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[...] the Crystal Bridges acquisition reflects an increasingly popular attitude toward architecturally significant homes among private collectors. Such buyers now see that historic homes can be collected, preserved, and appreciated much like fine art. — blouinartinfo.com
“Words like ‘holocaust’ have been used in reference to the idea that our house could inspire a rash of tear-downs which could then be replaced with modern homes. I designed my house specifically within the design guidelines of this historic district and to be compatible, a good neighbor. But the term ‘modernism’ just clicks a switch in people’s brain and they can’t see the house for what it is.” — nytimes.com
Previously: Architect Fights for His Home View full entry
Nicholas Korody penned a review - The Trouble with a Bird’s Eye View. The piece dissects a summer exhibition of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Design. He concludes the pairing of aerial photographs by Los Angeles-based Lane Barden with a geo-mapping project by the German-American... View full entry
PBS taps into the growing presence of 3D digital preservation on their new show, Time Scanners, which will premiere its first episode tonight at 8 p.m. ET. The three-part series will peruse the ancient iconic sites of the Egyptian Pyramids, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and the city of Petra... View full entry
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Editorial Manager for Archinect, talked with director Kelly Anderson about her documentary "My Brooklyn" and the “incredible, derogatory, racialized way people talk about the space". The film will air multiple times as part of PBS World's America ReFramed series... View full entry
Workers are digging the foundation for a twin-towered apartment building that will obscure the great flying buttresses and stained-glass windows of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights.
Preservationists, neighbors and architects are justly up in arms. [...] Even the developer laments how the approval process for new buildings in New York spews out too many projects that nobody really likes.
— nytimes.com
Decades of socialism and military rule kept Myanmar — or Burma, as it was known — poor and isolated.
There was one upside, though. The economy was so lousy, there was no drive to demolish the big British colonial buildings in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, and replace them with the glass and steel towers that now define much of the skylines in East Asia.
[...] remarkable architectural heritage, which has come into the cross hairs of developers trying to cash in on rising land prices.
— npr.org
I have been trying trying to understand what makes historic places special to so many of us. Part of it is that they are relatively rare in the United States, I guess. For several decades our newer everyday architecture – our subdivisions, strip malls, office buildings – has been simultaneously bland and deadening in its consistency. [...]
But I also think there may be something deeper going on. We gravitate to older places because they ground us in space and time.
— huffingtonpost.com
The most striking Bauhaus designs, such as Marcel Breuer's tubular steel chair or the Wagenfeld table lamp, have been endlessly copied and mass produced.
But the architecture of the design school has left a more complicated legacy in Germany.
[...] reopens two of the art school's most significant houses on Friday, almost 70 years after they were bombed, the move is sure to reignite the old debate about what to do with historic buildings damaged during the second world war.
— theguardian.com
Whether you're a diehard Miesian fan or could care less about the modernist architecture canon, we've heard of ol' Farnsworth time and time again since its completion in 1951 in Plano, Illinois. But Chicago-based artists Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero of Luftwerk want the public to see the... View full entry
Lewis Mumford wrote that, in a city, “time becomes visible.” Not, it would appear, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where a city board has just decided that a rather discreet and understated modern house might need to be torn down because it damages the ambience of a historic district, which is to say it destroys the illusion that the neighborhood is a place in which time has stopped. — Vanity Fair
A battle of bureaucracy and "historic preservation" is playing out in a Raleigh, NC neighborhood. Louis Cherry, FAIA, is building his own home in the Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh. After having received approval for his design by relevant city agencies, including the Raleigh Historic Development... View full entry
News Dave Heller spoke with Inga Saffron about not just architecture but "city life criticism". Evan Chakroff asked for tips "Has anyone compiled a good 'top ten' of her articles?" Quondam replied "Links to Saffron's articles appear almost weekly within ArchNewsNow's daily collection of... View full entry
In a city where real estate values are as dizzying as the skyscrapers, the angst over Manhattan’s changing profile and streetscape is becoming louder. The most recent outcry came over the demolition of a five-story building on West 57th Street, former home of Rizzoli Bookstore. [...]
"There won't be anything left to love if we don't stop this kind of development," State Senator Liz Krueger said during a rally protesting the Rizzoli building's pending demolition.
— theatlanticcities.com
[...] architectural historian William J R Curtis has set off the alarm bells by warning about the looming threat of destruction on Chandigarh's architectural heritage, terming the damage to buildings as "vulgarization" and "massacre."
According to Curtis, there is a clear and present danger to the legacy of city creator Le Corbusier and that the restoration measures are needed to be taken now.
— timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Curtis believes that astronomical rise in land prices has posed the greatest threat to heritage in an increasingly materialistic society where there is a "price for everything and value of nothing." View full entry
The new commission for cultural heritage protection, an adviser to the Czech National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) director, has recommended that the state start protecting relatively young works of architecture from the second half of the 20th century [...]
“Unlike the architecture of the interwar Czechoslovakia, the post-war architecture has been omitted by protection programs so far, also because its valuable pieces are more difficult to distinguish."
— praguepost.com