The project IlluminAction by UrbanoActivo, an open design collective from Puerto Rico, has been selected to represent the island in the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy this fall (August 29 – November 25). The selection was narrowed from 450 project submissions nationwide and will be presented as part of the Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good exhibition by The Institute for Urban Design. — bustler.net
This exhibit will be part of an archive of actionable strategies around U.S. cities to improve the public urban realm. Click here to see more Archinect News posts related to the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. View full entry
Charlie Rose will be interviewing Tod Williams & Billie Tsien on tonight's show. Check your local listings for broadcast times. View full entry
It took Dubai more than five years to build the 828-meter Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building (for the moment, anyway). But Chinese architects and engineers reckon they need a mere 90 days to leave the Emiratis in the dust. At least, that's what they've claimed. — cnngo.com
BSB is renowned for its eye-opening construction efficiency. Its portfolio includes assembling a 15-story building in six days in June 2010, and erecting a 30-story hotel in 360 hours in December 2011. The key to achieving such stunning speed is an innovative construction technique developed by... View full entry
Googie was used as a deragatory term almost from the start — born in Southern California and named for a West Hollywood coffee shop designed in 1949 by John Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Architecture critic Douglas Haskell was the first to use “Googie” to describe the architectural movement, after driving by the West Hollywood coffee shop and finally feeling like he had found a name for this style that was flourishing in the postwar era. — blogs.smithsonianmag.com
Energetic duo Andreas G. Gjertsen and Yashar Hanstad, partners of TYIN tegnestue Architects from Norway live by Finnish architect and writer Juhani Pallasmaa’s saying, “Architecture is about the understanding of the world and turning it into a more meaningful and humane place.“ — nst.com.my
It seems to me Aberdeen thinks in terms of a consumerist society, where the solution is: "Well, put more shops in and get more business." I think it's a mistake; the same mistake they made back in the 60s. — Guardian
The singer Annie Lennox has made a scathing attack on plans for a £140m privately run park (aka the Aberdeen City Garden Project) in the centre of her home city of Aberdeen. Sir Ian Wood an Aberdonian oil industry magnate, has offered to give at least £50m towards the... View full entry
In this one-off special the Culture Show goes behind-the-scenes to follow it from commission to completion, and discovers just how difficult it is to build a tower for the 21st century. — bbc.co.uk
For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls... In the process we have gutted our traditional downtowns. We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have, as Nate Berg reported this week, endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value. — theatlanticcities.com
As Los Angeles architecture schools with their year end final reviews are contributing to the discourse in varying degrees of engagement, there is one institution usually stands out with its excellence in quality education, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design and its yearly Rumble brand. This... View full entry
Looking at the city through the lens of landscape architecture allows us a clear view of the situation. There is just one course of action available to us: if we are to resolve the world’s ecological problems we first need to resolve the problems facing our cities. And the only way we can reach these solutions is by naming and researching them in terms of the metabolism of the city. — IABR
-Dirk Sijmons, renowned landscape architect and former Governmental Advisor on Landscape, has been appointed curator of the next edition of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. The 6th IABR has the working title “URBAN by NATURE” and opens in May 2014. It focuses on the... View full entry
The highly anticipated skyspace by famed American artist James Turrell does not open to the public until June 14, but Rice students, faculty and staff got a sneak preview May 5 during an exclusive Cinco de Mayo celebration for the Rice community. — youtube.com
The folks in Alabama have just passed a law that says quite clearly that they don’t want anything to do with sustainability. Though they might not have any problem with clean air and water and all that, it seems to be the planning for it that is the problem. Because planning, after all, is apparently what communists do. — triplepundit.com
Sumit Jain has fond memories of his childhood in a small town where everybody knew everybody. But as a young man, he moved to a big city for work and began living in an apartment building. Jain said he soon missed feeling connected to a community.
That sense of loss led him to create Commonfloor.com, a “neighborhood portal” for Indians whose lifestyles have changed with their nation’s economic transformation but who still crave neighborhood life.
— washingtonpost.com
The High Line in New York succeeds because it unites neighborhoods and gets people outside, building a community in a space that was planned to be demolished: it brought life from rehabilitation. As we all know, Los Angeles has many places that need rehabilitating and that could serve as a point of unification. The problem though is that unlike the High Line we don’t have an area that stretches between neighborhoods without feeling forced or unantural. — laimyours.com
