It's like the furniture version of ASMR. This short video from Vitra shows the materials of an Eames Lounge Chair coming together: Mores Eames on Archinect: A “terrible, enjoyable bloody business”: the influential films of Charles and Ray EamesCharles and Ray Eames Explain the Computer... View full entry
The confluence of Google mapping, 3D printing and the desire for inventive home decor has produced a Kickstarter for One Hundred Tokyo, a fully-fledged three dimensional map of Tokyo that is divided into 100 handy pieces. Pick your favorite palm-sized square(s) or collect all 100; it's up to you... View full entry
Is flood mitigation the new frontier in urban planning? China, whose urban centers have regularly been experiencing infrastructure-shuttering floods, is actively encouraging its metropolises to start reshaping themselves to handle the new reality via the so-called "sponge city" program. As an... View full entry
For all of the dubious attention attracted by the “Bilbao Effect” theory [...] a more prosaic, and arguably more important aspect of museum location has received little attention: not which city a museum is built in, but where in that city. Locations that would once have seemed inevitable, such as Chicago parkland, are hugely contentious in the 2000s, while locations previously unthinkable in that year – an abandoned lumbermill in Bilbao [...] – are now commonplace. — theguardian.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Embattled Lucas Museum may move to S.F.'s Treasure IslandLawsuit against Lucas Museum holds off (for now)‘Museum directors hated Bilbao’ View full entry
This week is one of the first in the season to demand a coat. With nights starting to draw in, the temperature dropping, and with many galleries and events opening later in the evenings, now is the perfect time to replace parks with free exhibitions. This year’s Stirling Prize winning project... View full entry
Over the years, Trump has courted me, comforted me, criticized me and sent me a handful of sometimes-fawning letters and notes. I saved the correspondence. Wouldn't you? [...]
And the missives are telling. Combined with other things he's said and written, they show that Candidate Trump isn't all that different from Developer Trump. He remains a master media manipulator who can be charming, mercurial and vengeful. Only now he wants to be the most powerful man on earth.
— Blair Kamin – Chicago Tribune
In this relatively personal piece for the Tribune, architecture critic Blair Kamin recounts his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with Trump over 10+ years, talking (as developers and architecture critics do) about buildings. Kamin explains that there were times when Trump was... View full entry
"I see architecture as almost a political work" [...]
“We are in a radically divided world” in which “architecture is not dealing with those political issues in a really sophisticated way,” [...]
“I think that both the art world and the architecture world … [are] pretty intolerant in terms of engaging” with political worlds beyond Western democracies."
— news.harvard.edu
More recent news from Rem and OMA:OMA's plans for Axel Springer building officially releasedWatch live: Rem Koolhaas is moderating a 12-hour marathon of interviews on the future of EuropeOMA's hyper CorbTo thrive post-Zaha, Koolhaas says ZHA should emulate high fashion brands"The first major... View full entry
On Friday October 7th, Steven Holl and Senior Partner Chris McVoy will be on hand to officially open the firm's Visual Arts Building for the University of Iowa, which in addition to being the only building in the United States that uses an integrated hydronic radiant heating and cooling system in... View full entry
In August, after a multibillion-dollar, year-and-a-half-long battle, Uber agreed to sell its business in China and depart the country.
It was a face-saving retreat for Uber, which got a 17.7 percent ownership stake in Didi and $1 billion in cash. [...]
Investors recently valued Didi at $35 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world. Uber, with operations in almost 500 cities on six continents, is worth $68 billion.
— bloomberg.com
More stories from the Uber-verse:The view from inside a self-driving Uber: "the technology is not quite ready"Uber and the future of on-demand public transitGoogle, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehiclesWomen-only Uber alternatives face pushback from... View full entry
Can cities be built not only to be harmonious with their environment, but to outperform traditional architecture? The residents of Arcosanti, Arizona, which is profiled in this video excerpt from the Atlantic, seem to think so. Part campus, part permanent dwelling, Arcosanti embraces the concept... View full entry
My issue is not with areas being improved, it is how gentrification is about one demographic of our society changing an area for themselves and not for the benefit of everyone. — the guardian
Portland, US: ‘We are currently building our way to hell’“I am a 70 year old carpenter and I have seen more decay in the quality of life in the last three years in Portland, Oregon – pearl of culture in the Great Northwest – with the one-term mayor ‘Chainsaw Charlie Hales’ who was... View full entry
The Architectural League started another cultural year on a high note at the 2016 Beaux Arts Ball, which took place at the new nARCHITECTS-designed A/D/O space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn last Friday. Co-chaired by architects Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown, this year's “Tabula Rasa” theme was... View full entry
CBS has given a put pilot commitment to "A Burglar's Guide to the City," a television series based off the book by BLDGBLOG founder Geoff Manaugh, who interviewed former bank robbers like Joe Loya to explore the role of architecture in crime, and the corresponding shifts in privacy in both the... View full entry
Take away the conceptual heft of Chris Burden's Metropolis II and substitute in a grade-school love for pre-fabricated plastic building blocks and you'd have something like Jorge Parra Jr.'s eight-years-in-the-making Lego model of Los Angeles, which portrays a detailed swath of the city's... View full entry
This week, the focus is on the hard stuff: concrete. Whether that is exploring the Barbican Centre's towering volumes, listening to the author of Concretopia, or learning about two award-winning projects who use concrete in an elegant way, there's plenty of ways to fall in love with the... View full entry
