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Only a few days left to submit your work to the anticipated World Architecture Festival 2016! Entries are due this Friday, June 10.After four successful years in Singapore, WAF is making its way back to Europe in Berlin. The festival will take place on November 16-18 inside the Arena Berlin, which... View full entry
"You repress almost everything to produce a building," states Daniel Libeskind during a long and wide-ranging conversation with the architectural historian Gillian Darley in the context of the exhibition Childhood ReCollections: Memory in Design at the Roca London Gallery."Everything is repressed... View full entry
The question to be addressed by confronting these different types of ‘enclaves’, is of the role of architect and the scarce influence of the architectural practice to affect the social realm. The intangible architectures that emerge from these urban ecologies create a wider system; an archipelago of enclaves can be found from one place to another, from one epoch to the next one — dpr-barcelona
A big picture on "enclaves and archipelagos as built environment and social realities cities need to ultimately adopt and use these systems in their developmental urban design projects. "This is a tale of two cities. One, designed and dreamt by the architect. The other, the result of regional... View full entry
A proposal under consideration here called the Flussbad (“river pool”) would clean up a filthy canal, part of the River Spree, that flows around the tourist-mobbed Museum Island. The plan would add new wetlands and some place the public can literally dive into.
Despite detractors who picture Berlin’s cultural center being upstaged by the equivalent of one long, riotous water-filled bouncy castle, the idea, which has been around for a while, is gaining momentum.
— NY Times
Over the past few decades and across the globe, cities have been increasingly reimagining their waterways and -fronts. Hydrologic infrastructure projects, from Cheonggyecheon in Seoul to the LA River Revitalization Project (to be helmed by Frank Gehry), have the potential to inspire renewed... View full entry
Herzog & de Meuron have the widest approach to architecture varying their style for each job. In this sense they epitomise the global search for an architecture of pluralism, one flexible enough for very different cultures...The high quality of the work is as notable as the wit; the amount of production as much as its personality. -RIBA President Stephen Hodder — architecture.com
Herzog & de Meuron, whose works include the recently approved yet controversial Tour Triangle in Paris and the redevelopment of Berlin's Tacheles cultural center, received the 2015 RIBA Jencks Award for being a practice "that has recently made a major contribution internationally to... View full entry
For Screen/Print #36: Amelia Taylor-Hochberg highlighted an essay by "Well, Well, Well", the fortieth issue from Harvard Design Magazine, which is focused on the "landscape of health and illness". News Carter B. Horsley criticized The New LaGuardia Airport: as being Not Functional, Not... View full entry
The neighborhood — a central district that was dismantled by the Nazis, battered by Allied bombs and radically reconfigured by postwar architects — has foiled urban planners, exasperated patrons of the arts and demoralized generations of Berliners intent on seeing their city made once more into a cohesive whole. [...]
Many are hoping that all that strife is in the past now that a new museum of modern art will be built in the much-maligned arts quarter.
— nytimes.com
In recent Berlin news on Archinect: Berlin's world-class museums struggle to build up excitementBerlin lists communist-era towers of Alexanderplatz as historical monuments; Gehry high-rise still happeningHerzog & de Meuron to redevelop Berlin’s infamous Tacheles cultural center; locals fear... View full entry
Danziger addressed the issues of perception: How does a patient with a shifted perception experience space? He focused on color, the distribution of light, material, and shape. — NPR Berlin
While designing for medically healthy clients can occasionally drive an architect insane, an entirely different set of challenges is involved in creating a safe and healing environment for mentally ill patients. Architect Jason Danziger found himself asking questions like: what makes a bed... View full entry
No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. How do designers experience their cities as locals? Plus, with summertime in full swing, planning a vacation is on everyone's mind. Archinect got in touch with J. MAYER H. founder Jürgen Mayer H., who... View full entry
The architecture and engineering teams fought to keep up. As the terminal ballooned from 200,000 to 340,000 square meters (dwarfing Frankfurt’s 240,000 and just shy of Heathrow Terminal 5’s 353,000), they parceled out the work to seven contractors. That soon grew to 35, and they brought in hundreds of subcontractors, says Delius. [...]
At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport’s cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion.
— bloomberg.com
As far as major cities go, few other places are in possession of so many treasures that are so poorly exhibited as Berlin. It's as though cultural institutions here go out of their way to keep people from visiting. [...]
The city is undeniably home to diverse, valuable and unique museum collections, but they aren't helping the city as much as they should be.
— spiegel.de
In the SPIEGEL article's comment section, reader nsmith compares the museum situation in Berlin with New York and raises a word of caution: "I read this article and I am envious. In New York City, it's almost impossible to get into any of the major Museums on any given... View full entry
Berlin has just said “yes” to Communist-era blocks and “no” to more new skyscrapers. On Monday, the city announced that it was listing some key Communist-era structures in Alexanderplatz, East Berlin’s central square, as historical monuments. It is an irremovable nail in the coffin of a 22-year-old plan to demolish the square and replace it with a “little Manhattan”—a set of 10 new 150-meter high towers. — citylab.com
"Alexanderplatz won’t stay entirely unchanged. Two new towers will still be built, one of them a twisting number from Frank Gehry."Previously:Berlin's Alexanderplatz high-rise developments continue to take shapeBerlin hopes Germany's tallest residential tower has the 'Bilbao effect'Berlin After... View full entry
During the tempestuous postwar years, Berlin was a city divided. Occupied by Soviet powers in the East and western Allies in the West, the city was split into separate states, and in 1961, the Berlin Wall was built between the two. Nearly thirty years later, Berlin's reunification process began... View full entry
Herzog & de Meuron, the Basel-based architecture studio that designed London’s Tate Modern, is due to redevelop Berlin’s famous art squat Tacheles. The massive warehouse, in the now fashionable Mitte district, was occupied by artists after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. A symbol of the city’s subculture, Tacheles became a major tourist attraction. In 2012, the authorities closed the art centre amid widespread protests by artists and anti-gentrification campaigners. — theartnewspaper.com
Berlin has become the first city in Germany in which rent-control legislation has come into force in a bid to put the breaks on some of the fastest rising rents in Europe.
From Monday, landlords in the capital will be barred from increasing rents by more than 10% above the local average. Such controls were already in place for existing tenants but have now been extended to new contracts.
“[...] the difference between the rent paid in existing contracts and new contracts is so high [...]”
— theguardian.com
