Exhibiting architecture is a notoriously difficult and contentious task. After all, how do you represent a spatial practice without neglecting the very qualities that made it worth representing in the first place? Nonetheless, it has a long history – extending at least as far back as the... View full entry
If architecture is the ultimate fourth dimensional experience, then “Architectural Guide China” by Evan Chakroff, Addison Godel and Jacqueline Gargus is a remarkable fourth dimensional tour guide. It encapsulates not only the physical attributes and detailed locations of architecture in China... View full entry
After a decade of outlandish proposals for the City, Parry has come up with a refreshingly blunt stick of a building for the centrepiece of the district’s “cluster” of office blocks. [...]
“The thing that’s most interesting in all this is urban design,” says Parry, deflecting the discussion away from the fact that he is penning the City’s tallest totem. He’s more concerned with fixing the human experience at street level: “The project is really all about public space.”
— theguardian.com
Soon to join the "great dinner party in the sky," between Rogers Strik Harbour + Partners' Cheesegrater and Foster + Partners' Gherkin, 1 Undershaft will be as tall as The Shard (the maximum height limit for the city). According to The Guardian, the building was also designed to have a triangular... View full entry
The [British] museum announced a six-month show that will tell the remarkable story of two lost cities at the mouth of the Nile – Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus – which by the 8th-century AD had been swallowed completely by the sea. [...]
the loans will range from the enormous, a 5.4-metre-high granite statue of the Nile flood god Hapi, to the domestic. [...]
It represents Egypt’s first major loan of antiquities since the country’s revolution in 2011...
— theguardian.com
A red alert should go into effect if there is a prediction that the air quality index will stay above 200 for more than 72 hours. The United States government rates above 200 as “very unhealthy,” and 301 to 500 as “hazardous.” At 7 p.m. Monday, the Beijing municipal reading was 253. [...]
At international climate change talks, including the ones now underway in Paris, Chinese officials have promised to curb coal use in order to address both air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.
— nytimes.com
More from Beijing:Beijing's challenges to become the center of Jing-Jin-Ji — a supercity of 130 million peopleThe tiny village library that draws Beijingers in drovesBeijing mayor says air pollution makes his city "unlivable"China considering drastic ban on coal View full entry
FIU is now considering a merger between its journalism school and College of Architecture + The Arts. The new combined college would probably get a new name (such as adding “communications” somewhere in the title), and journalism would continue as a “school” within this larger umbrella college. Journalism would still be an available degree track, as would the school’s other offerings in broadcast media, public relations, and advertising. — Miami Herald
archaeologists have found several recesses in rock formations in Wales that match the size and shape of Stonehenge's bluestones, leading to theories that the monument may have been erected in Wales first, before being moved to its present site in Salisbury Plain.
The researchers also discovered evidence of what they described as “a loading bay" from where the massive boulders could have been dragged away.
— artnet.com
Wales is over 130 miles / 209 kilometers from Stonehenge's current site in Salisbury Plain – a distance that would have taken Neolithic people over 500 years to transport the monoliths over, according to Professor Mike Parker Pearson, a British late prehistory professor at UCL who led the... View full entry
The first permanent publicly-viewable artwork by Refik Anadol, a media artist known for his immersive, site-specific light installations, was recently unveiled in San Francisco. Virtual Depictions: San Francisco, a series of "data sculptures" based on a publicly-available dataset, occupies a... View full entry
Before coming to MIT to serve as dean of the School of Architecture + Planning in January 2015, Hashim Sarkis taught at Harvard's GSD as the Aga Khan professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies. He founded his own practice, Hashim Sarkis Studios, in Cambridge in 1998, and... View full entry
The 18 members of London-based Assemble were named winners of the 31st Turner prize on Monday night, receiving their £25,000 prize from the Sonic Youth co-founder and artist Kim Gordon at an awards dinner broadcast live on Channel 4 from Tramway, Glasgow.
Assemble are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense of the word, to win the prize. They were nominated for their work tackling urban dereliction in Toxteth, Liverpool...
— The Guardian
Assemble, the architecture-ish collective known for their direct action urban interventions, has just won the prestigious Turner Prize. Working "across the fields of art, architecture and design," they are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense, to win the prize, and the first whose work... View full entry
According to leaked documents France's Ministry of Interior is considering two new proposals: a ban on free and shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency, and measures to block Tor being used inside France.
The documents were seen by the French newspaper Le Monde. According to the paper, new bills could be presented to parliament as soon as January 2016. These proposals are presumably in response to the attacks in Paris last month where 130 people were murdered.
— Ars Technica
According to the report published by Le Monde, the French Ministry of Interior has developed two frightening new security proposals that may be presented to parliament early next years.The first, as reported by Ars Technica, would block free, public WiFi during a state of emergency. On November... View full entry
Architectural photography is supposed to be different from the airbrushed images of nude women that are about to disappear from the centerfold of Playboy magazine. But what if an edited photograph of a building doesn't just crop out visual clutter like street lights but alters the contours of the building itself? What should we think about an architectural award that was bestowed on the basis of such a doctored image? — Blair Kamin | Chicago Tribune
In his column, Kamin scrutinizes the recent awarding of an honor award to El Centro, a building designed by Juan Moreno, by the Chicago branch of the AIA. Apparently, the architects provided the jurors with a photoshopped image of the building, notably erasing the clunky air circulation machines... View full entry
[Elsie Owusu] alleged that the election [for Riba’s vice-president of practice and profession] was rigged in favour of a rival candidate, and in a complaint to Riba’s president, Jane Duncan, she claimed it was “tantamount to institutionalised racism in my view”. [...]
“The banter, discrimination and treating black people worse than other staff goes through architecture like a stick of rock. It’s absolutely disgraceful and it starts at the top with Riba."
— theguardian.com
In response to Owusu's allegation, RIBA has initiated a formal investigation, and states that a report will be filed in time for discussion at the next national council meeting in March of 2016.According to the Guardian, the allegations include not only accusations that the election of the Vice... View full entry
No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. How do designers experience their cities as locals?A tumultuous sequence of political upheaval and renewal just within the last century has transformed Warsaw into a bustling incubator of creativity for... View full entry
Mr. Adjaye’s public architecture often poses questions about the value systems historically associated with building types. [...]
His explorations into African textile patterns, tribal mythologies, the legacy of slavery and postcolonial modernism are far from predictable sources for architecture. [...]
...the collection of images provides a fascinating look at the transmogrification of European ideas into African shapes.
— wsj.com