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During a lecture given at Kansas City Design Week earlier in the year, Gullivar Shepard of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) called the St. Louis Arch Ground project, known as CityArchRiver 2015, one of the most challenging projects he has been involved in. — thisbigcity.net
Previously: The "Park Over the Highway" is now underway View full entry
A city that is connected -- in all senses of the word -- is a good city. The finalists of the Dallas Connected City Design Challenge offered numerous solutions in how Downtown Dallas can be linked to the Trinity River.
To guarantee a variety of ideas for Dallas' future development, the competition invited submissions in a Professional Stream and an Open Stream. Three Professional and 4 Open entries won.
— bustler.net
Professional Stream finalists (selected by jury):Stoss + SHoP, Boston, MA: "HyperDensity/HyperLandscape"Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, Barcelona, Spain: Dallas: "Downtown & Trinity"OMA*AMO, New York, NY: "2Rivers/2Datums"Open Stream finalists (selected by jury and public voting):Kohki... View full entry
Rio de Janeiro is set to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and there are two starkly different visions of what that will mean for the "marvelous city," as it is known[...]
"Instead of creating a space of conviviality, a space of shared culture, of community, of conversation, you are going to have this very isolated element where after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, it's going to be dead. You are creating banks, parking lots, Trump towers," Gaffney said. "It's been rezoned for 50-story buildings."
— npr.org
Previously on Archinect:Once Unsafe, Rio's Shantytowns See Rapid GentrificationOlympic Displacement: Atlanta 1996 to Rio 2016Before Olympics It's Demolition Derby View full entry
So it is that nearly a third of the interstate system consists of stretches through our cities, in the form of loops, spurs and freeways. So it is that American motorists drive nearly twice as many miles on urban interstates as they do the lengthier rural legs. So it is that every metropolis in the country has reorganized itself around these roads, and that they've shaped where we live and work, how we shop, what we eat, and how we pass our time. — theatlanticcities.com
Los Angeles may be known for its celebrities, glitz and glam, but the city's mayor, Eric Garcetti, is focused on something decidedly less flashy: infrastructure. [...]
"We destroyed our public transit system from the '30s and '40s and '50s, and so we're in the process of rebuilding it," Garcetti says. "A bigger program than anywhere in the U.S., but a long way to go."
— npr.org
See also:LA Mayor talks urbanism and mass transit with architecture critic Christopher HawthorneL.A.'s "People St." initiative puts public place-making into the public's hands View full entry
Here comes our first Europan 12 project of this week -- and it's a double whammy. Rotterdam-based Estudio Lunar scored runner-up for both the Gjilan site in E12 Kosovo (which had no declared winner) and for Regionale 2016 in E12 Germany. — bustler.net
Here's a glimpse into the team's proposals"Welcome to Urban Wellness!" - E12 Kosovo, Gjilan"Kein Land für alte Männer" - E12 Germany, Regionale 2016Find more about both proposals on Bustler. View full entry
Our cities are damaging our health – that's the conclusion of a new report by the Royal Institute of British Architects which looks at the impact of the built environment on obesity and life expectancy. It found that the urban conurbations with the healthiest populations [...] had half the density of housing and a fifth more green spaces than the places where people were the most unfit, such as Liverpool (the highest rate of diabetes) and Birmingham (the lowest proportion of active adults). — independent.co.uk
Since Gruen Associates and Grimshaw Architects were approved in 2012 to create the L.A. Union Station Master Plan, the leading designers and their team recently got the green light from the L.A. Metro to begin the plan's third and final phase.
Preserving the station's iconic nature and enhancing its surrounding 17 hectares to address the city's most pressing needs in the future, the proposal is set for completion in Summer 2014.
— bustler.net
Images via Grimshaw Architects Previously: Los Angeles Metro Approves Gruen/Grimshaw for Union Station Master Plan View full entry
Our Europan 12 featured entry for today is "Sprouting City Blocks" by KATOxVictoria, a Copenhagen-based design office founded in 2011 by architects Hiroshi Kato and Victoria Diemer Bennetzen.
Designed for the Vesterbro district in the competition's Copenhagen site, KATOxVictoria's entry won the runner-up award in the latest Europan Denmark.
— bustler.net
Here's a preview of "Sprouting City Blocks": Images courtesy of KATOxVictoria. Click the thumbnails below for more images. More project details on Bustler. View full entry
Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright produced an Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States in 1932 that remains, 80 years later, one of the most definitive collections of maps (many of them innovative in their time) from early U.S. history. [...]
Just before the holidays, the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab unveiled an ambitious project bringing the entire collection online [...].
— theatlanticcities.com
“The people who design the cars and the people who design the roads never talk to each other,” according to Kati Rubinyi. With a background in architecture, urban planning, and fine arts, Rubinyi wants to enrich mobility planning by bringing everyone involved to the same table. Her book, The Car in 2035: Mobility Planning for the Near Future, includes essays from the different viewpoints of planners, policymakers, architects, and car designers [...]. — buildabetterburb.org
It's a three-way tie for the competition to develop the urban conceptual design for the Delta and Porto Baros area in Rijeka, Croatia. The international call-for-concepts asked entrants to propose an urban design that could serve as an innovative model of feasible development that could be used to renew future development sites in the country. — bustler.net
Out of 56 submissions from around the globe, the competition jury selected three Crotia-based first-prize winners who were awarded a net amount of approx. US$35,600 (26,200 €): Studio 3LHD from Zagreb PORTICUS from Split njiric+ arhitekti/Hrvoje Njirić from Zagreb View full entry
Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture's design proposal was selected for the 2017 Astana World Expo exhibition site. Construction of the two-phase development is expected to begin in March-April 2014. — bustler.net
Previously: Kazakhstan’s Astana World Expo 2017 Competition Attracts Big International Names View full entry
The MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning released new research that examines the evolution of urban planning and its effects on communities. The report defines placemaking as “an innovative approach to transforming communities by creating and revitalizing open, public spaces around the needs and desires of the community.” — parksify.com
The City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Downtown Council announced on Sept. 19 that New York firm James Corner Field Operations and its team have been selected to carry out the $40 million redesign of Nicollet Mall, a major cultural and commercial center in Downtown Minneapolis. The winning proposal, called the "Nicollet Walk", is a 12-block stretch that divides the Nicollet Mall into three sections: Live, Work, and Play. — bustler.net
James Corner presented his team's project at a public event last Tuesday with the two other finalists: Daoust Lestage of Montreal and Tom Leader Studio from Berkeley, CA. View full entry