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As we were getting off the plane he asked me what I was doing that evening: “Catching a train, I am afraid,” I said. “ Pity. You are fat and I like my women fat. We could have spent a pleasant night together.” He said this quite casually. [...] So gigantic was Corb’s egotism that he probably considered it enough of an honour for a humble mortal to provide a genius like him with a night’s relaxation. — theguardian.com
Keeping up with new design and rendering softwares is a never-ending job. Industry standards change, plug-ins multiply, and technology simply improves. And more often than not, the onus of learning these updates falls on the individual architect or designer — school programming moves at too... View full entry
Adjaye himself is weary of people obsessing over his being black in a profession which, in Europe and the United States, is very white. Which is not to say that he regards his heritage is unimportant. "I can't win with this one," he says. "Everyone has a view on it. I am an architect first of all, whose background is complex. I use the continent of Africa as a background, But I also grew up in London." — theguardian.com
Working simultaneously from the inside out - engaging the functional needs and psychological desires of the program - and the outside in - making connections to the city campus and relating to the Mackintosh building opposite - the design embodies the school's aspirations in the city's fabric. — Steven Holl Architects
Just one month before a disastrous fire broke out at the Glasgow School of Art's historic Mackintosh Library, a brand new addition to the campus opened up across the street. Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the new Reid Building is a modernist complement to the Mackintosh, riffing on similar... View full entry
For the last few weeks, the AA Visiting School has been chopping and stirring and slicing in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for their "Play With Your Food" workshop. Participants are put through the rigorous paces that chefs face when designing new foods, and compare the methodology of cooking to... View full entry
The challenge requires sophisticated understanding of the resources — human, physical, digital, spatial, and civic — that libraries offer to their users. In the conversation below, Shannon Mattern, a scholar who works on libraries, archives, and media infrastructures, and Nate Hill, Deputy Director of the Chattanooga Public Library, talk about what these resources are, how they are evolving, and what design can contribute to how they are deployed. — urbanomnibus.net
“I started to cry a bit when I saw the finished result for the first time this morning,” said architect Annabelle Selldorf at the June 27 press preview of the newly expanded Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. [...] Visitors might have similarly emotional reactions to the results, including Pritzker-winner Tadao Ando’s multipurpose visitor center, which prioritizes circulation and the views of lush hills behind the Clark [...]. — blouinartinfo.com
Previously: Tadao Ando's New Clark Art Museum is Berkshires, with Bilbao Ambitions View full entry
The big catharsis for UCLA Architecture and Urban Design comes by way of RUMBLE, an all-school expo held at the end of the academic year, that includes student work, final reviews, program installations, and lectures. Mixing content from students, practitioners, critics and faculty, the event... View full entry
Zack Giffin is [...] a host of a new series, “Tiny House Nation,” beginning Wednesday on FYI, an A & E Networks channel that used to be known as Bio. When we caught up with him by phone last week, he was on the road for the show, which chronicles those who live the tiny-house life. The chalet, he said, was sitting on a trailer “in a lovely field in Lummi Island, Washington State, on my parents’ property, which is where it lives when we are not around.” — nytimes.com
Previously:The Tiny House Lover's Guide to RomancePrototyping: Tiny House Design Workshop View full entry
"[...] In this project, we're using a living organism as a factory. So the living organism of mycellium, or hyphae, which is basically a mushroom root, basically makes our bricks for us. It grows our bricks in about five days with no energy required, almost no carbon emissions, and it's using basically waste— agricultural byproducts, chopped up cornstalks. This mushroom root fuses together this biomass and makes solid bricks which we can kind of tune to be different properties." — The Creators Project
Here are a few more photos of Hy-Fi, the locally-sourced, virtually waste-less biostructure by The Living, which just debuted in the courtyard of MoMA PS1. Photos by Andrew Nunes. In the video below, David Benjamin talks with The Creators Project about building the structure from agricultural... View full entry
How do you put together an exhibition of over sixty studios at once, including final reviews, for an entire architecture school? With the help of many devoted administrators. Often working behind the scenes and in conjunction with the Deans of schools, administrators like USC's Gail Peter Borden... View full entry
[takes action] is the fourth issue from Bracket, Archinect's collaborative publication with InfraNet Lab. Edited by a diverse collection of professionals from the intersecting worlds of architecture, environment, and digital culture, Bracket's content is sourced from an open-call... View full entry
The documentary Lagos Wide and Close - An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City, arose from Rem Koolhaas' 2001 visit to Lagos, Nigeria with filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, hoping to document a phase in one of Africa's fastest growing cities. The doc's unique direction allows viewers to... View full entry
This year's Venice Biennale of Architecture, curated by Rem Koolhaas, officially opened on June 7, under the theme "Fundamentals". The deluge of criticism and reporting coming out of the Biennale will surely continue until it closes November 23, but so far reactions from the architectural... View full entry
The salty 83-year-old architecture star on his loves (green design), his hates (the IBM building’s redo), and winning the AIA’s lifetime achievement award. — chicagomag.com
