Archive of Affinities is a very interesting new(ish?) Tumblr documenting architectural patent applications. View full entry
Designed primarily by Roland Genick, chief architect for rail and transit systems at Parsons, the huge Pasadena-based construction conglomerate, the new stations are topped by undulating light-blue canopies of perforated metal panels that are not only dated — bringing a public-art project from the early 1990s to mind — but provide almost no shade or rain protection. Or solar power, for that matter, though from certain angles the stations look a bit like they're covered with photovoltaic panels. — latimes.com
... instead of drawing his inspiration from buildings in his portfolio, Gehry designed the various pieces of this chess set based on their role in the game. So the soft curves of the queen contrast the sharp angles of the king, while the pawns have all been equipped with cannons atop them. Unfortunately the set, which is made from fine bone-china, is only available from Tiffany & Co. as a special order for a staggering $25,000. A check-mate to the bank account for most of us. — gizmodo.com
The House of Tomorrow, a modernist,12-sided exhibition home built for Chicago's 1933 World's Fair is among Indiana's 10 most endangered buildings, according to the state's leading preservation group.
Designed by Chicago architects George and William Keck, the house wowed fairgoers with then unheard of features such as glass exterior walls, air conditioning, a dishwasher and automatically opening kitchen and garage doors. The home even had an airplane bay on its ground floor.
— wbez.org
You've heard of popup stores, right? Companies setting up storefronts that might only be around for a week or a day or even just a couple of hours. [...]
In Oakland, Calif., they've taken it to the next level. A handful of stores have popped up all at the same time -- with no plans to close. It's called a popup hood. And Andrew Stelzer reports, it may be coming soon to a hood near you.
— marketplace.org
New psychological research shows that mild intoxication can actually boost creative problem solving. — inc.com
Are you bummed that it's Monday again? New research may turn your frown upside down, because it looks like you now have an excuse to get a little buzz on at work, in the name of creativity. View full entry
Skywalking basically involves a photographer making his way up to a death-defying height, and snapping a photo that’s meant to give you both a perspective you’ve never seen before, and that feeling like your stomach just made its way into your throat. — petapixel.com
Ayyüce also says that with governments such as Los Angeles now less financially able to maintain parks and other such amenities, big business set about increasingly co-opting -- or, picking up the slack for -- the creation and safeguarding of a bastardized brand of community commons.
"You go to The Americana, you go to The Grove, you got to the Santa Monica [Third Street Promenade], these are places that thousands of people visit," Ayyüce says. "But this is not really public space."
— kcet.org
KCET's Jeremy Rosenberg talks to Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce about Proposition 13. View full entry
When the hotel workers released a short film a few months later that vividly made the connection between poverty and the uprising, there was a memorable freak-out in the Convention Bureau and City Hall. Instead of a comprehensive investigation that documented events, took public testimony and probed underlying causes, the Christopher Commission was coaxed to finish its superficial report on reforming the LAPD. No one wanted to hear the voices from our own intifada. — Los Angeles Review of Books
Mike Davis reflects on 1992 Rodney King "uprising" deceivingly known as L.A. Riots. He refers it as "our own intifada." I agree with him since witnessing first hand the black smoke covering the city few hours after the events start to unfold. It was the most socially important event I... View full entry
A public forum today at Union Station provided the public with their first look at conceptual visions for Union Station and the surrounding area by six architectural firms bidding to prepare a master plan for the facility.
Metro Executive Planning Director Martha Welborne told the several hundred people in attendance that the point of the vision boards was to energize the teams submitting bids to prepare the master plan, and energize the public that uses — or will someday use Union Station.
— thesource.metro.net
The Italian government has 20 days in which to decide the fate of the country's national contemporary art museum, the Maxxi, which opened in Rome just two years ago and was designed by the Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid. — The Guardian
Almost a million images of New York and its municipal operations have been made public for the first time on the internet.
The city's Department of Records officially announced the debut of the photo database.
Culled from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the 870,000 photographs feature all manner of city oversight -- from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.
— dailymail.co.uk
For the first eight years of our marriage, [Michelle and I] were paying more in student loans than what we were paying for our mortgage. So we know what this is about.
And we were lucky to land good jobs with a steady income. But we only finished paying off our student loans—check this out, all right, I’m the President of the United States—we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago.
— Barack Obama
#dontdoublemyrate View full entry
Things are changing enormously in almost every sense. The effects of globalization have been positive and negative. My generation of architects is the first that could work almost anywhere in the world. We had the option to repeat the same building everywhere or to push ourselves forward, to create an encounter between ourselves and the local culture. — americancity.org
On Thursday, Briganti’s group honored two well-known Americans whose grandparents once waited on line in Ellis’ main building — former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and New York architect Richard Meier
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ellis-island-building-turned-a-museum-immigration-article-1.1064757#ixzz1suJate93
— New York Daily News