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In an amazing rebuke of their university’s purblind pursuit of the Munger Hall megadormitory project last week, students at the University of California, Santa Barbara staged a public forum in order to showcase research-based alternatives to the development and long-term strategic plan. Led by... View full entry
Rivian Automotive Inc., the electric-vehicle startup backed by Amazon.com Inc., is in talks to invest at least $5 billion to build a factory near Fort Worth, Texas, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News. — Bloomberg
The factory, labeled “Project Tera” according to the Bloomberg-obtained document, would be able to produce 200,000 vehicles a year and create at least 7,500 jobs by 2027. A number of incentives, including grants and a city tax abatement of up to $440 million, have also been proposed in the... View full entry
The Gilcrease Museum has unveiled designs for an expansion of the 72-year-old Tulsa institution as part of a redevelopment plan meant to give its 350 years of collected history an upgraded 21st-century relevance. The plan will add improved exhibition space for the city-owned museum... View full entry
Plans for a proposed cultural center in China’s southern Guangdong region have been released as MAD becomes the latest to enter its name in a competition for an urban renewal project that is equal parts conservation and inspiration, leaving intact the historic past while keeping an eye on the... View full entry
A pair of recently published economic tracking studies for the construction industry developed by Quarterly Market Forecast (QMF) highlight the increasingly split nature of construction proposal activity within the United States following the COVID-19 pandemic. Commercial projects are... View full entry
After the tragedy, [a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va.] and another honoring Stonewall Jackson were shrouded, but only temporarily. Around the country, similar monuments have been removed. In some cases, only their pedestals remain.
We asked artists to contemplate these markers of our country’s racist and violent history — the space they take up, physically and psychically — and imagine what should happen when they are gone.
— The New York Times
Around the US many statues and monuments celebrating racism in our country's history have been removed, either partially or fully. The question currently remains on what we as a culture should do concerning the spaces these historical monuments inhabit[ed]. The New York Times asked artists to... View full entry
MAD Architects is one of six architecture firms competing to design the “Southbank by Beulah” tower in the heart of downtown Melbourne. Located at City Road and Southbank Boulevard, the skyscraper must include a mixed-use program of more than 220,000 square meters. The other competing teams... View full entry
Portland's urban renewal agency has named three finalists to shape the redevelopment of the soon-to-be-vacated downtown post office blocks.
Not among them: a headline-grabbing but unlikely proposal for two massive skyscrapers, the taller of which would be nearly twice the height of any existing building in Portland.
— oregonlive.com
Prosper Portland has selected 3 finalists for the 14 acre post office site located in the heart of the city: McWhinney, Related Cos., and Continuum Partners. It comes as no surprise that William Kaven's two tower proposal was not selected. Broadway Corridor total development site of 32 acres... View full entry
Zaha Hadid Architects designed a proposal for the Vauxhall Cross Island site in London. Located adjacent to Vauxhall Station, the proposal focuses on creating a Vauxhall district center by providing a mixed-use space to generate employment opportunities and a new public square to accommodate... View full entry
While 2017 saw developer Related Midwest remain tight-lipped on its plans for the site of the defunct 2,000-foot-tall Chicago Spire project, a rendering showing a pair of very tall skyscrapers rising at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive recently reignited speculation regarding the site’s future redevelopment. The rather slender image surfaced online, credited to Britain’s Zaha Hadid Architects. — chicago.curbed.com
Another rendering for the vacant Chicago Spire site recently surfaced online. The image was confirmed as a proposal from Zaha Hadid Architects; however, the developer Related Midwest will not be pursuing the design. While the project will not be built, the organic towers are certainly a... View full entry
Soon after the news, an Indian architect posted an image of [Foster's] design juxtaposed next to a stainless-steel idli maker—the kind used to steam idlis for breakfast in countless households across southern India—on an architecture-focused Facebook group. While some made fun of the resemblance—”How on earth will they cook in this?”—others praised the design for not being derivative of colonial-era architecture. — Quartz
Foster + Partners was invited to design the state assembly building in Amaravati, the new capital of the Indian state Andhra Pradesh. Since it was released, Foster's proposed design has drawn mixed reactions from the public. Some people compared the building's spiked design to an idli maker... View full entry
At the 2016 Venice Architectural Biennale, Ban and Choi presented a scale model of a 13-kilometer (about eight-mile), garden-lined bamboo walkway meandering between North and South Korea, elevated to protect visitors from ubiquitous DMZ landmines. Along its length would be towers for viewing nature and, every kilometer, open-air “Jung Ja” meditation pavilions designed by different architects and artists, including several reserved for North Koreans. — Los Angeles Times
With support from Shigeru Ban and others, artist Jae-Eun Choi envisioned a garden-lined bridge called "Dreaming of Earth" that would meander through the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has ironically grown into one of Asia's most significant wildlife sanctuaries. The initial proposal, which Choi... View full entry
In LA, Trump bragged he was going to spend a billion dollars on what he claimed would become the world’s tallest building. His architect Bill Fain delivered a gilded 125-storey office tower etched in a diamond-patterned exoskeleton...David Martin also devised a skyscraper: ‘When I told Ivana [Trump] the basis of the idea was to put two diamonds together, she lit up,’ Martin said. ‘I think they were divorced a week later.’ — The Guardian
Whether you've been following the tumultuous life of proposed architecture projects in Los Angeles or not (a stretch of Grand Avenue, for example, has been undergoing elaborate proposals designed in part by Frank Gehry for almost forty years) "Never Built Los Angeles," a book by architectural... View full entry
Proponents of the material, called cross-laminated timber, or CLT, say it can be used to erect buildings that are just as strong and fire-resistant as those made from steel and concrete. Those qualities have helped excite the passions of architects and environmentalists, who think it could unlock a greener method for housing the world’s growing population, and timber producers, who hope to open a U.S. market for the value-added good. — Bloomberg
Right now the structures are mainly proposals, but CLT could be the principal element of a 100-story tower nicknamed "The Splinter" in London as designed by PLP Architecture, while there's an ornamental 40-story timber tower in Stockholm on the boards, as designed by Anders Berensson... View full entry
The Pershing Square Renew initiative revealed Agence Ter and Team as the winners of the competition to redesign Downtown L.A.'s oldest public park, exactly two weeks after the four finalist teams delivered their final presentations. The winning consortium is led by French landscape practice... View full entry
