They submitted an entry for the "Architecture is" competition... The call for entries asked young architects to fill in the following sentence, "Architecture is ___." For Rudolph and Johnson, the answer to the question was a no-brainer. "Architecture is design, bitches."
They earned an honorable mention, and although it was never intended as a name, Design, Bitches stuck. It has turned out to be a mission statement in two words.
— laweekly.com
Last Monday evening at the Italian Cultural Institute in Los Angeles, architect Ilaria Mazzoleni and evolutionary biologist Shauna Price tag-teamed a lecture on their joint-work, Architecture Follows Nature, a collection of architectural proposals inspired by various animal skins. It’s a... View full entry
[...] Dutton and Piper have traced a path, broadly following the Meridian, extending from the 02 Arena in Greenwich across the Thames by cable car to the Olympic Park in Stratford: a largely flat and buggy-friendly three-hour meander through an extraordinarily varied and little-known urban landscape that will be punctuated by striking pieces of modern sculpture. They’re calling it the Line, and the hope is that it will be up and running by midsummer. — telegraph.co.uk
"Places like M&A provide architects with the opportunity to fail. I mean that in the best possible way," said Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues, whose practice got its start at M&A. Ball-Nogues works are now in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Not many clients will support a trial-and-error process on an untested structure. M&A is a place where you can do that." — latimes.com
... it is, in a special way, an architectural history. “A small interior world of color and form now came within grasp of small fingers,” wrote Frank Lloyd Wright about his 9-year-old self in a 1943 autobiographical sketch. “These ‘Gifts’ came into the gray house” and “made something live here.” These were the famous Froebel Blocks, educational wooden building blocks in systematic shapes and sizes developed in the 1840s by Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten. — nytimes.com
One of the great feats of 20th-century engineering, a landmark of modernist architecture is facing demolition. Late last month, the Russian State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting agreed to the dismantling of the Shabolovka radio tower in Moscow.
This is the Eiffel Tower of Russia, a 50-story conical structure of steel latticework, shaped roughly like a collapsing telescope, designed by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov.
— nytimes.com
UPDATE: Moscow Puts Iconic Shukhov Tower on Protected Landmark List View full entry
For this month's Wide Lens, a column that investigates the relationship between architect and photographer, Photography & Architecture editor Julie Grahame shares some insight from her interview with architectural photographer, Scott Frances.Julie Grahame:Post Production and Retouching of... View full entry
It’s easy to forget that Irvine, the minutely planned southern California city awash in tract housing and shopping complexes, was regarded as a pretty radical place at the time of its 1971 incorporation. Almost entirely ranchland up until the mid-1900s, the area that would become Irvine... View full entry
Alice Aycock, the sculptor, was holding her breath.
[...] a massive crane, blocking traffic, lifted one-half of “Cyclone Twist,” a swirling series of white aluminum bands, into place, precisely connecting with its other half already standing on the avenue’s slim median. [...]
Called “Park Avenue Paper Chase,” and stretching from 52nd Street to 66th, they are inspired variously by tornadoes, dance movements and drapery folds, and will be up until July 20.
— nytimes.com
Cycling advocacy group People for Bikes has selected six U.S. cities to receive funding and consultation for new protected bike lanes, as part of its Green Lane Project. The annual Project collaborates with cities over two years to expedite the installation of protected bike lanes, one of the ways... View full entry
Researcher Anastasia Swearingen claims that "LEED certification is little more than a fancy plaque displayed by these ‘green’ buildings", and compares energy use intensity (EUI) of LEED certified buildings to non-certified buildings. Quoting data from the Green Building Report for the District of Columbia, she concludes that "For LEED-certified buildings, their EUI was 205, compared to 199 for non-certified buildings..." — treehugger.com
In the center of the sprawling metropolis of Germany's capital, Berlin-Tempelhof Airport stands as both a monument to a darker era in Germany's past and a link to its future.
Built on an airfield where the Wright Brothers once demonstrated their Flyer before a captive European audience, Tempelhof Airport was conceived by the leaders of the Third Reich as a architectural testament to the boundless ambition of German supremacy. Captured by the Soviet Army in 1945 before... View full entry
Perhaps you remember Spirit of Space's Art in the City film from back in summer of 2013, meditating on the interplay between city life and public art in Chicago. More recently, the architectural film-making creative agency produced two short films showcasing Steven Holl's work for the Sifang Art... View full entry
London’s 200 new towers are something different. Virtually every one contains “luxury” apartments. This new residential upsurge in London is echoed across the Atlantic in New York – as property in both cities becomes a global reserve currency. New York, once the city of the commercial skyscraper, has become the city of the condo tower and the penthouse. But where does that leave commercial architecture? — ft.com
Gensler recently began a research project focused on Los Angeles and D.C., “Hackable Buildings – Hackable Cities,” exploring how building owners can adapt their properties to meet changing demand.
“It really started with some research that we were doing on the evolution of office buildings,” said Raffael Scasserra, a Gensler principal. “What we were looking at is what is that evolution like? What is it transforming to and what are buildings going to be?”
— washingtonpost.com
