Some child-development experts and parents say decades of dumbed-down playgrounds, fueled by fears of litigation, concerns about injury and worrywart helicopter parents, have led to cookie-cutter equipment that offers little thrill. The result, they say, is that children are less compelled to play outside, potentially stunting emotional and physical development and exacerbating a nationwide epidemic of childhood obesity. — online.wsj.com
At one time, the dorm housed as many as 40 or 50 prisoners packed together like sardines, according to Caperton. The plan is to convert the space into two or three one-bedroom apartments, which is a considerably more comfortable arrangement than the last residents of the building had. Caperton says that in the 1980s and '90s Lorton Prison had a reputation for being dangerously overcrowded. — wamu.org
Luo Baogen and his wife are the lone holdouts from a neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the main thoroughfare heading to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city of Wenling in Zhejiang province.
"Nail house" families occasionally have resorted to violence. Some homeowners have set themselves on fire in protests. Often, they keep 24-hour vigils because developers will shy away from bulldozing homes when people are inside.
— in2eastafrica.net
"In 2009 we built two timber houses, the Oberhus and the Unterhus, in the hamlet of Leis, just over 1,500 m above sea level in the community of Vals in Grisons. From 1 December 2012 onward we are letting out the Unterhus for vacations. A third timber house, the Türmlihus, will soon complete this little ensemble. The Türmlihus will welcome its first guests in autumn 2013.
We are very much looking forward to having guests in our timber vacation homes in Leis.
Annalisa and Peter Zumthor"
— ZTH blog
peter and annalisa zumthor are, apparently, getting into the hospitality business. one - and soon to be two houses, designed by zumthor and located in the small town of leis, will be able to be leased out beginning next week. both houses appear to be located adjacent to a house designed for... View full entry
PLANT partners Lisa Rapoport, Chris Pommer, and Mary Tremain have been awarded the 2012 Faculty of Engineering Team Alumni Achievement Medal from the University of Waterloo. The awards ceremony took place on Thursday 22 November 2012 at the annual Dean of Engineering Dinner in Waterloo, Ontario... View full entry
Libraries are increasingly the places in which culture is produced as well as collected and disseminated. The Ambient Exchange promotes a culture of collaboration, creative inquiry and community engagement through provision of functional and exuberant spaces that engage the strong cultural... View full entry
HELSINKI CENTRAL LIBRARY THE STORYTELLING TREE The book is an everlasting memory. It is like a hundred-year-old tree that tells us stories and tales, from here and elsewhere. This is where we start from. Just as the roots of the trees are deeply anchored in the ground, the books and their pages... View full entry
To fund the Bubble, the museum originally turned to Bloomberg, planning to call it the Bloomberg Balloon in honor of a $1 million (or greater) gift. But, perhaps tellingly, the Hirshhorn has not consistently referred to the Bloomberg Balloon as such, suggesting there may still be room—or the need—for a larger donor. Diminishing federal support certainly won’t fund the Bubble, and to date, the museum's board has not stepped up to bridge the funding gap. — tnr.com
After the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Sandy, those responsible for our built environment, especially in New York, are facing the dawn of a new environmental clime and industry reality. Designing and delivering to the highest safety standards in what were once thought of as safe areas of the world now holds far greater importance than ever before. — DesignBuild Source
“I would hate to stop the process and lose the momentum, especially since a lot of time, money, and effort has been expended on this memorial,” he wrote. “However, given the continued opposition with the Eisenhower family, I question whether we can ever resolve the differences ... and whether it would be in our best interest to continue to move forward.” — washingtonpost.com
Moshe Safdie has designed buildings around the world for almost fifty years but doesn’t have an identifiable style. His latest work, an Arkansas art museum funded by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, illustrates why it doesn’t matter — thewalrus.ca
The idea of creating a low-line companion to Philadelphia's planned high line has so gripped imaginations that a team of top designers has volunteered to sketch ideas for a belowground trail on the west side of Broad St. Tours are now practically weekly events conducted by Paul van Meter, who first proposed a low-line park.
There's one hitch: A new city plan just earmarked the low-line trench for a high-speed bus route that would connect a string of cultural venues to the heart of downtown.
— articles.philly.com
While the design industry may not pay as much heed to star architects – or starchitects – as it once did, on a consumer level, they clearly still pack a punch.
This is exemplified by the sale of an apartment in the Frank Gehry-designed Opus Building in Hong Kong which, according to William Lau of Midland Realty, reached a record-breaking sale price of nearly $60 million due to its ‘unique’ architectural design.
— DesignBuild Source
Developers in San Francisco are loath to take architectural risks because the city’s approval process for new development is long and rigorous, perhaps the most onerous in the country, architects say.
It’s hard to fault their caution when you consider how small San Francisco really is — 47 square miles (Manhattan alone is 23 square miles) — with much of the area consumed by neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes.
— The New York Times
Led by Architekturzentrum Wien director Dietmar Steiner, the curators traveled around the former Soviet Union over a three-year period in search of their often elusive and quickly decaying subjects. Focusing on the former republics—from Estonia to Belarus, Armenia to Uzbekistan—they interviewed the still-living actors of the time and foraged in bookshops for archive material. They eventually uncovered major Soviet typologies... — online.wsj.com