There are many ways to measure the massiveness of “Over the River,” the project that artist Christo is championing for Colorado's Arkansas River Valley.
Amount of fabric: 5.9 miles.
Cost: Up to $50 million.
Size of environmental impact statement: 1,686 pages.
— latimesblogs.latimes.com
As he has moved through the design professions, Hustwit has scaled up from a single typeface (Helvetica) through industrial design (Objectified) and now to cities. Each one has followed essentially the same structure, talking heads interspersed with images, one person and one idea leading to the next. No voiceover. No narrative. No critique. And not a lot of style. As Hustwit told Adam Harrison Levy, that’s the way he wants it. — observersroom.designobserver.com
As his life wound down, and cancer claimed his body, his great passion was designing Apple’s new, three-million-square-foot headquarters, in Cupertino. Jobs threw himself into the details. “Over and over he would come up with new concepts, sometimes entirely new shapes, and make them restart and provide more alternatives,” Isaacson writes. He was obsessed with glass, expanding on what he learned from the big panes in the Apple retail stores. — newyorker.com
“There would not be a straight piece of glass in the building,” Isaacson writes. “All would be curved and seamlessly joined. . . . The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and... View full entry
Selected photos of my journey on November 2nd 2011, as I joined a biking group that blocked the port of Oakland and later a stadium sized crowd merged with us, very ordered, very kind, the crowd was and they showed that people are not sheep by interrupting the flow of goods momentarily, later that night, I witnessed how the mainstream media ignores the news and focuses on the mistakes of few trouble makers. — Sepa Sama
As reported and photographed by our friend Sepa Sama in Oakland. View full entry
Architects do a lousy job of selling their ideas to the general public, said Bjarke Ingels, on Thursday morning during his keynote address at Architectural Record’s annual Innovation conference in New York. They need to “find ways to present their ideas or concerns in words that are so clear that non-architects will actually take an interest in them” — archrecord.construction.com
Kevin "Crimson Wolf" Fedde (work pictured above) builds some of the most detailed and creative ApocaLego dioramas around. Kevin, a college student from Ft. Collins, CO, layers his models with intricate detail and mini shorelines, making them seem almost plausible. While he revels in the requisite "Mad Max" skirmishes, I love how he also shows how people's shanties look like. This is how they scrounge electricity. Those details are far more interesting for me than any battle. — boingboing.net
We're excited to announce the next round of Archinect Sessions, to kick off on Saturday, November 5th, at the Neutra VDL House, in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, in collaboration with Cal Poly Pomona. Archinect Sessions is a series of discussions with architects, academics and other interesting... View full entry
Bad news: a skyscraping apartment block is being built near my home. Worse news: judging by the computer rendering on the developers’ hoarding, it will be indistinguishable from thousands of instantly forgettable new buildings all over the world. Even worse news: its name is Avant-garde Tower. — New York Times
The Green House concept is the most comprehensive effort to reinvent the nursing home ...— including the way medical care is delivered. In traditional nursing homes, employees typically have narrowly defined jobs ... based on efficiency that tends to ignore individuals’ preferences and needs. — New York Times
While during the last decade most of the people have become fascinated by, and began researching into, the vast population growths of cities and their consequences, everybody got so excited that it was forgotten that even now half of the world's population is actually living in non-urban areas. — MONU magazine
NEW CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU #16 - NON-URBANISM Some six years ago and in one of our first issues - MONU #4 - one of the contributors explained "how suburbs destroy democracy" when people live in high degree of residential and cultural isolation and individualism. By that time he could not... View full entry
Retrofitting their home to eliminate feathered fatalities has worked for Brophy and Lutz. But a growing chorus of bird enthusiasts are advocating avian-friendly architecture at the design stage as the best prevention. It's a national movement that started in Chicago and has spread to other major cities, including the Twin Cities. — startribune.com
75 PETERS celebrates iconic British Architect (and co-founder of Archigram) SIR PETER COOK's 75th birthday.
75 established and emerging international artists have produced a portrait of Sir Peter to auction for charity Architecture for Humanity.
— Adam & Eve
a floating dome, built with the spokes of dead umbrellas and carried over the waves by the invisible power of empty soda bottles.... was due to begin a monthlong exhibit on Friday in a finger of water in Inwood, at the northern end of Manhattan.
“We were floating it on pontoons to Inwood from the South Bronx.”
A pause.
“We shipwrecked,” she said. “On Rikers Island.”
If this is failure, it is of a type rooted in genius.
— New York Times
“The best clients, to my mind, don’t say that whatever you do is fine,” Mr. Bohlin said last week, a few days after Mr. Jobs’s death. “They’re intertwined in the process. When I look back, it’s hard to remember who had what thought when. That’s the best, most satisfying work, whether a large building or a house.” — nytimes.com
Oh, look, Bohlin Cywinski is hiring. View full entry
The Abu Dhabi company building a branch of the Guggenheim museum in the Emirati capital said Sunday it has temporarily dropped plans to award a major construction contract, raising questions about the future of the high profile project. TDIC (The state-run Tourism Development and Investment Co.)... View full entry