Any definitive insight into the formative stages of Roman architectural hubris lies irretrievable beneath layers of the city’s repeated renovations through the time of caesars, popes and the Renaissance [...] Now, at excavations 11 miles east of Rome’s city center, archaeologists think they are catching a glimpse of Roman tastes in monumental architecture much earlier than previously thought, about 300 years before the Colosseum. — nytimes.com
The New York Times recently reported on the ongoing excavations of Roman monumental remnants from the city's pre-Colosseum era at the Gabii digging site not far from the capital. Since last summer, a team of archaeologists and University of Michigan students led by classical studies... View full entry
Artist and architect Tomás Saraceno [...] created a massive layered installation that’s suspended more than 25 meters (approx. 82 feet) in the air of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen museum in Düsseldorf, Germany. “in orbit” stretches across the piazza under the mammoth glass ceiling of the K21 Ständehaus with its three levels of steel wire netting. Situated on the three levels are six inflated spheres that range in size, with the largest being 27 feet in diameter. — design-milk.com
Previously: Tomas Sarceno's Met Museum Rooftop Installation 'Cloud City' Now Open View full entry
[My Ideal City] is an instrument where all people in Bogota help to create their city by interacting in proposals made for their Downtown in crowd sourcing, thus impacting design through real time interaction and direct feedback. Once the different initiatives are defined, the process is completed by the population crowd funding its own initiatives. — Aedes
Winka Dubbeldam (Archi-Tectonics) and Rodrigo Nino (Prodigy Network) have developed Downtown Bogotá // My Ideal City, an online platform for the citizens of Bogotá to influence their local city-planning proposals. Recognizing that middle-class population growth across Latin America... View full entry
Philip Beesley is a Canada-based architect who has spent years blurring the lines between nature and technology. In 2008, he began work on the Hyozolic series — a collection of immersive installations that react to, and evolve with, the movements of people who pass through them. The idea, according to Beesley, is to create a "metabolic architecture," whereby manmade structures are seen not as inanimate, fixed objects, but as living, breathing entities, capable of regeneration and growth. — theverge.com
The most recent addition to the Hyozolic series, Radiant Soil, debuted earlier this summer at the EDF Fondation in Paris, France. View full entry
They look like shelters for hikers in a national park, but these wooden sheds in Switzerland have a rather less innocent purpose – they provide a discreet location for men to have sex with prostitutes. — telegraph.co.uk
In an attempt to "regulate prostitution, combat pimping and improve security for sex workers", Zurich has opened nine "sex boxes" in the former industrial zone of Zurich. The boxes are accessed by drivers following signed routes, where customers will find up to 40 prostitutes waiting to offer... View full entry
From the air, the hills of Silver Lake, peppered with bungalows, must look like a leafy game of Snakes and Ladders. Roads insinuate their way up and around the mountain slopes and connecting them all from the lowest to the highest are dozens of vertiginous stone staircases. These are the historic Los Angeles Stairs, hidden and unknown to most of the city's residents and visitors. — bbc.co.uk
Coast Modern is an independent documentary by directors Mike Bernard and Gavin Froome. Travelling along the Pacific North West coastline from LA to Vancouver, the film showcases the pioneers of West Coast Modernist Architecture, and the homes that have become their legacies. Stepping inside the most inspired dwellings on the west coast, we feel how the light and space of a classic Modernist home can work in collaboration with the natural environment. — coastmodernfilm.com
“An economic downturn is always a good thing for preservation,” says Regina O’Brien, chairperson of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “A lot fewer developers are making a lot less money, and therefore they have a lot less motivation to pursue these profit-oriented flips. But the problem is that the opposite is true when the market picks back up.” — thedailybeast.com
Many of these references are to natural phenomena: the wind-blown sand dunes of the desert or the sanctuary of an oasis; others refer to a way of life seemingly passing beyond recall: the dhows used for trade and pearl diving, or the tents of the nomadic Bedouins. — Atlantic Cities
It is like the new expression of Orientalism. Middle East architecture is defined by few limited metaphors by Western architects who are really looking East to fulfill their payroll obligations. View full entry
“What I find so fascinating about the Presidio is that, in the heart of this military machine, there was a huge planting programme,” Goldsworthy says, referring to the fact that the park’s 300-acre forest was planted by the US military between 1886 and 1900. “They had quite a sophisticated sense of landscape,” he says. “They read the landscape in the way that sculptors do—or at least the way I do.” — theartnewspaper.com
"A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living" is the LA-based architect's first major museum retrospective happening now until Sept. 8 at the Hammer Museum. Practicing architecture in Los Angeles from 1939 to his death in 1979, Jones -- or Quincy, as he was known -- is described as a quiet... View full entry
Euphony, a dramatic installation of suspended stainless-steel ball chains by Ball-Nogues, has been created for Nashville's Music City Center. The studio, headed by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, intersects the disciplines of architecture, art and industrial design. We talk to Benjamin Ball about Euphony and the process of its construction. — frameweb.com
In celebration of Hopper Drawing, a life-size window installation of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) is on view inside the landmark Flatiron Building's prow, one of the original architectural inspirations for the iconic painting. We recommend viewing it at sunset! — whitneymuseum.tumblr.com
The Gold Dome building based on Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome will be preserved. TEEMCO, an Oklahoma-based environmental professional engineering firm has purchased the architecturally historic Gold Dome building located on legendary Route 66. As one of the first geodesic domes in the world, the Gold Dome is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. — todaysfacilitymanager.com
It was a dome of many firsts: the first dome to have a gold-anodized aluminum roof, the first above-ground geodesic dome, and the first Kaiser Aluminum dome used as a bank. Due to these forward thinking attributes, the building was billed as the “Bank of Tomorrow.” View full entry
As for what she wants visitors to get out of the exhibit, Koumoundouros just hopes it will help them think about -- even question -- how much our economy is based on the housing market.
'Ownership and consumption are linked to how much our economy is consumed based," she argues. "[This view of housing] is so specifically American. And I love digging that out, and I think questioning it is part of maybe a shift.'
— Marketplace.org
The phrase "a place to call home" rings loud and clear in the "Dream House Resource Center" exhibit by artist Olga Koumoundouros currently at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles until August 18. Her exhibit focuses on the commodification of the home in America through the context of America's... View full entry
