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Talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose has been announced as the 2014 recipient of the esteemed Vincent Scully Prize. Established in 1999 by the National Building Museum and named after Professor Vincent Scully to honor his legacy and work, the prize recognizes exemplary practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design. — bustler.net
Widely known as the anchor and executive producer of Charlie Rose and co-anchor of CBS This Morning, Rose will receive the prize in recognition for his insightful interviews with the world's leading thinkers that explore the value of good design as well as the growth and shaping of the urban... View full entry
[...] Frank Gehry has once again revised his design for a long-delayed memorial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, removing two controversial metal tapestries that would have flanked the installation and two columns.
The revised design was shown today to the National Capital Planning Commission, whose members for the most part seemed receptive to moving forward with the plan. But discussion over remaining 80-foot columns — from placement to height to necessity — hinted at possible issues.
— dcist.com
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Minimalism does smell a little foul these days, ever more commercial, devoted to luxury rather than simplicity, a fantasy of the globalized everywhere. It is the design ethos of a world in which you bounce around a grid of generic places, which all feel familiar because they all have the same stores, the same brands and the same basic design. If you want to look at how this fantasy manifests itself architecturally, visit CityCenterDC [...]. — washingtonpost.com
Regardless, there are two paths forward. One is to scrap the project and start over with an open public competition, which would cost around $17 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The other is to push forward with the existing plan to finalize the memorial design and begin breaking ground.
We favor the latter. [...] And the current design is nowhere near a “monstrosity,” as some have called it; it is a novel take on memorialization [...].
— washingtonpost.com
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The recent "TALL DC: New Monumentalism" exhibition took a critical approach to how outdated urban building standards -- specifically in D.C. -- can affect the built environment and the field of architecture, even as social demands and technology progress. Graduate students of Emerging Technologies and Media at The Catholic University of America proposed three skyscrapers among D.C.'s historical monuments to further encourage the questioning of this notion and the definition of "a monument". — bustler.net
More photos and other details on Bustler. View full entry
This week came the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leaving its home in Washington, D.C. [...]
Most importantly, from the perspective of thousands of D.C. residents, the District will finally be rid of the FBI's dark architecture. I will be sad to see the building go, as the city will almost certainly demand. Not only could it still potentially be put to good use, but whatever replaces the FBI Building will be regular, orderly, safe, and worse.
— citylab.com
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien were honored with the prestigious National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). As the highest award bestowed to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. federal government, the medal specially recognizes individuals or groups for their... View full entry
Throughout his neighborhood of Lanier Heights, developers are buying up two-story townhouses and building an extra floor or two, additions that are known as pop-ups. They’re also extending the structures as far back as allowed, to within 15 feet of the property line, obliterating backyards in the process. [...]
A few doors down the other way is a deafening construction site, where a single-family home is being turned into eight units, taking full advantage of what was once the backyard.
— washingtoncitypaper.com
A life-size maze like the one BIG installed in partnership with the National Building Museum will attract plenty of attention, regardless if people know who BIG is or not. Constructed in the museum's iconic Great Hall, the maze was set up as an interactive sneakpeek for BIG's exhibition scheduled to open at the museum in January 2015. — bustler.net
As a follow-up to our previous mention of the maze, here's a little more detail behind it:Check out a time-lapse video of the maze's construction below. View full entry
The museum teamed up with international architecture firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group to construct a maze right in the Great Hall. [...]
The museum’s “ubergoal is that people walk out of here looking at their built world differently,” Frankel says. “We think this is sort of on the microlevel of that — forcing people to look up [as they navigate the maze] will make them look at our building differently.”
— washingtonpost.com
The latest draft of DDOT's citywide transportation plan, moveDC, calls for a massive expansion of transit and cycling facilities throughout the District, plus new tolls on car commuters. If it actually becomes the template for DC's transportation, the plan will be one of America's most progressive. — greatergreaterwashington.org
You won’t find any stairwells tucked away into the dark corners of George Washington University’s newest academic building.
That’s because those stairs have literally taken center stage in the $75 million Milken Institute School of Public Health — designed by Boston-based Payette Architects and D.C.-based Ayers Saint Gross Architects [...] one of the first things visitors see upon entering the 115,000 square-foot building are the staircases winding every which way up a seven-story atrium.
— bizjournals.com
More than 150 cracks have been repaired, rainwater leaks have been sealed, and the 130-year-old Washington Monument is set to reopen Monday for the first time in nearly three years since an earthquake caused widespread damage.
The memorial honoring George Washington has been closed for about 33 months for engineers to conduct an extensive analysis and restoration of the 555-foot stone obelisk that was once the tallest structure in the world.
— blogs.wsj.com
in Washington, D.C., the retail behemoth gave architects more creative license. The result is a move away from the blandness of Big Box in favor of place-based design. [...] I got a call from Gabe Massa of MMA Architects, who helped design this Walmart. I asked him how it was that this store managed to be so different and he laughed. “That’s a really loaded question,” he said. — fastcodesign.com
Six teams of architects and landscape architects are still in the running for the 11th Street Bridge Park competition in Washington D.C. The nationwide competition is hunting for the best design to transform an old freeway bridge into D.C.'s first elevated park: the 11th Street Bridge Park. — bustler.net
Out of more than 40 teams and 80 firms that responded to an open call for submissions this past March, the jury selected the phase-one finalists -- who have all formed into the following interdisciplinary teams below:Balmori Associates / Cooper, Robertson & PartnersPiet Oudolf with Glenn LaRue... View full entry