Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
On the heels of another recent multimillion-dollar community revitalization effort through his non-profit Rebuild Foundation, 2022 Serpentine Pavilion designer Theaster Gates was back in the South Side last week to celebrate the groundbreaking of the new St. Laurence Arts Incubator in Chicago... View full entry
Architecture firms are billing more from reconstruction and renovation projects than they are from new builds for the first time; a milestone driven by soaring demand for office renovations. In the 20 years that the AIA has been collecting data on billings for renovations versus new build... View full entry
Detroit-based contemporary art exhibition space Library Street Collective has announced a partnership with OMA to transform a former 1900s-era commercial bakery and warehouse into a mixed-use arts education and public space. Led by OMA Partner Jason Long, the adaptive... View full entry
Harry Lennix’s Lillian Marcie Center for the Performing Arts, a project located at 4343 S. Cottage Grove Ave. on Chicago’s South Side and designed to aid in the renaissance of Bronzeville, will receive capital funding from the State of Illinois to the tune of $26 million, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Tuesday. — Chicago Tribune
The Chicago-born actor describes the project as “the Black version of the Lincoln Center.” It will house a 350-seat multi-level auditorium, flexible performance stage, a second smaller 100-seat theater, and related areas, such as rehearsal spaces, dressing rooms, offices, and outdoor gathering... View full entry
The picture is getting clearer for the Studio Gang-envisioned new, unified home for the University of Kentucky's College of Design after final renderings and a project timeline were just revealed. The firm beat out five other top-flight firms for the renovation of the former Reynolds... View full entry
Why would the U.S. General Services Administration now raise a hind leg to this legacy by wrecking the Century and Consumers buildings, two early 20th Century skyscrapers at 202 and 220 S. State Street?
The buildings’ demolition would create an economic and pedestrian dead zone on State Street, something neither the street nor the city can afford. And it would be a shameful waste of some really good Chicago architecture.
— The Chicago Sun-Times
A $141 million adaptive reuse plan was initially approved in 2017 by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but the city decided to change direction only a few months later after an FBI security assessment determined that the two buildings’ continued existence creates too much risk for the iconic adjacent... View full entry
The hulking Hickory Hollow Mall — a full 1.1 million square feet of retail space in southeast Nashville — was once the largest shopping center in Tennessee. But like dozens of malls, it’s been in a downward death spiral for more than a decade — despite a scrappy revival effort. Now, the mammoth complex surrounded by acres of parking is on track to join the ranks of malls making a transition into medicine. — Marketplace.org
According to a national database kept by Georgia Tech urban design professor Ellen Dunham-Jones, a total of 32 enclosed malls have shifted to housing health care services, with nearly a third established at the start of the pandemic. Covid lockdowns had a tremendous impact on brick-and-mortar... View full entry
Here’s a sobering fact: The building sector is dragging down global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. [...]
The good news is that, according to the report, up to 61% of building emissions could be cut by 2050, and we have all the solutions at our disposal today, from passive cooling technologies and denser multifamily homes to retrofits. All we need to do is implement them—or better yet, introduce regulations and policies to will them into implementation.
— Fast Company
The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that emissions from buildings doubled between 1990 and 2019 despite the widespread adaptation of environmentally-friendly construction methods and materials like recycled concrete. Increases in population and the total... View full entry
A trio of concerned letter writers replied to a March 31st opinion piece by The Guardian’s Owen Hatherley in which the critic declared that “hardline modern architecture is now something of a cult.” “A living city has to strike some sort of balance between avoiding the strangulation and... View full entry
A historic 1940s post office building, weighing 1,010 tons, is being temporarily moved 120 feet in Burlingame, California to make way for the construction of a new underground parking garage beneath the building’s current location as part of the planned 220 Park Road office and retail... View full entry
This historic home is now a museum with an overnight rate. The former house and surrounding gardens of former South African president and anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela is now accepting reservations after being transformed into an inn. — New York Post
Located in the suburb of Houghton, Johannesburg, Sanctuary Mandela, not only offers lodging but also features curated exhibits that pay tribute to the human rights activist and a restaurant with menu items inspired by Mandela’s favorite meals. View this post on Instagram A post shared... View full entry
Freeski big air opened its Olympic competition Monday at the world’s first permanent, city-based big air facility, a repurposed steel mill on the west side of Beijing that’s made a stunning backdrop for one of the Games’ newest sports. — The Associated Press
The venue is the one-time home of a steel production facility that was shuttered ahead of the 2008 games to create a generally greener picture of the country to Western news outlets. Its former grounds have been transformed into a greenery-laced headquarters for the games’ Organizing Committee... View full entry
Montreal’s Thomas Balaban Architecte (TBA) has returned to a core area of its practice with a new private residence for an art-collecting Quebecois family called the Berri House. Challenged to “squeeze as much home as possible” out of a 112-year-old 130-square-meter (1,400-square-foot)... View full entry
The Italian state is spending €70 million ($86 million) to rehabilitate structural remains at Santo Stefano and neighboring coastal sites. At the former, the government is building an open-air museum that will illustrate the site’s dark past, along with gardens and conference rooms that will be used for seminars and events focused on cultural and political themes. — ARTnews
The cultural center will be located inside the site of a former 18th-century prison originally constructed under the reign of King Ferdinand IV in a now aging village called Santo Stefano. The project is being overseen by the state’s cultural minister Dario Franceschini and mirrors efforts... View full entry
A diverse consortium of architects has been announced for a massive new development called Cultural Terrace on the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in Irvine, California led by IBI Group and MVRDV. The firms will be joined by landscape architects Agency Artifact and the local... View full entry
