There was a period where people created a caricature of the Mediterranean or Tuscan style, increasingly ornate and garish — WSJ
"Along with Beanie Babies, the Sony Discman and other trends of the 1990s, the once wildly popular Mediterranean-style home has fallen out of fashion.An analysis of current home listings shows that asking prices for Mediterranean-style homes—known for stucco walls, tumbled stone and... View full entry
At 41, Bjarke Ingels could be fairly described as architect-famous, meaning people outside of his profession might be able to finger one of the buildings he's designed, but not the man himself.
In person, he exudes a boyish charisma that one minute suggests a Silicon Valley wunderkind and the next a president of a frat house. [...]
His most distinctive features are his eyes, which are such dark pools you can practically see your own twin reflections in them.
— rollingstone.com
More from BIG and its founder:Session 14: His bjark is BIGger than his bjite – A chat with Bjarke Ingels at the opening of BIG's "Hot to Cold" exhibitionInga Saffron calls BIG's new Navy Yard building "mesmerizing", "reminiscent of a Richard Serra sculpture"Bjarke Ingels Group + AECOM join... View full entry
Following the Olympics’ closing ceremony, and as September’s Paralympic Games continue, international attention has begun to shift to the future of Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic sites. These buildings must be built to evolve to accommodate Paralympic and future athletes, and the success of this... View full entry
According to estimates by the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration, up to 60,000 people will seek asylum in Norway this year alone, most of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these newly-arrived people have little knowledge of where to go to find basic resources, not to mention where... View full entry
During his time in power, as head of state and as leader of the all-powerful, secularist Ba’th party, Saddam would oversee an unprecedented program of monumental development across the historic city of Baghdad. This was not limited to monuments of war and hollow bronze shells, but enormous palatial complexes, museums, art galleries, and civic squares [...] marshal it, awkwardly, unevenly, into the post-industrial age, a modern city shaped by the aspirations and egotistical tastes of a despot. — failedarchitecture.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Iraq honors Zaha Hadid with commemorative stamp — which features rejected Tokyo stadium designDestruction of Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery by ISIS militants went unreported for 16 months View full entry
Designed by three architects, one Cuban and two Italian, the new schools were constructed in flamboyant, sinuous forms deliberately reflecting the local landscape. Built in brick and terracotta as a pragmatic response to the US embargo of imported steel, ... these were a confident repudiation of Western-style International Modernism. But of the five original schools in the complex, only two were completed, as the deepening relationship with the USSR prompted disdain for such exotic forms — theartnewspaper.com
More on Archinect:Unfinished Spaces premieres tomorrow night on PBS; Archinect talks to the filmmakerHow Havana tries to come out of its crumbling shell without betraying Cuba's revolutionary rootsSelling Cuba (Gehry's already there)The promises and problems of a Cuban architecture marketRicardo... View full entry
Unsurprisingly, the majority of the U.S.' job growth over the past five years has been centered in large metro areas like Los Angeles and New York. What might be surprising is how the majority of those newly created jobs are either "mid-wage" or "low-wage" jobs, here defined as those that pay... View full entry
Are you looking for design inspiration for a new project? Historical references to bolster your design proposal? The Columbia GSAPP Visual Resources Collection (VRC) and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library host an online collection of 20,000 images of 20th century architectural projects... View full entry
Despite introducing what seemed like excellent legislation to help increase the number of affordable housing units in developer-backed housing projects, California governor Jerry Brown's proposal caused so much multi-faceted angst it became political poison, primarily because it gently... View full entry
Bureau Spectacular etched their mark into Downtown L.A.'s Arts District with the new Frankie flagship store that opened last Friday, celebrating the relaunch of the high-end streetwear label as well as the firm's first retail store design. Frankie founder Kevin Chen worked alongside Jimenez Lai... View full entry
“I have an issue with architects and designers who think about how is the space going to look when it's on an architecture website, rather than how it’s going to feel for the people who either live there, work there or patronise it,” [...]
“I had a couple of nights in Madrid staying in a hotel room that Zaha Hadid Architects had designed. It looked amazing, but was the least comfortable space I’ve ever inhabited... Literally sleeping in a dumpster would have been more comfortable.”
— cladglobal.com
More design forays by the rich and famous:Pharrell Williams Will Give the AIA 2014 National Convention Keynote AddressMoby: Dancing About ArchitectureA Famous Person’s 5-Step Guide to Becoming an ArchitectOh, Moby...Paris Hilton "designs" a beach club in the Philippines View full entry
“This is the end of the matter, we have ruled out state funding (for Guggenheim) once and for all, for this government, we are not opposed to the project as such, we just don’t think it is something that the state should participate in.” — Hyperallergic
"Champions of the Guggenheim Helsinki don’t plan on giving up. The Guggenheim Foundation said it will continue talks with the government and the city to find other funding options. But without the state’s help, plans for the outpost could now be dead in the water: at an expected cost of... View full entry
[Schumacher] sees parametricism as the architectural style of capitalism, to which he is a relatively recent convert. “My early heroes were Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, people who wanted to make an impact”, but he now believes that free enterprise is the best means of the “human development of prosperity and freedom”. The innate logic of parametricism means that, in a truly free market, with “freer utilisation of land”, it would eventually triumph. — theguardian.com
Patrik Schumacher sits down with Rowan Moore, and share his plans to assert a parametricist future as Zaha Hadid's successor at ZHA. Moore isn't exactly convinced.More on Zaha and Patrik:The Salerno maritime terminal: Zaha Hadid's first posthumous project inaugurated in ItalyZHA after Zaha: Patrik... View full entry
Airports can be hell, as any traveler knows. From endless check-in lines to depersonalized security checkpoints to the dull monotony of waiting rooms and transit halls, the experience of traveling has become something of a 21st century ritual. You’ll (probably) get to your destination, but first... View full entry
Martin Roth, a German and director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, sees the result of the UK's referendum as a personal defeat. — DW
One of the contributing factors for the V&A's director Martin Roth to leave the V&A was Brexit, he tells DW:"Our international networks will not collapse, but their background is being questioned. Until now, we had assumed we were all working together towards a common platform. Now that... View full entry
