Now that Helsinki has decided to reserve a plot in the South Harbour, the Guggenheim Foundation can organize and fund an international architecture competition for a potential Helsinki museum location. — yle.fi
Previously: Another Step Toward a Guggenheim in Helsinki View full entry
Israeli designer Avner Gicelter gives loving homage to Tel Aviv's array of architectural styles in his illustrated "TLV Buildings" project. In the continuing series, Gicelter faithfully represents each building's facade in simple, colorful, almost 8-bit renderings, sometimes retaining small... View full entry
Madeline Arakawa Gins, a poet-turned-painter-turned-architect who publicly forswore mortality — and whose buildings, by her own account, were designed to pre-empt death for those living in them — died on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 72.
The cause was cancer, said Joke Post, the manager for architectural projects at the Reversible Destiny Foundation, which Ms. Gins and her husband, the Japanese-born artist known simply as Arakawa, established in 1987.
— mobile.nytimes.com
National and local foundations have pledged more than $330 million to a fund to protect city-owned art at the Detroit Institute of Arts from being auctioned off, mediators in Detroit’s bankruptcy announced Monday.
A statement from Chief U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Rosen’s team of mediators called the financial commitments “an extraordinary and unprecedented effort” to preserve the art collection and raise money for Detroit’s underfunded pension funds.
— detroitnews.com
Previously: Detroit’s Venal Art Sale No Fix for Urban Nightmare View full entry
The Working Group plan puts forward a number of recommendations that are worth pursuing under any financial model. However, we believe that the contingencies and risks inherent in the proposals are too great to supplant the need for new revenue sources. Regrettably, tuition remains the only realistic source of new revenue in the near future. — Richard S. Lincer, chair of The Cooper Union Board of Trustees
Below is the entire email announcing the Cooper Union's decision to start charging tuition this fall, breaking the school's 153-year tradition. Catch-up on the history behind the controversial move, explained in Archinect's 13 top issues of 2013: #5: Free Cooper Union To: The Cooper Union... View full entry
The Barcelona-based illustrator responsible for Archicine and Archipixel, Federico Babina, has created a whimsical alphabet in the style of 26 particularly inspiring architects. For Archibet, Babina modeled each letter after an architect with that shared initial. The Guggenheim wraps... View full entry
I foresee that major urban spaces of Pyongyang, such as Kim Il Sung Square, will be used as “public” space with a greater variety of urban activities, such as commercial activities and show events. [...]
The last thing that may happen in North Korea, or the thing that should not happen in some sense, is the Chinese model. Considering the scale of the economy and the potential of the North Korean market compared to China, it is hard to picture radical and massive urban development in Pyongyang.
— NK News
Part two of NK News' interview with Dongwoo Yim pushes the discussion of North Korean urbanism into the future, comparing potential development methods to those seen in China and South Korea. Focusing on capital Pyongyang, Yim proposes a "Bilbao effect" development strategy that is heavy on... View full entry
Yesterday, DS+R announced in their proposal for MoMA's redesign that the American Folk Art Museum would have to be demolished. Backlash from the #folkMoMA community quickly arose: architects and critics called the choice callous and unsustainable, outraged not only by the Folk Art Museum's... View full entry
Looking at the diagram of a restricted image reminded me of the ubiquitous stock photograph of the NSA, the one reminiscent of the Kaaba and among the few used by news outlets. The photograph’s ubiquity, along with its subject’s resemblance to another opaque monument, serves as shorthand for an institution that seeks to be perceived as beyond human comprehension or accountability.
I made my pilgrimage not to the NSA, however, but to adjacent temples of lesser gods.
— creativetimereports.org
[Diller] had great respect for the Folk Art Museum, calling it a “bespoke” design tailored to the needs of the museum. She went through several scenarios on how to integrate the museum in the expanded footprint. [...]
Adapting the Folk Art Museum building, however, would basically compromise the building’s interior beyond recognition. [...]
The architects would have had to destroy the Folk Art Museum building in order to save it.
— Architect Magazing
In what looks like the kiss of death for the #folkMoMA movement, Diller Scofidio + Renfro's design for MoMA's expansion will necessitate the destruction of the neighboring American Folk Art Museum, as proposed today in a MoMA press conference. The initial threat to the Folk Museum was made last... View full entry
They conceive of urban space as space owned by the public, not space for real estate development. — Dongwoo Yim, NK News
Much of the North Korean news that reaches the United States reads like tabloid hearsay, as glimpses of a totalitarian dictatorship rife with human rights violations are peeked through Dennis Rodman and military showboating. NK News, an independent and private news source based in Washington... View full entry
The disaster that reduced Christchurch to rubble has given rise to a spirit of art and enterprise, writes Tijana Jaksic. [...]
Nearly three years on from the devastating earthquake that shook the city, it's clear that Christchurch will never be the same. But the city is embracing the chance to not only rebuild, but completely reinvent itself.
— heraldsun.com.au
In doing press for the film, Jonze has repeatedly credited New York architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, AIA, founding principals of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with helping him devise the feel of his settings. Diller took time to chat with ARCHITECT about the film, as well as the uncanny qualities of the near-future and why she generally prefers murder stories to sci-fi. — architectmagazine.com
The open office was originally conceived by a team from Hamburg, Germany, in the nineteen-fifties, to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve. — newyorker.com
Texas has seen the future of the public library, and it looks a lot like an Apple Store [...].
Even the librarians imitate Apple’s dress code, wearing matching shirts and that standard-bearer of geek-chic, the hoodie. But this $2.3 million library might be most notable for what it does not have — any actual books.
That makes Bexar County’s BiblioTech the nation’s only bookless public library.
— washingtonpost.com