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The result was a beguiling cocktail – part bastion, part brutalist hanging gardens of Babylon – and it stood as the ultimate expression of the modern movement’s search for a monument.
The complexity of incorporating so many venues on so many levels across a 40-acre site has always made the place an infuriating labyrinth for the uninitiated, with successive decades of signage and way-finding strategies deployed in an attempt to ease the maze-like passageways.
— The Guardian
The Barbican’s important birthday comes ahead of next month’s revealing of the winner of the City of London Corporation-sponsored redevelopment contest. The Centre is celebrating with a weekend of special programming including a guest DJ’d after party. Previously on Archinect: City of London... View full entry
Our original designs for the biomes – hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal cells supported by geodesic tubular steel – looked more like Waterloo, but we used ETFE foil, or ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, which was more transparent than glass but extremely lightweight. It uses 1% of the energy and carbon of glass. The difficulty was creating biomes that would interlock across a constantly shifting landscape. — The Guardian
The Eden Project with its famed geodesic biomes opened twenty years ago on March 17th, 2001 in Cornwall, England. Inside the tropical biome of the Eden Project. Photo: Hchc2009/Wikimedia Commons. View full entry
The city’s most polarizing building is now officially middle-aged and a couple of fans have reproduced a pin that was given out during its opening week celebrations in 1969 [...]
Joyce Linehan, chief of policy for Boston’s Mayor Marty Walsh, still has an original pin, which local designers Chris Grimley and Shannon McLean used as the basis for a reproduction.
— CityLab
Commemorative pin and letter press drawing card. Image via OverUnder's website"Cast in bronze and hand patina’d, the commemorative lapel pin is produced in a limited edition of fifty," reads the pin's description on the website of OverUnder, the Boston-based architecture and design firm behind... View full entry
Today their studio is a scant five-minute walk from the old neighborhood, and they spend much of their time at the office tinkering with models and dreaming up gee-whiz notions. But the pair now have a firm of 390 employees playing alongside them, with another 62 scattered across five satellite branches around the world. And they’re no longer dealing in idle fancies but creating some of the most challenging and startling architecture to be found anywhere. — WSJ.Magazine
As Herzog & De Meuron is celebrating its 40th company anniversary, WSJ.Magazine takes a look back at the beginnings of the six-decade-long friendship that unites the founding partners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, both 68; from their childhood in 1950s Basel to winning the 2001 Pritzker... View full entry
Time flies mercilessly, and another iconic example of contemporary architecture is already celebrating its 10th anniversary: designed by the late Dame Hadid and shortlisted for the 2008 RIBA Stirling Prize, the four stations of Innsbruck’s Nordpark Cable Railway opened to the public in December... View full entry
Originally built as the U.S. Pavilion in the memorable World Expo of 1967, the steel structural frame of Buckminster Fuller's Biosphere remains standing to this day as a sole landmark in Montreal's Parc Jean-Drapeau. In planning for the 50th anniversary of Expo 67 as well as Montreal's 375th... View full entry
Concealed within the forest landscape of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, the acclaimed Thorncrown Chapel will celebrate its 35th anniversary this summer. Designed by E. Fay Jones, who was commissioned by retired schoolteacher Jim Reed, the 48 ft. tall chapel boasts 425 windows and over 6,000 sq... View full entry
The Eiffel Tower, one of Paris's most visited attractions, welcoming almost seven million visitors per year, was completed 126 years ago today - and there's a Google Doodle to mark the anniversary. — telegraph.co.uk
Contrary to the Telegraph quote above, the Eiffel Tower was actually completed on March 15. Today's anniversary honors the public opening on March 31, 1889.Joyeux anniversaire, old friend! View full entry
David Rockwell has got the art of theatrics down pat. His world is a stage complete with cuts, scene changes, sequences and transitions, where he is the director presiding over the action between performer, audience and space. [...] “The emphasis on arrival, procession, lighting and the all-encompassing power of a live theatrical experience have really impacted how I think about my designs.” He counts on his audiences buying in emotionally to his designs [...]. — forbes.com
The only geodesic dome movie theater in the world, Becket’s design was inspired by Buckminster Fuller—and the nation’s midcentury obsession with landing on the moon. Built to resemble a giant spacecraft, the Dome boasted futuristic floating stairways—a first for any movie theater at the time. Simultaneously projected images using three 35mm cameras were so cutting-edge, the Dome’s own original projector—the Norelco Universal—would win a Technical Academy Award in 1963 [...]. — Los Angeles Confidential Magazine
To celebrate Disney Hall’s tenth anniversary, architect Frank Gehry and Conductor Laureate for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen reminisced on the building’s inspiration last night, at a discussion held at the Hammer Museum. Co-hosted by the LA Phil, far from the actual... View full entry
