Architecture is usually the product of multiple, conflicting constraints, so how does it fare in the context of a gallery? Shielded from the realities of climate and context, client and user, planning and building regs, what of architecture is left? Liberated from the obligations and contingencies of a real building, can it jump free and take on a greater sensory power – or is it hollowed of all meaning and left to fall flat? — theguardian.com
"The results in the Sensing Spaces exhibition lie somewhere between these two camps." View full entry
Late in 2011, [Zappos CEO] Hsieh became even more legendary by announcing almost larkishly that he’d be leading a $350 million effort to rejuvenate a blighted stretch of Las Vegas’ downtown […]
His plan was to spend much of his own personal fortune to transform this lifeless area about a mile north of the neon blitz of the Strip into an entrepreneurial tech nirvana. [...]
Doubters have no place in the ecosystem. Pragmatists stand little chance. A love of hyperbole prevails.
— Wired
Architects always have the future in mind when they design. That's particularly evident in today's cityscapes as they continuously try to one-up each other in who can raise the world's next tallest, more-modern-than-thou skyscraper for all to gaze in awe -- or not. For Jingjing Naihan Li, a... View full entry
The city has dense clusters of tall towers and a mass-transit system to rival London's. Cars seem to have been banished. [...]
The sidewalks and the rail stations are crowded with people. It's as if a benevolent Robert Moses, a planning dictator with a green agenda, had taken over the political realm in Los Angeles.
— latimes.com
Related: Elizabeth Diller on Spike Jonze's 'Her' View full entry
There’s a movement afoot to bring new money into urban areas all over the country, and surprisingly, Phoenix, is part of that movement.
The city has long been famous for its suburban sprawl. But now, plans are moving ahead to link high-rise downtown with a neighboring Latino barrio that wealthy developers have mostly ignored for the better part of 100 years. Not a shovel of dirt has moved, though neighbors already have expectations and fears.
— marketplace.org
the show offers innumerable other examples of the housing industry’s braiding of mythic imagination and commercial calculation...It’s an epic, richly rewarding intellectual journey — NYT
Ken Johnson reviews the exhibition currently on view Grolier Club (running through February 7, 2014). The show explores how quintessential American traits are reflected within the pages of the builder’s guides, pattern books, catalogues, and other forms of architectural literature. View full entry
“All of us who knew them thought this was going to be pretty much a slam dunk — that they would save the Folk Art Museum,” said Peter Wheelwright, a former chairman of the architecture program at Parsons, the New School for Design. “I knew they were capable of doing it and that, because of their friendship, that they would make a sincere, genuine, wholehearted effort.” — NY Times
Not long ago, these questions — of policy but also political and ethical questions — seemed to be out there on institutional tables, demanding discussion. Technically, they may be there still, but museums seem to be most interested in talking about real estate, assiduously courting oligarchs for collections, and anxiously scouting for the next “Rain Room.” Political questions, about which cultures get represented in museums and who gets to make the decisions, and how, are buried. — nytimes.com
And on the subject of integration, why, in one of the most ethnically diverse cities, does the art world continue to be a bastion of whiteness? Why are African-American curators and administrators, and especially directors, all but absent from our big museums? Why are there still so few black... View full entry
Negotiated edges – one world, different systems is a kinetic cartography "world machine" currently featured at the 2013-14 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Hong Kong. Created by multidisciplinary design team Chiu Ning, Yuet Chan, Lau Wai Kin, and Andrew Ng, the piece is relevant... View full entry
What we do know: the Hyperloop is a fantastic, gee-whiz! prospect that, in an idealized and seamless application, would get between A and B faster than we ever imagined. But whether the Hyperloop actually can (or should) be built is still very much unclear. Ever since Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla... View full entry
Los Angeles County supervisors gave their blessing Tuesday to a reimagined design for a proposed mix of high-end apartments, businesses and public space across from Walt Disney Concert Hall.
The $750-million plan to redevelop that portion of downtown's Grand Avenue nearly screeched to a halt in September, when a panel of city and county representatives overseeing the project rejected the design presented by developer Related Cos.
— latimes.com
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has bought a rare Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house, known as the Bachman Wilson House, located in the Borough of Millstone in Somerset County, New Jersey.
Museum officials said the plan is to disassemble the house and move it to Arkansas, where it will be reassembled on the museum’s 120-acre grounds, located 25 miles north of Fayetteville.
— fayettevilleflyer.com
A year ago a potential buyer wanted to move this house to Italy. View full entry
The 21-story, three-building apartment project now rising in Portland's Lloyd District will create more long-term bike parking than any other project in the nation, with four huge new storage facilities in four buildings and an on-site bike valet parking service to serve the biggest one. [...]
Bike experts in Canada, Mexico and across the United States said they didn't know of any single project on the continent with more bike parking; Mexico's largest facility, at a train station, holds 800.
— Bike Portland
Portland, Oregon's new apartment complex by GBD Architects instates a new standard in bicycle infrastructure and planning, offering one bike parking spot each for its 657 housing units, plus underground parking space for as many as 547 bikes. That's 1,204 bike spots total, a number that... View full entry
In a SPIEGEL interview, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, 56, discusses how the authorities monitor his movements in sometimes bizarre detail and the feud with the government in Beijing that has kept him from being allowed to leave the country for three years now. — spiegel.de
The Wheelwright Prize awards a $100,000 travel-based research grant to a recent architect whose proposal conveys a talented, scholarly and professional design sense. Originally established by Harvard's GSD in 1935 as the "Arthur Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship", the prize is meant to extend... View full entry
