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Only a few days left to submit your work to the anticipated World Architecture Festival 2016! Entries are due this Friday, June 10.After four successful years in Singapore, WAF is making its way back to Europe in Berlin. The festival will take place on November 16-18 inside the Arena Berlin, which... View full entry
A large fire has broken out at a convention centre in the western German city of Duesseldorf.
The centre acts as an accommodation hub for refugees waiting to be sent elsewhere in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Everyone inside hall 18, where 180 refugees were staying, was brought to safety, according to reports.
As the fire raged, a thick, black plume of smoke could be seen across Duesseldorf.
— BBC
In related news:What Does the Syrian Refugee Crisis Mean to Architecture?Ai Weiwei's latest works focus on refugee crisis in GreeceNew MoMA exhibition explores the architecture of displacementOlafur Eliasson's 'Green Light' responds to the refugee crisis in Europe View full entry
May 26, 2016Aravena’s Biennale for architecture to give a damn might imply a specific kind of project, but, after one day on the ground, it is clear that there is no one way for it to respond. For one thing, there is a truly incomprehensible quantity of material to cover. The volume alone speaks... View full entry
Germany has announced new legal measures requiring migrants and refugees to integrate into society in return for being allowed to live and work in the country.
Under the coalition government’s measures, announced on Thursday morning, asylum seekers face cuts to support if they reject mandatory integration measures such as language classes or lessons in German laws or cultural basics.
— the Guardian
"According to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the aim of Germany’s first ever integration law is to make it easier for asylum seekers to gain access to the German labour market, with the government promising 100,000 new 'working opportunities', expected to include low-paid... View full entry
A group of German architects and planners has started a campaign to rebuild the Wolf House, widely seen as a link between van der Rohe’s early, more conventional designs and his later buildings, like the Barcelona Pavilion and the Farnsworth House, that would redefine modern architecture. [...]
But the plan has run into resistance from other architects and scholars who say that the Wolf House would be too hard to reconstruct [...].
— nytimes.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Two of a kind: photographer Robin Hill contemplates the Farnsworth House and Glass House simultaneouslyRedesign of DC's main Mies library tip-toes around the good and the badDavid Chipperfield pledges to carefully "optimize" Mies van der Rohe's Neue... View full entry
"Does the Bauhaus really offer total liberty, or is it a place of oppression where all intimacy in banished, and the group triumphs over the individual?" asks the narrator midway through the English version of the acclaimed documentary The Dessau Bauhaus. The 28-minute film about Walter Gropius'... View full entry
The newly opened portion is just 5km (3 miles)— but the completed highway is set to span over 100km and will connect 10 cities and four universities .... Almost two million people will live less than a mile from the new cycling autobahn [...]
the bicycle highway will be 13-feet wide—or almost double the width of normal cycle paths—and have no crossroads or traffic lights. [...]
it’ll also be greener. RVR estimates that the route will take 50,000 cars off the roads every day.
— qz.com
More on cycling infrastructure:As bicycle ownership in North Korea rises, Pyongyang introduces bike lanesBoris Johnson greenlights London's "Crossrail" bicycle superhighwayGensler proposes "Underline" bike paths in London's abandoned tube tunnelsAtlanta plans big for bikes, and Atlantans turn out... View full entry
A German group which matchmakes citizens willing to share their homes with refugees said it had been overwhelmed by offers of support, with plans in the works for similar schemes in other European countries.
The Berlin-based Refugees Welcome, which has been described as an “Airbnb for refugees”, has helped people fleeing from Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria.
More than 780 Germans have signed up to the Refugees Welcome website...
— the Guardian
The neighborhood — a central district that was dismantled by the Nazis, battered by Allied bombs and radically reconfigured by postwar architects — has foiled urban planners, exasperated patrons of the arts and demoralized generations of Berliners intent on seeing their city made once more into a cohesive whole. [...]
Many are hoping that all that strife is in the past now that a new museum of modern art will be built in the much-maligned arts quarter.
— nytimes.com
In recent Berlin news on Archinect: Berlin's world-class museums struggle to build up excitementBerlin lists communist-era towers of Alexanderplatz as historical monuments; Gehry high-rise still happeningHerzog & de Meuron to redevelop Berlin’s infamous Tacheles cultural center; locals fear... View full entry
No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. How do designers experience their cities as locals? Plus, with summertime in full swing, planning a vacation is on everyone's mind. Archinect got in touch with J. MAYER H. founder Jürgen Mayer H., who... View full entry
ThyssenKrupp's MULTI elevator test tower is happening, indeed — and at a seemingly impressive rate. Less than 10 months after starting construction, the currently 232-meter structure in the German city of Rottweil recently celebrated its topping out. ThyssenKrupp is aiming to have the tower... View full entry
The architecture and engineering teams fought to keep up. As the terminal ballooned from 200,000 to 340,000 square meters (dwarfing Frankfurt’s 240,000 and just shy of Heathrow Terminal 5’s 353,000), they parceled out the work to seven contractors. That soon grew to 35, and they brought in hundreds of subcontractors, says Delius. [...]
At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport’s cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion.
— bloomberg.com
As far as major cities go, few other places are in possession of so many treasures that are so poorly exhibited as Berlin. It's as though cultural institutions here go out of their way to keep people from visiting. [...]
The city is undeniably home to diverse, valuable and unique museum collections, but they aren't helping the city as much as they should be.
— spiegel.de
In the SPIEGEL article's comment section, reader nsmith compares the museum situation in Berlin with New York and raises a word of caution: "I read this article and I am envious. In New York City, it's almost impossible to get into any of the major Museums on any given... View full entry
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has declared two districts of the German city of Hamburg a world heritage site: the Speicherstadt and Chilehaus with the Kontorhaus District. Declared following a meeting in Bonn, the designation was based on the belief that the areas represent "an outstanding... View full entry
Berlin has become the first city in Germany in which rent-control legislation has come into force in a bid to put the breaks on some of the fastest rising rents in Europe.
From Monday, landlords in the capital will be barred from increasing rents by more than 10% above the local average. Such controls were already in place for existing tenants but have now been extended to new contracts.
“[...] the difference between the rent paid in existing contracts and new contracts is so high [...]”
— theguardian.com