"In 1955, the US State Department commissioned Richard Neutra to design a new embassy in Karachi. Neutra's appointment was part of an ambitious program of architectural commissions to renowned architects, which included embassies by Walter Gropius in Athens, Edward Durrell Stone in New Delhi... View full entry
Chicago Past collects large photos of historic Chicago. — chicagopast.tumblr.com
This is a great tumblr blog to follow if you're feeling Chi-town nostalgic. View full entry
To continue with Javier's recent place hacking post of this dude climbing the Shard, I bring you this insane video of base jumpers "hacking" the Koekelberg Basilica in Brussels. View full entry
Because towers take so long to plan and construct, the current crop reflect a vision up to a decade old, reckons Nick Offer of Arup, an engineering firm. Economic conditions and the scale of such projects mean that only the very brave will invest now... In 2010 the coalition scrapped the previous, Labour government’s density targets, which were designed to encourage developers to build more units. Instead it has endorsed “garden cities” — economist.com
Related: Just climbing the shard, whatever... View full entry
Fred Chambers, an Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, is studying what he calls "ghost town climatology," or the declining temperature of a region as it is abandoned by human activity. He describes it as "a reverse urban heat island effect." — bldgblog.blogspot.com
On any given night in the U.S., there are approximately 60,500 youth confined in juvenile correctional facilities or other residential programs. Photographer Richard Ross has spent the past five years criss-crossing the country photographing the architecture, cells, classrooms and inhabitants of these detention sites. — wired.com
“Both L.A. and Mexico City have improved but in Mexico City, the change has been a lot more,” said Luisa Molina, a research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has done extensive pollution comparisons. Mexico “is very advanced not just in terms of Latin America, but around the world. When I go to China, they all want to hear the story of Mexico.” — nytimes.com
In Moscow, it's common for two buildings to have blind walls facing each other over a wide alley. This setup provides the perfect space for a lithe, little office to build itself a perch. The structure fuses onto the neighboring buildings with steel clamps, hovering off the ground so pedestrians can stroll under it. It also glows at night, thanks to a translucent plastic shell, looking like a wasps' nest from hell. — theatlanticcities.com
The story of the automobile — like the story of the city of Detroit — is a tale of unwitting eternal returns. At every turn the inventors of modern life — of its machines, its aspirations — seemed unable or unwilling to grasp the meaning of what they were in the process of creating and unleashing, and what they were thus undoing and destroying. — Places Journal
On Places, historian Jerry Herron traces the intersecting lives of architect Albert Kahn, industrialist Edsel Ford, and artist Diego Rivera and examines their roles in shaping the mythology of Detroit as an industrial powerhouse. View full entry
Before a city becomes a thing of steel, concrete, and glass it is a theater of visions in conflict. As a city ages, the visions do not die but come up against the physical and ideological resistance of the place and its people. This is an account of a Manhattan that could have been – might have been. A phantasmagorical Manhattan where the visionary meets the everyday. The island as we know it is but a pale reflection of a city designed by visionaries – a city of mad, incongruous utopias.
The film (created for Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale) visualizes several unrealized projects for Manhattan, including Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Midtown, Rem Koolhaas’ City of the Captive Globe, RUR’s East River Corridor, Paul Rudolph’s Eastside... View full entry
Even in the thirties, Clement Greenberg worried about kitsch, the split between popular and avant-garde taste. "The same culture produces a painting by Braque and a Saturday Evening Post cover," he wrote, fretting that "real art would not stand a chance next to ... Norman Rockwell." I've always thought that this is fine; people should like whatever they want to like. And they do like Kinkade: It's estimated that he sold around $100 million worth of art each year. — Vulture
The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers team smashed its own world record for largest Rube Goldberg machine with a 300-step behemoth that flawlessly accomplished the simple task of blowing up and popping a balloon - setting the new world record for the Largest functional Rube Goldberg machine, according to World Records Academy — youtube.com
It is still far and away the greatest memorial of modern times—the most beautiful, the most heart-wrenching, the most subtle, and the most powerful. It’s also the most abstract, which makes it even more miraculous that it was built in a nation that generally prefers symbols more along the lines of the Lincoln Memorial. — Vanity Fair
Reacting to the news that The New Yorker's influential architecture critic Paul Goldberger, was moving to another magazine (although both are owned by Condé Nast) Vanity Fair, some have wondered whether Eulogies For Architecture Criticism (are) Not Far Behind... View full entry
The new owner will get a gas station and convenience store, a schoolhouse from 1905, a cabin, a garage, 10 acres, and a three-bedroom home at 8,000 feet altitude — overlooking the trucks and cars on the nearby interstate on one side and the distant snowcapped mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado on the other. — washingtonpost.com
In an ambitious project, the states of North Carolina and South Carolina are trying to set the record straight. After years of historical research and old-fashioned survey work mixed with global positioning technology, they are moving the boundary back to where it belongs. — nytimes.com