RevolucijeArchitect: Marko Mušić Kayak Club “Galeb” Architect: Vukota Tupa Vukotić Hotel FjordArchitect: Zlatko Ugljen Spomen Dom Architect: Marko Mušić To learn more, head over to Bustler. View full entry
What do cooking and mixology have to do with architecture? Can food and drink, as prototyped and iterative objects, help us better understand architectural design? The AA Visiting School is traveling to San Juan, Puerto Rico this summer for “Play With Your Food”, to tackle these questions and... View full entry
It was an artistic collaboration delayed by some 25 years: The London architect Zaha Hadid responded as much to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as she did to “Così Fan Tutte” when she designed her undulating all-white set for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of Mozart’s opera this week (it closes on Saturday). “We were responding to the context, to Frank’s design,” Ms. Hadid said in a telephone interview from London. — nytimes.com
[The American shopping mall] has its own traceable lineage, from the earliest planned shopping centers to the first regional hubs for shoppers traveling by car, to the novel post-war enclosed malls of Victor Gruen [...]
Malls, in short, have spread across the American landscape -- and defined it -- with remarkable success, adapting to our changing tastes along the way.
— washingtonpost.com
The below animation shows the spread of shopping malls across the U.S. throughout the twentieth century, and was created by Sravani Vadlamani, a doctoral student in transportation engineering at Arizona State University. Including numbers of strip, outlet, indoor and outdoor malls, growth really... View full entry