Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
The UNESCO Office in Afghanistan announced today the grand prize winner and four runner-up teams in the Bamiyan Cultural Centre Design Competition. Launched last November, the single-stage competition invited architects worldwide to propose designs for a cultural center in the Bamiyan Valley of... View full entry
Make It Right, the non-profit organization founded by actor Brad Pitt in 2007, recently revealed six new single-family housing designs for the Manheim Park neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri. The single-family homes will be built on vacant lots directly across the Bancroft School Apartments, an... View full entry
Archinect’s Get Lectured series has shone the spotlight on numerous lecture posters from architecture schools and departments throughout the U.S., and a few outside the States, since late 2013. During this past fall semester, I reached out to some of our previously featured Get Lectured schools... View full entry
The rural village of Sinthian in southeastern Senegal is home to the THREAD arts center, a new artists' residency and cultural community space set to open this March. The idea for the arts center originated from the long-term efforts of doctor and local Sinthian leader, Magueye Ba, who spearheaded... View full entry
Rural Studio, Auburn University's off-campus undergraduate program in Newbern, Alabama, continues to gain recognition for their student-led design/build projects that assist the communities in one of the South's most under-served regions. Rural Studio has won several awards from 1995 until most... View full entry
Thousands of bus stops in Brazil completely lack signage to indicate which buses actually stop there. The nation-wide inconvenience has finally been tackled by one of the biggest community projects in the world.
‘Que Ônibus Passa Aqui?’ (‘Which Bus Stops here?’) is a resident-led initiative which has taken Brazil by storm.
— popupcity.net
Help save one of America’s architectural gems; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Spring House in Tallahassee, Florida. We at the Spring House Institute are trying to raise money through a crowdfunding campaign to acquire the House from the original owners - the Lewis'. The house was recently listed on the... View full entry
From preventing drafts and keeping moisture out of walls, to being used as inexpensive material for crafting 3D models, rigid insulation foam is a familiar friend to many architects and designers during the creative process. But what to do with all those scraps?Designers Elisa Werbler and Lucy... View full entry
Although anyone with Internet access can do a quick search online, nothing replaces a brick-and-mortar public library for quality resources and info — yet these centers are consistently overlooked by city policymakers. After setting up an RFQ for the Re-Envisioning Branch Libraries Design Study in New York, the Architectural League and the Center for an Urban Future selected five interdisciplinary teams out of 45 submissions. — bustler.net
They are:Andrew Berman Architect | Library Development Solutions | Neil Donnelly | AEA Consulting | Auerbach Pollock FriedlanderMarble Fairbanks with James Lima Planning + Development and Special Project OfficeMASS Design Group SITU StudioUNIONTo find out more, head over to Bustler. View full entry
The Green Lane Project, established in 2012 by non-profit group PeopleForBikes, continues its ambitious mission to expedite the process of building more protected bike lines with six new U.S. cities in tow: Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Seattle.The program celebrated its... View full entry
Last night, nearly 500 New Yorkers gathered at the New York Public Library’s main branch for a forum on the wave of skyscrapers that are rising along the Southern edge of Central Park. Skyscrapers that will, depending on whom you ask, either transform Central Park into a gloomy airshaft or create shadows as fleeting and insubstantial as a cloud moving across the sun. Concerns were raised, grievances aired and oligarchs denigrated. — observer.com
Communities can transform underused areas of L.A.’s largest public asset—our 7,500 miles of city streets—into active, vibrant, and accessible public space with People St, a program of the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). Eligible Community Partners can apply for approval to create projects that enhance the quality of life in this city. Three innovative types of projects are available: Plazas, Parklets, and Bicycle Corrals. — People St.
Los Angeles began piloting its "People St." program in 2011, developing spaces designed to reclaim sections of streetspace for public recreation and use, rather than car traffic. The projects were few but popular, including the Sunset Triangle (designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios) plaza in... View full entry
Writes New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman: "Las Vegans I spoke with, young and old, complained about not having 'enough authentic places,' which are 'locally owned, one of a kind, less corporate,' as Tyler Jones, a 35-year-old architect-developer of luxury homes and third-generation Las Vegan, put it to me. They wanted a Las Vegas for Las Vegans." — New York Times
Las Vegas, a city long-defined by googie, short-term stays, and the flash and pulse of the Strip, is doing some soul-searching. The Downtown Project, backed by online apparel mogul and Zappo's executive Tony Hsieh, is leading efforts to cultivate authentic neighborhood feel and life at street... View full entry
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
