As City—Michael Heizer’s vast Land Art installation in the Nevada desert—nears completion, the fate of the federally protected land surrounding it could soon be decided. Ryan Zinke, the US Interior Secretary, visited the state on Sunday, 30 July, as part of a review of 27 national monuments ordered by President Donald Trump, which could result in some of these lands being reopened to development. — theartnewspaper.com
"A number of museums banded together to call for the site’s preservation," The Art Newspaper explains the background of City's current surroundings (previously also on Archinect), "and in 2015, Obama created the Basin and Range National Monument, which covers 704,000 acres in southern Nevada’s... View full entry
The manufacturing site of the first London bus in E17 has been converted to celebrate London’s maker culture in SIDESHOW, an installation with interactive, family friendly elements opening mid-August. The project was undertaken by U+I and Blackhorse Workshop, the latter a ‘pioneer in the... View full entry
What had the land done to deserve being fissured? Local residents protested that they were traumatized enough by the killer’s passage among them not to suffer a daily reminder of it, thronged by tourists. Some families of victims refused the use of their loved ones’ names, which are already enshrined on a modest monument—a suspended silver ring, in the woods—on Utøya. Last month, Norway officially canceled the project. — The New Yorker
Memory Wound, a bold proposal by the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, won a government competition for a memorial dedicated to the seventy-seven victims of a massacre committed by Andres Breivik on July 22, 2011. The artist's design called for cutting a channel across the... View full entry
Today in Washington D.C. the AIA strongly voiced its support of bipartisan legislation that makes permanent a key energy efficiency tax incentive for owners and designers of energy efficient buildings and that expands its benefits to designers of hospitals, schools, tribal community facilities and... View full entry
Citing the street as their favorite workplace and the whole world as their canvas, Valencia-based couple Anna Devis and Daniel Rueda inventively interact with architecture. When paired with their love of travel, this playful interest culminates in a quirky and creative collection of photos that'll make you look twice. — My Modern Met
For those of you who "curate" your Instagram feeds with your photogenic other, there's some artfully posed competition in town: illustrator Anna Devis and trained architect Daniel Rueda not only know their architecture, but they're determined to pose winningly in front of it, as this article in My... View full entry
During the speech, Cuomo suggested that one way to get more funding for the ailing transit system would be to offer companies the opportunity to sponsor subway stations for an annual fee. That money could go toward “enhanced maintenance, additional security, and aesthetic features.” — Curbed NY
The practice of letting corporations put their stamp on the subway has precedents— in 2009, the MTA sold the naming rights for Atlantic Ave–Pacific St station in Brooklyn to Barclays, which according to NY Times, gets MTA $200,000 per year for the next two decades. However, many crucial... View full entry
With a soundtrack that could be described as whimsical and an aesthetic outlook that encompasses both the old and the new, a video preview of 2017's Chicago Architecture Biennial (which will transpire simultaneously with EXPO CHICAGO this year) is now available for your viewing pleasure: View full entry
Still, the trouble with the Hyperloop is not its breathless gee-whizzery. It’s the fact that it mistakes the charismatic mega-project for a viable solution to current problems. If the Hyperloop’s purpose is to address large-scale urban mobility, then there are many other options already deserving of public funding and attention—ones that do not require a hard rebooting of the entire urban world to be realized. — New Yorker
Musk’s visions are valuable because they show that even people far outside the field of urban planning can be frustrated with the world others have built for us. They, too, should have a say. It’s great set design, but terrible city planning. Tunnels might abruptly end where investors fear to... View full entry
The best things in life are free, but construction cranes still cost money, which has prompted an investor to sue the developers behind SHoP's 111 West 57th Street for failing to budget appropriately for the cost of cranes (among other things) for the super skinny tower, which is already way over... View full entry
The Turf House Tradition of Iceland was nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status in 2011. “The turf house is an exceptional example of a vernacular architectural tradition, which has survived in Iceland,” according to the nomination. “The form and design of the turf house is an expression of the cultural values of the society and has adapted to the social and technological changes that took place through the centuries.” — National Geographic
Although living walls are still considered to be somewhat noteworthy in contemporary design, Iceland's architecture has been overgrown with the technique for hundreds of years. Along with a history of turf as a building material (and the pressures of modernism on Iceland's architecture in the 20th... View full entry
For designers who love to draw by hand on real paper but want to store those sketches in the cloud, there is now a kind of a refined, tech-savvy etch-o-sketch in the form of the Rocketbook Wave Smart Notebook from self-described "notebook innovators" Joe Lemay and Jake Epstein. Using a special... View full entry
The price, a record for a single U.K. office property, is remarkable given that the building will face ongoing maintenance costs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts including Tim Leckie wrote in a client note. LKK, which sells Chinese herbal medicines, paid a 13 percent premium to book value for the property even as Land Securities’s shares trade at a 26 percent discount, he said. — Bloomberg
Land Securities Group Plc and Canary Wharf Group Plc agreed to sell the Rafael Viñoly-designed Walkie Talkie for 1.28 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) to Hong Kong-based LKK Health Products Group, founded in 1992 by the Lee Kum Kee family, whose primary business sells a variety of condiments... View full entry
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from University of Oregon, Stanford and Dartmouth have co-developed a new digital archive. The collection contains nearly 4,000 drawings, prints, paintings and photographs of historic Rome from the 16th to 20th centuries that are now available online to... View full entry
Last week, we covered the newly released designs for a landmark sculpture that would be built at Flint Castle in Wales. The sculpture, designed by George King Architects, was to be a cantilevered bridge structure made of weathering steel and engraved with words chosen from the local community. At... View full entry
Built in 1896 for piano dealers M. Steinert & Sons, Steinert Hall is a magnificent six-story limestone and brick building tucked 40 feet below the street level. Appropriately nicknamed “The Little Gem”, it was designed by Winsell&Weterell and incorporated a Beaux Arts-style facade... View full entry