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Frida Escobedo’s first American residential commission has been revealed as a block-scale condominium project in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The designer of the new Modern and Contemporary Art Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in which she has set up a working studio) will... View full entry
Goldstein and his team of architects, builders, engineers and landscape designers have been working on the Lautner house addition since 2003, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Goldstein’s property, which he has been tinkering with for more than 50 years. [...]
“The purpose of all of this was to make the inside feel like it was outside,” said Goldstein, who describes a very collaborative working relationship with Lautner until the architect’s death, at 83, in 1994.
— The New York Times
Sam Lubell examines half a century of renovations of and recent additions to James Goldstein's compound surrounding the famed John Lautner-designed Sheats-Goldstein Residence in Los Angeles. Big kudos to the Times for referencing Lautner’s 1960 (now-demolished) Concannon House with a link to our... View full entry
The next new project from Zaha Hadid Architects will renovate major elements of the historic Le Schuylkill Tower in Monaco. Built as the principality’s first high-rise in 1963, the aging 25-story residential tower overlooks the Mediterranean and Monte Carlo’s Port Hercule and boasts... View full entry
Toronto-based Studio AC has offered a look inside their “unapologetically” residential scheme in the Canadian city. The three-story home reads as a series of stacked boxes from the outside with echoes of traditional residential forms. Image credit: Doublespace Photography Image credit... View full entry
Tokyo-based Ryuichi Sasaki Architecture has completed a residential scheme in the western part of the Japanese capital defined by an exposed concrete structure on a constrained site. According to the designers, the three-unit scheme “emphasizes maximal utilization of natural energy and pursues... View full entry
Hong Kong-based Ronald Lu & Partners has completed a residential development in Kowloon described as a “real forest building.” Named Garden Crescent, the scheme was designed with the philosophy of “nature on every doorstep.” Image credit: Ronald Lu & Partners Image credit: Ronald Lu &... View full entry
Vancouver-based Omer Arbel Office (OAO) has completed work on their award-winning project 75.9, a new construction of a private home located adjacent to a hayfield in rural British Columbia. The design scheme won in the 'Future Project House' category at the 2019 World Architecture... View full entry
Late SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s final residential design has hit the market in Venice Beach, California, for a listed price of $4.2 million. The 2,482-square-foot home has three bedrooms and was originally built in 1947. Kappe began the commission in 2019 (the same year he passed... View full entry
Multistudio has broken ground on a noteworthy new four-residence supportive housing project in Lawrence, Kansas, which they say is evocative of their goal of pushing the limits of what’s possible within their community and the industry as a whole. The project involved collaborating with clients... View full entry
I started the blog McMansion Hell to document—and deride—the endless cosmetic variations of this uniquely American form of architectural blight. [...] I worry that I’ve actually reinforced the idea that McMansions are a relic of the recent past. In fact, there remains a certain allure to these seemingly soulless suburban developments [...] the McMansion is alive and well. Far from being a boom time fad, it has become a durable emblem of our American way of life. — The Baffler
Wagner says that, without noticing, the media’s focus on gentrification and the affordability of cities has meant that the rise of “modern farmhouses” and other forms of McMansions following the end of the great recession has gone largely unscrutinized. She claims these and other designs... View full entry
Apparent Japanese architecture aficionado Kim Kardashian recently traveled to the country to meet with Pritzker winner Tadao Ando, according to an Instagram post made by the celebrity mogul Thursday. Ando is designing a private residence for Kardashian in the Palm Springs area, the details of... View full entry
Zurich-based firm Appels Architekten has designed an open, simplistic family home in Bavaria, Germany, composed of wooden cubes. Called “House by the Lake,” the home balances privacy and spaces for gathering. As detailed by the architects, this configuration allows residents to retreat... View full entry
The new developments look startlingly alike, often in the form of boxy, mid-rise buildings with a ground-floor retail space, sans-serif fonts and vivid slabs of bright paneling. The bulky design is conspicuous, jutting out of downtown streets and overpowering its surroundings. Over time, it attracts a certain ecosystem — the craft breweries, the boutique coffee shops, the out-of-town young professionals.
It’s anytown architecture, and it’s hard to know where you are from one city to the next.
— The New York Times
The disappearance of America’s vernacular architecture and subsequent rise of what some call developer modernism is the product of necessity, reluctance towards artistry, and the monopolization of residential development across the country, according to the Times’ real estate reporter Anna... View full entry
A pair of landmark projects in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito is now complete, representing firsts for both BIG and Safdie Architects, respectively. QORNER, the 24-story Safdie-designed tower, is the firm’s first residential project on the continent and serves as an extension of its founder’s... View full entry
For many years, industrial hemp was illegal in the US due to hemp’s association with drug use, despite the fact that it does not contain more than 0.3 percent THC [...] Building residential homes with hempcrete was therefore effectively outlawed until 2018, when the Farm Bill distinguished between hemp and cannabis plants. Then, in September 2022, hemp building materials were added to the model US residential building code, paving the way for legal use in 2024. — Reasons to be Cheerful
The International Residential Code (IRC) accepted a modified appendix in September that some are hopeful could be a catalyst for further adaptation throughout the building industry. Builders for Climate Action spokesman Chris Magwood says its greatest potential lies in commercial... View full entry