Straight from the heart, this year's bloggers saw us through intellectual property debates, employment strategies and Yeezus' studio-crashing. Below are the 13 most visited Blog posts during 2013. For a full list of all of our top 13 lists for 2013, click here. 1. VIDEO - Kanye stops by studio to... View full entry
It's not just starchitects and big competitions making headlines this year -- 2013 showed that architecture news can arise from anywhere, from erotic comparisons to toy companies to public protests. Below are the 13 most visited News posts during 2013. For a full list of all of our top 13 lists... View full entry
The tech sector is, increasingly, embracing the language of urban planning — town hall, public square, civic hackathons, community engagement. So why are tech companies such bad urbanists? — nytimes.com
The architects are Denton Corker Marshall, an Australian practice with an office in London, whose design makes intelligent choices. The coach part is split from the car park, which reduces their combined effect on the landscape, and back-of-house facilities are put in a separate building, a discreet chestnut-clad box, a little distance from the public structure.
The latter is, deliberately, as light as the old stones are heavy, with an undulating parasol of a roof propped on skinny steel sticks.
— theguardian.com
“I always remember the Calder show at the Guggenheim in New York,” Gehry told LA Confidential, “and how the work responded to the curves of the museum. It was spectacular. LACMA didn’t have such a space for the show, so we designed one. I hope to at least give the art its individual space and let the architecture help reveal the dynamism of each piece.” — phaidon.com
After winning first prize in a 2009 competition, Danish firms COBE and Transform collaborated once again to design the new Maritime Museum and Exploratorium, which opened its doors to the public today in the Porsgrunn Harbor in Norway. Incorporating Porsgrunn's industrial surroundings in its... View full entry
[The Catskills] could become a lot flashier, thanks to [Sherry Li's] proposal for the area: a multibillion-dollar "China City of America," complete with an amusement park, mansions, a casino, retail centers, a college, and more. [...]
The Center for Immigration Studies wrote a comprehensive take-down of "China City," criticizing the project's potential for environmental disruption, dubious promise of job creation, and possible role as a stalking horse for the Chinese government.
— The Atlantic Cities
As virtual access to art collections expands through online walk-throughs and projects like Google’s Open Gallery, museums have long been experimenting within their own halls with ways to accommodate a wider range of visitors, particularly those with disabilities. Historically, museums... View full entry
This is the thing about creativity that is rarely acknowledged: Most people don’t actually like it. Studies confirm what many creative people have suspected all along: People are biased against creative thinking, despite all of their insistence otherwise.
“We think of creative people in a heroic manner, and we celebrate them, but the thing we celebrate is the after-effect,” says Barry Staw, a researcher at the University of California–Berkeley business school who specializes in creativity.
— slate.com
The newest version of [Highlight], available for iPhone and Android, uses every sensor, signal, and stream it can get its hands on to passively figure out what you’re doing, and it intelligently scans users nearby to figure out who you might be interested in.
It’s not necessarily about people you know but people you could know. And that makes it both way cooler and way creepier than Facebook could ever dream of being.
— Wired
Reactions to Alan Parkinson's luminaria range from rhapsodic and enlightened, to energized or calmed. These giant inflatable structures, first designed by Parkinson in the 1980s and now touring worldwide under his "Architects of Air" organization, resemble multi-colored bouncy citadels, and... View full entry
So what happens if an architect in good professional standing is revealed to have a minor crime on his record due to being fingerprinted? Could he lose his license, despite the quality of his work? The TBAE absolutely reserves that right. — theatlanticcities.com
The requirement applies not just to new applicants, but also to licensed architects seeking to have their registrations renewed. Violators face a fine of up to $5,000 per day in which they are not in compliance with the new law. Currently only one other state (Massachusetts) even runs criminal... View full entry
Architect Josep Lluís Mateo has now completed the final phase of the Castelo Branco Cultural Center in Portugal. Mateo first proposed the design, which won first prize, in an invited competition in 2000. The new Cultural Center in the historic town of Castelo Branco features an ice-skating rink, an exhibition space, and an auditorium — all integrated into one fluid structure. — bustler.net
Here's a few photos of the new Cultural Center: To see more, head over to Bustler. Photos by Adrià Goula. View full entry
With help from volunteers, we took pictures of dozens of buildings and found that on average, blinds or shades covered about 59 percent of the window area. And over 75 percent of buildings had more than half of their window area covered. As the study puts it, “Tenants are moving into these rooms with a view, but more often than not, can’t see out the window.” — blog.urbangreencouncil.org
After two successful showings, the third edition of UNStudio's Motion Matters exhibition opened at the MAXXI Museum in Rome on Dec. 6. As an exploration of movement, space, and perspective, the site-specific installation has visitors interact with and experience 10 rescaled representations of UNStudio's architectural designs. — bustler.net
Get more details at Bustler. Photos © Cesare Querci View full entry