Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
We suspect the city’s notoriously bad traffic and general “aloofness” of the people contributed to its low ranking, as well as its culinary scene, which was also ranked dead last in this year’s poll. — Travel + Leisure
When Travel + Leisure compiled a survey of the places its readers love to visit, it also collected data on the 30 locales they loathe. While Moscow, Russia tops the list of the world's unfriendliest cities, a significant number of the top 10 are located in the United States (including Los Angeles... View full entry
architecture designed to create an emotional reaction — City Paper
As preparation for a D-Center lecture about The McKeldin Fountain at Windup Space tonight, a taste of Baltimore's "brutal" past.h/t Fred ScharmenRelated Mckeldin Fountain View full entry
An investor group hoping to build a high-speed train capable of cutting the travel time between Baltimore and Washington to 15 minutes says in a filing to state regulators that it has lined up more than $5 billion in financial backing. The commitment is from the Japanese government, which hopes to showcase the technology behind superconducting magnetic levitation or “maglev” trains to an American audience […] — Washington Post
The article notes that the maglev train has detractors, many of whom complain at the cost, which is far higher than other high-speed rails like those currently being built in California. For more information on the California project, check out the Atlantic's coverage here.Meanwhile, Joanna Symons... View full entry
New to Archinect, Julia Ingalls penned an essay, titled Material Witness: Insanity in the walls of '"True Detective" and "Twin Peaks". Olaf Design Ninja_ offered a complement "A good visceral read like a true detective watch...This would almost suggest the inert quality of this line between... View full entry
Not long enough to be comfortably horizontal, the building was also too tall for its shallow depth and too wide to be reasonably vertical. Both horizontal (modern) and vertical (historic) orientations were on display in the surrounding Seton Hill neighborhood. This bastard was of neither parent. — Baltimore Business Journal
Architect and critic Klaus Philipsen takes the incursion of a faux historicist 7-11 into the westside of Baltimore's downtown to task. View full entry
The houses in Ben Marcin’s project ‘Last House Standing’ seem oddly misplaced, lost and forgotten. The series reads like a homage to the forgotten solo row house. The Baltimore based self-taught photographers interest ‘in these solitary buildings is not only in their ghostly beauty but in their odd placement in the urban landscape. Often three stories high, they were clearly not designed to stand alone like this’. — ignant.de
Behnisch Architekten, in collaboration with Ayers Saint Gross, completed the John and Frances Angelos Law Center for the University of Baltimore this past April. The structure began construction in 2009 after the firm, which was developed under the leadership of Günter Behnisch's son Stefan, won first place in the university's international design competition back in 2008. — bustler.net
We tend to think of architecture as solid, stable, enduring, something that at its best will outlast us and possibly say something about us to future generations. Demolition makes powerfully evident the vulnerability, the mortality, of all things standing. — Places Journal
"When does architecture, once started, stop?" asks Keith Eggener. "Does it end when human occupation or attention terminates, when function or fabric are removed?" What is the connection between civic buildings and collective memory? Just in time for the World Series, Eggener recounts the saga of... View full entry
