“Louvers won’t work, they reflect light too,” he wrote in June in a blog comment on dallasnews, “and retrofitting on a 42 story building has never been tried and the makers say they would rip off in high winds prevalent in Dallas.”
An honest opinion, except that there is no such Barry Schwarz.
This post and others proved to be the work of Mike Snyder, long a fixture in the city and now a public relations executive who had been hired by the tower’s outside law firm.
— nytimes.com
Previously: The Nasher and The Ant BullyRenzo Piano's Nasher Sculpture Center controversy continues View full entry
Cities can transform into an entirely new place once it's nighttime, sometimes to the point of disorientation that you wonder if you're still in the same city. The upcoming "Vers un climat: Building (With) The Unstable" exhibit at Cornell University presented by award-winning interdisciplinary... View full entry
Well, it is the prerogative of men to enter the world without acknowledging that they are men. - Sylvia Lavin — Harvard GSD M.Arch.I (Lian)
Watching Sylvia Lavin and Eric Owen Moss in conversation at SCI-Arc last night, prolific Archinect blogger Lian Chang took careful note of a few key impasses -- where Lavin and Moss either failed to see eye-to-eye, or artfully dodged one another's argumentative traps. Lavin, an imposing academic... View full entry
Romania's Minister of Religious Affairs, Victor Opaschi, concedes that there is a close working relationship between the church and politicians during electoral campaigns, and that this is "not a good thing". — BBC News
Tessa Dunlop reports in from Romania where the Orthodox Church is in the midst of a growth spurt with as many as 10 new places of worship being completed every month, and the enormous Cathedral for the People's Salvation is slowly taking shape. However, Romanians have begun to question... View full entry
According to Preservation Detroit, "The City of Detroit Historic District Commission has received a petition to demolish the State Savings Bank. The petition is subject to a public hearing, which is scheduled for the next Historic District Commission meeting on Wednesday, August 14." — change.org
Samantha Farr, an Urban Planning Graduate Student at University of Michigan, has started a petition to block the plans by Andreas Apostolopoulos, CEO of Triple Properties, to demolish the historic Beaux-Arts-Style State Savings Bank in Detroit, to make room for a parking structure. Triple... View full entry
When companies go bankrupt, the medicine can be harsh for staff members and the local tax base, yet the effects are temporary. A bankrupt city can’t fire citizens who pay taxes but already receive worse than subsistence services like one-hour police response times.
Large cities don’t disappear or die, they just waste into chronic basket cases, like Camden, New Jersey; Gary, Indiana; and East St. Louis, Illinois.
— bloomberg.com
A major force within contemporary Indonesian architecture, the soft-spoken man is recognized as the helmsman of a generation of independent architects, yet hardly anyone outside his native country knows his name. Locally celebrated but internationally undiscovered, Matin was one of the first Indonesian architects to establish an independent practice after the fall of Suharto in 1998. — MovingCities
Mark magazine #44 (June-July 2013) put the spotlight on the architectural scene in Indonesia. MovingCities contributed with an interview with leading Indonesian architect Andra Matin who is hailed as ‘a well kept secret in the architecture world’. An extract: A major force within... View full entry
As incorrigible collectors we are all too aware of the gap between the desirability and availability of Dieter Rams' work. das programm was conceived to correct this. We only sell Dieter Rams designs for Braun and Vitsœ, and Braun products issued between 1955 and 1995, the period of Rams’ office at Braun, for the greater part as Director of the Design Department. — dasprogramm.org
Great architects build structures that can make us feel enclosed, liberated or suspended. They lead us through space, make us slow down, speed up or stop to contemplate. Great writers, in devising their literary structures, do exactly the same.
So what happens when we ask writers to try their hand at architecture?
— New York Times
That’s a nice photo of Paris, isn’t it? Nope! That’s not Paris and no, it’s not Disney World or even the Las Vegas Strip; it’s a replica Paris in China. What makes this clone of Paris even more weird is that it’s a ghost town. Only about 2,000 people live there, which means that those giant skyscrapers, with 700+ units tend to only have around 30 people living in each of them. This city has become a place to take wedding photos for Chinese citizens who can’t afford to travel to the real Paris... — mydesignstories.com
The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) is a philanthropic body, dedicated to preserving local culture. It recently wrote to RIBA after the architectural body awarded Zaha Hadid Architects' Galaxy Soho complex a 2013 International Award for architectural excellence, chastising RIBA's choice of winner. — phaidon.com
In addition to last year’s unveil of an augmented reality-capable catalog, Ikea now boasts a new app feature that can turn that little book into a virtual piece of furniture. The new AR can now help shoppers envision what the furniture might look like in their apartment by adding the illusion of the product on top of the live view through a smartphone camera. — digitaltrends.com
Snugbury's has been erecting its giant straw sculptures for more than 10 years, but this one is by far the most advanced yet.
It features two fully movable parts - the head and the gun - and also includes audio.
It is the brainchild of engineer Mike Harper, whose team of volunteers have put in an estimated 700 man hours to bring the creation to life.
— chesterchronicle.co.uk
You can never be too old to play with LEGOs. Yesterday, the beloved brand released its latest series, LEGO Architecture Studio. Endorsed by REX architecture, Sou Fujimoto Architects, SOM, MAD Architects, Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, and Safdie Architects, the set includes a guidebook... View full entry
When MoMA’s chief curator of architecture and design Barry Bergdoll gives up his post at the end of the summer and returns to his tenured lair at Columbia University, the museum will lose a quiet crusader. MoMA can feel corporate and aloof, but in his domain, Bergdoll has displayed an uncanny sense of timing, using each exhibition to set a real-world agenda that frequently outlasts its run. — vulture.com
