The Conscious Cities Conference will delve into the evolving relationship between human behavior and the built environment, and the economic impact it creates. Taking place at Arup's London office on March 1, the one-day conference is the UK's first event of its kind and is part of the year-long... View full entry
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti summoned his inner crooner and released a music video Thursday to warn drivers of an impending 40-hour traffic headache -- the #101SlowJam.
Flanked by the Theodore Roosevelt High School Jazz Band, Garcetti sings a tune reminiscent of the "Slow Jam the News" segment on "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon."
— latimes.com
"See we're bringing down the 6th Street Bridge, making way for something new and the demolition will cause delays," Garcetti says in the video. "But sometimes, just sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty to build something beautiful." – Infrastructure never felt so sexy. Related... View full entry
what exactly does housing justice look like in a metropolis where the wealthiest commute via helicopters while the poorest live in shantytowns perched on riverbanks? [...]
“The new master plan tries to resolve one of São Paulo’s biggest challenges, which is its decentralization" [...]
The master plan calls for ... transit-oriented development ... [and] expanding and honing the controversial Zonas Especiais de Interesse Social... swaths of the city defined as having “special social interest.”
— nextcity.org
More news from São Paulo and housing crises the world over:Relocation or Adaptation: São Paulo Nears Collapse as Drought ContinuesActivism targeting London's housing crisis bubbles to the surfaceUnaffordable cities: this criminal lack of housing is a global scandalBrazilian engineering companies... View full entry
In the short time since Hernan Diaz Alonso assumed directorship of SCI-Arc, the prestigious architecture institute has already seen quite a few changes. Adding to the roster of programs at the newly-founded EDGE, a graduate center focusing on something like the "edges" of the rapidly-expanding... View full entry
During an excavation for a new office development at 21 Lime Street, a team from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) found the millimeter-thin fresco nearly 20 feet below street level. Dating to the late 1st century AD, and the first decades of London, it’s one of the earliest surviving frescos from Roman Britain. [...]
The rare, ornate wall painting is likely to have decorated a reception room for party guests at the home of a wealthy Roman citizen.
— hyperallergic.com
A statement issued by MOLA explained, “The fate of this rare wall painting was literally sealed in the ground ... In AD 100, construction of the 2nd Forum Basilica, the main civic center for the city and the largest Roman building ever built north of the Alps, began. In advance of construction... View full entry
'The dumpling maker has a structural problem,' says Jason Kim, a project manager at ARO. 'The skin has to be thin enough where you have the right ratio of meat to skin, but strong enough to hold together.' — Sporkful
"How do the principles of architecture and design apply to dumplings?" Sporkful has a quick chat with dumpling fanatics Architecture Research Office about how particular design concepts can structurally improve the Lunar New Year food staple. Maybe you'll learn a trick or two on how to eat the... View full entry
For the 2016 Spring/Summer Prada Real Fantasies, AMO graphically reinterprets the Indefinite Hangar as a synthetic sunset fixed within a 3 dimensional blank space. The abstract hangar is populated with geometric objects and furniture. Characters move through a neutral scene between the undefined and distilled fragments of daily life. The horizon and scale constantly shifts, manipulating the frame and disrupting a linear sequence: an artificial landscape where fiction and collection collide. — OMA
OMA and its think tank counterpart, AMO, have deep ties to the fashion world, in particular with Prada. Alongside built work by the architectural powerhouse, notably the recently-completed Fondazione Prada, OMA/AMO has designed runways, look books, and videos for the Milanese luxury brand.Since... View full entry
Frank Gehry and Maya Lin join the ranks of those who have explored the history of their ancestors via the PBS show "Finding Your Roots." The show, which is in its third season, has attracted a passionate live-tweeting audience, one of whom wryly noted that "I did not know that Maya Lin's teacher... View full entry
Robots will take over the courtyard of London’s V&A Museum this summer to build a pavilion inspired by flying beetles.
The installation – designed by architect Achim Menges – features an undulating canopy of tightly woven carbon fibre cells, drawing on the shells of insects called elytra. Visitors will also be able to watch the robots in action over the course of the summer as they continue to add new sections to the evolving ‘Elytra Filament Pavilion’.
— the Spaces
For more robo-news, check out these links:The dawn of construction worker robots?3D printing will recreate destroyed Palmyra archMIT presents 3D printer that can print 10 materials simultaneously without breaking the bankAnother study warns that 3D-printers pose potential health risks for usersNew... View full entry
Houston's architects obviously do not read poetry.
None of the corporate buildings, apartments and hotels being built now seems like something we'll be proud of 20 years from now. Of course, that's assuming that those buildings even survive 20 years in a city that is characterized by destroying its architectural past. [...]
But maybe we citizens can influence the builders. We can tell them how ugly their buildings are. We can refuse to rent space in them.
— houstonchronicle.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Museum of Fine Arts Houston unveils its Steven Holl-designed $450M expansion planThe Astrodome: The World's Largest Indoor Garden?Looking to Houston — Yes, Houston — as a Model for Better Street DesignThe Bayou Greenways Plan: A Game-Changer for Houston? View full entry
Across Syria, where a seemingly unstoppable war is about to enter a third year, a heritage built over 5,000 years or more is being steadily buried under rubble. — The Guardian
Related:What Does the Syrian Refugee Crisis Mean to Architecture?The new Monument Men: with 3D cameras and GPS data against cultural annihilation in Syria and beyondTo preserve cultural memory, these Syrian refugees recreate lost monuments in miniature View full entry
[A former sanitation policy director for New York City, Ben] Miller is working with his partners at the planning firm Closed Loops, with funding from state grants, to bring pneumatic tubes to New York’s High Line.
Rather than rotting in landfills, carrot peels and apple cores from nearby restaurants could travel under the feet of unsuspecting tourists through pneumatic tubes hung below the elevated park. A small facility could turn them into compost right there in the neighborhood.
— fusion.net
More on garbage disruption and the very pressing problem of waste management worldwide:The Uber of waste management is coming for your trashTracing how your litter ends up in the oceanTransforming a garbage heap into a public parkPlan to build UK's first building entirely out of wasteFrom Trash to... View full entry
...the pieces in [Wurm's] latest show, Lost, appear as thought your living-room furniture took a nightmarish turn for the worse.
Wurm modeled all of the objects in clay before distorting their form by stomping, smashing, or walking on them (the latter method can be seen clearly in the footprints on the torn-up chaise lounge). Wurm then cast the deformed pieces in bronze or polyester and painted [them].
— Fast Co Design
A few pieces from the show:February is furniture month here on Archinect! Send us your furniture musings, interviews, reviews, designs, projects and investigations for review to be featured on our site. The open call for submissions is effective immediately.More details here.To satisfy your fix... View full entry
Moore’s appreciation of Disneyland was notorious in an era when the ‘truthfulness’ of modern architecture was largely unquestioned. — places journal
"No architectural essay of the time foretold the preoccupations of postmodernism more memorably: “You Have to Pay” featured the very first architectural appreciation of Disneyland, which had opened just ten years earlier. Moore’s provocation would be upped three years later when Robert... View full entry
Online job boards burst with ads recruiting “idea people” and “out of the box” thinkers. We are taught that our own creativity will be celebrated as well, and that if we have good ideas, we will succeed.
It’s all a lie.
— slate
