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North Korea's propaganda machine has spent days promoting a new airport in Pyongyang, showcasing the building's sleek glass walls and espresso stations. But the images, which feature Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, fail to mention that the building's principal designer was likely executed last year because Kim was unhappy with the design. — ibtimes.com
While the starving population of North Korea will likely never going to enjoy the airport's amenities (under the current circumstances), it has shown more direct feedback to other key-interest projects of the supreme despot, like the 46-story Taedong River Apartment Towers which remain... View full entry
I'd like to tell you a story about death and architecture...hospital architecture has earned its reputation...if we want better buildings for dying then we have to talk about it....where we die is a key part of how we die. — Alison Killing @ TED Talks
In this talk, architect Alison Killing looks at buildings where death and dying happen — cemeteries, hospitals, homes. The way we die is changing, and the way we build for dying ... well, maybe that should too.For those interested in more about the architecture of death, check out... View full entry
Paul Schimmel, a close friend of the artist and the former chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art who had organized Burden’s first retrospective exhibition in 1988, said the cause was malignant melanoma. Burden was diagnosed 18 months ago, Schimmel said, but kept the information private except for a few family members and friends. — latimes.com
Small Skyscraper, a collaboration between tallmankoch and Chris Burden View full entry
France's best-known 20th century architect, Le Corbusier, was a "militant fascist" who was far more anti-Semitic and a fan of Hitler than previously thought, two new books reveal.
[...] the latest, far more damning, revelations have shocked admirers and threaten to cast a shadow over commemorations of the 50th anniversary of his death. [...]
"Hitler can crown his life with a great work: the planned layout of Europe."
— telegraph.co.uk
He donated millions to the University of Michigan’s health care center, medical school library and college of architecture and urban planning; to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; and to Brown University’s public policy and American institutions program. He led a $75 million expansion of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and was a director of the Detroit Symphony and other cultural organizations. — nytimes.com
Just last week, Taubman was still attending the groundbreaking of the new wing of the Art & Architecture building at University of Michigan's Taubman College Architecture and Urban Planning. View full entry
Le Corbusier designed a pair of markers in the style of one of his own concrete architectural models.
Carlo Scarpa, who was buried standing up and wrapped in linen in the style of a medieval knight, has a marble grave with a maze-like design.
Frank Lloyd Wright's marker could not even be called a gravestone, because it looks more like an uncut rock.
Meanwhile, Buckminster Fuller's grave has an esoteric quote he once gave to Playboy magazine inscribed on it: "Call me Trimtab."
— curbed.com
Sure, an article like this suggests a click bait-y listicle, heavy on images and light on content. But what's installed astride an architect's final resting place is of grave (pardon the pun) importance. Not only would it be surrealistically disorienting to have an architect's professional style... View full entry
Ten minutes before we sat down to record this week's episode, the Pritzker Prize Laureate was announced – posthumously. The winner, Frei Otto (1925 - 2015), was a German architect whose impressive work and research with lightweight and sustainable structures influenced countless architects... View full entry
Michael Graves, the renowned architect and founder of Michael Graves Architecture & Design (MGA&D), died peacefully of natural causes in his home in Princeton, New Jersey on Thursday. He was 80 years old. Born in Indianapolis on July 9, 1934, Michael Graves is regarded as bringing "post-modernism"... View full entry
"I know this is going to be an offensive simplification of the value of a human body," she (Carpenter-Boggs) wrote in an e-mail, "but one could compare the fertilizer value to 100 pounds of cottonseed meal." She linked to a bag of "6-2-1" cottonseed-meal fertilizer on sale at Amazon.com. "Which, from this source, would be two of the 50-pound bags = $144"
Of course, the nutrient value of human beings as soil is only a small component of the Urban Death Project's overall mission.
— Brendan Kiley, The Stranger
A somewhat long-read on a proposal for turning dead human bodies into compost, and the young architect who is proposing a structure for cities to do so. Check out more renderings and information at Urban Death Project. View full entry
Seattle-based architect [Katrina Spade], originally from New England, has a vision that could radically reshape not just the death-care industry but the way we think about death itself.
She calls her plan the Urban Death Project, and it proposes a middle road between burial and cremation: compost. [...]
The centerpiece of the idea is an approximately three-story-high building in an urban center where people could bring their dead.
— thestranger.com
Before Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha was killed on Feb. 10, she had an epiphany in her architecture class. [...]
"Within a few moments after we began the demonstration, she lit up like she completely got it. In her eyes, I remember the most, just the kindness in her eyes. Behind those deep eyes, a little bulb went on, and she no longer needed me. It's the moment any teacher wants to have with their students, like, 'OK, they get it, you can go now.'
— indyweek.com
See also: Razan Abu-Salha, Architecture Student: A Small Memorial View full entry
Jon Jerde, founder and chairman of the Venice, California-based Jerde Partnership, passed away today in his home in the Brentwood area in Los Angeles after a longterm illness. He was 75. Born in Alton, Illinois on January 22, 1940, Jerde grew up in the oilfields of the West where his father worked... View full entry
Ricardo Porro, an architect who gave lyrical expression to a hopeful young Cuban revolution in the early 1960s before he himself fell victim to its ideological hardening, died on Thursday in Paris, where he had spent nearly half a century in exile. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by friends and associates, including John Loomis, the author of “Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools.”
— nytimes.com
School of Modern Dance, by Ricardo Porro School of Plastic Arts, by Ricardo Porro To learn more about the Cuban National Art School project and the related documentary Unfinished Spaces, click here. View full entry
August Perez III had an incredible impact on the way New Orleans looks today, from its skyline to Mardi Gras. Perez, one of the city's most important architects of the 20th century, passed away last week at the age of 81.[...]
Taking over his father's architecture firm in 1975, Perez quickly made his mark on postmodern architecture, teaming up with Charles Moore to design the Piazza D'Italia in 1978. The public plaza [...]remains one of the most defining pieces of postmodern design to this day.
— citylab.com
Bridging the aspirations of developers and the firm’s architects, Mr. Katz negotiated into existence some of the tallest mixed-use buildings in the world, among them the Shanghai World Financial Center and the International Commerce Centre in HK.
His other projects for KPF included Roppongi Hills, a huge complex in Tokyo encompassing an office tower, apartments, shops and restaurants, movie theaters, a museum, a hotel, a television studio, parks and an outdoor amphitheater.
— nytimes.com
