That the Antinori family embraced a more ambitious project, allowed Archea to design everything down to the furniture and fittings, then paid the bills after the budget more than doubled from its original $45 million, and also endured years of delays because of construction problems, shows how much fine, successful architecture depends on the right client. — New York Times
Fröbe says she has developed an affection for good Bausünden, and is excited whenever she comes across them. The buildings are products of ingenuity, determination and courage...According to Fröbe, there's a fine line dividing good Bausünden from good architecture. — Der Spiegel
Kristin Haug recently spoke with architectural historian Turit Fröbe, who has compiled a photo collection celebrating the Germany's ugliest edifice. The most beautiful examples of Bausündens, have been published in a new book titled "Die Kunst der Bausünde" (The Art of... View full entry
It appears we are destined to be a generation of new-age nomads as a result of technology, constant career changes and unprecedented mobility. Is a constant search for how best to return to nature an inevitable side effect of modern life? [...]
[Justin Gargasz's] designs are created not only to shelter the wearer physically but as a play on the need to escape psychologically from a world filled with distractions.
— Core 77
Justin Gargasz's Sans Shelter line of wearable shelters offers three distinct designs of impromptu-tent jackets, in sleek nylon and waxed canvas models. Using methods of folding and wrapping he picked up while traveling in Northern India, the rather fashionable coats can be unpacked into tents... View full entry
Construction has begun on a 47-story office tower at the edge of one of the busiest rail yards in the U.S. The $15 billion development will ultimately roof much of the 26-acre yards and stretch west from Midtown’s brawny brick to the sparkling park-edged Hudson River. A swath of greenery will flow around 10 high-rise towers. — bloomberg.com
Since the mid-1980s, Mr. Ackerman has been traveling to southeastern Minnesota from his home in the Twin Cities area to explore and acquire caves. He is the largest private cave owner in Minnesota and might be the largest in the country, but nobody is certain because not all of his caves have been fully explored to determine their extent. — nytimes.com
The exhibition re-envisions a series of urban environments that are typical for Chicago in order to examine alternatives to the way architecture engages the city. It is a collaborative effort by five teams – David Brown, Alexander Eisenschmidt, Studio Gang, Stanley Tigerman, and UrbanLab – determined to find potentials for spatial, material, programmatic, and organizational invention within the city. — City of Chicago
Same as it never was? What inspires a city to look back on abandoned plans? Along with the success of A+D Museum's "Never Built: Los Angeles", and anticipating the Bay Area's "Unbuilt San Francisco", The Atlantic Cities took a look at "City Works: Provocations for Chicago's Urban Future" at Expo... View full entry
You learn with experience the things that are not worth doing. Most architects think, no matter what, they can make something out of any commission. For example, I don’t do prisons or hospitals, or restoration work. I do know, by now, who I am. And by now at least clients come to us with their eyes open. They don’t expect something we don’t do. — Architectural Record
The leggy damsel with raven hair and Doc Martens to match is unequivocal. ''No,'' she tells the small, freckled boy. ''You can't climb here. Go in there where it's safe.'' [...]
But the boy - not recognising her livery - can be forgiven his mistake. To him, the large, gridded edifice that she guards promises infinite climbability. [...]
The climbing frame in question is in fact art. It is this summer's Serpentine Pavilion, by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.
— smh.com.au
What role should interactivity play in art? Should public opinion decide what is and isn't art? Can good art also have utility? These are a few polemics posed in the Sydney Morning Herald by columnist Elizabeth Farrelly, reacting to Sou Fujimoto's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, featured... View full entry
The success of a public work of art is measured not merely by aesthetics, but rather, by its magnetic qualities that inspire interaction. The art is a reflection of the City, the art becomes a part of the City, the art is instrumental in making the City. — Spirit of Space
Acting as poetic translators between cities and their citizens, the creative agency Spirit of Space uses digital media to showcase humanity's built environment, consequently enhancing the citizen's self-awareness and appreciation of architectural space. Their film for Skidmore, Owings... View full entry
For 20 years, the Mexican Museum, longtime tenant of Fort Mason Center, has sought to open a dedicated building in the evolving Yerba Buena Cultural District as its 14,000-object collection long ago outgrew the present space's capacity. The wait to integrate the museum into the first four floors of a Millennium Partners luxury high-rise may finally be ending - in about five more years. — sfgate.com
“We’re trying to fill the gap between the broad stroke of policymaking and the reality of life on the ground,” says Bar-Sinai, who recently returned to Israel after a yearlong fellowship at Harvard University. “Only thinking about these questions from the 30,000 foot high perspective isn’t enough.” — smithsonianmag.com
Previously: The secret to peace in the Middle East, at an architectural expo View full entry
If San Franciscans like to describe their city as “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world. Imagine a grand casino on Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge. — Architecture and the City Festival
San Francisco is a small yet fierce city; its 7x7 mile girth is home to a rich history of social activism, tech start-ups, foodies, artists, composting programs and absurdist housing rates. Given its compact and hilly terrain, any addition or subtraction would drastically impact the city’s... View full entry
Any definitive insight into the formative stages of Roman architectural hubris lies irretrievable beneath layers of the city’s repeated renovations through the time of caesars, popes and the Renaissance [...] Now, at excavations 11 miles east of Rome’s city center, archaeologists think they are catching a glimpse of Roman tastes in monumental architecture much earlier than previously thought, about 300 years before the Colosseum. — nytimes.com
The New York Times recently reported on the ongoing excavations of Roman monumental remnants from the city's pre-Colosseum era at the Gabii digging site not far from the capital. Since last summer, a team of archaeologists and University of Michigan students led by classical studies... View full entry
Artist and architect Tomás Saraceno [...] created a massive layered installation that’s suspended more than 25 meters (approx. 82 feet) in the air of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen museum in Düsseldorf, Germany. “in orbit” stretches across the piazza under the mammoth glass ceiling of the K21 Ständehaus with its three levels of steel wire netting. Situated on the three levels are six inflated spheres that range in size, with the largest being 27 feet in diameter. — design-milk.com
Previously: Tomas Sarceno's Met Museum Rooftop Installation 'Cloud City' Now Open View full entry
[My Ideal City] is an instrument where all people in Bogota help to create their city by interacting in proposals made for their Downtown in crowd sourcing, thus impacting design through real time interaction and direct feedback. Once the different initiatives are defined, the process is completed by the population crowd funding its own initiatives. — Aedes
Winka Dubbeldam (Archi-Tectonics) and Rodrigo Nino (Prodigy Network) have developed Downtown Bogotá // My Ideal City, an online platform for the citizens of Bogotá to influence their local city-planning proposals. Recognizing that middle-class population growth across Latin America... View full entry