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This post is brought to you by Boston Architectural College. The Master of Design Studies in Design for Human Health (MDS-DHH) is the first low residency—primarily online—master’s program dedicated to health and wellbeing within the built environment. This program is available at the Boston... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Boston Architectural College. The Boston Architectural College has been engaged in architectural education since 1889. We educate students to become citizen architects who change and sustain the city. Our campus is located in the distinctive collegiate environment... View full entry
There’s the legacy of Brutalism being such a negative term. It begins the conversation with negativity about these buildings, and this falls into the misreading of them as harsh, Stalinist, or some other kind of monstrous, mean architecture. The name plays into that mischaracterization that’s grown around a lot of them. I think “Heroic’” is a better title for what their actual aspirations were. The architects had a real sense of optimism. They were developing architecture for the civic realm. — citylab.com
Related news on Archinect:Brutalism: the great architectural polarizerArt college professor suggests makeover for brutalist Boston City HallFuture of Paul Rudolph's brutalist Orange County building still uncertain View full entry
This post is brought to you by Boston Architectural College. The Master of Architecture, distance program is the first, primarily online program in the nation to be accredited by the National Architectural Accreditation Board (NAAB). It is available at the Boston Architectural College to U.S... View full entry
architects at Tsoi/Kobus & Associates in Cambridge have started using the processing system that powers virtual reality games to put clients inside development projects before they are built.
Using a cloud-based system called Revizto, architects can create a digital hospital down to the last brick, and then invite a client to “walk” through the space to see if the ceilings are high enough or the windows provide enough light.
— betaboston.com
Firms like Tsoi/Kobus are beginning to experiment with multiple immersive, interactive media for clients to tour buildings, often in advance of making any physical models. Clients can be virtually transported into the design's space by wearing an Oculus VR headset, or by being inside a specially... View full entry
You can still call it the John Hancock Tower, but the company that paid $930 million for New England’s tallest building can’t.
Now that John Hancock’s last lease in the office building has expired, owner Boston Properties Inc. can no longer use the financial services company’s name on the property.
— The Boston Globe
Related:Boston’s tallest new skyscraper in 40 years breaking ground todayBoston’s John Hancock Tower Receives the 2011 AIA Twenty-Five Year Award (on Bustler) View full entry
The United States Olympic Committee said Monday that it was withdrawing Boston as its proposed bid city because resistance among residents was too great to overcome in the short time that remained before the committee had to formally propose a bid city by Sept. 15. [...]
U.S.O.C. intended to move quickly to prepare a bid from another city. While he did not mention Los Angeles by name, many people involved in the Olympics expect Los Angeles to enter the competition.
— nytimes.com
More news from the 2020 and 2024 Olympics:Zaha's Tokyo Olympic Stadium cancelled – Abe calls for a redesign from scratchDavid Manfredi, the architect behind Boston’s 2024 Olympic bidBoston wins U.S. Olympic Committee's bid for 2024 GamesWhich U.S. city will win the 2024 Olympic bid? Boston... View full entry
Some architects consider the design a stunning example of the modern Brutalist style, but for many Bostonians it’s the building they have long loved to hate.
[...] why can’t we make changes that are easily reversible, while simultaneously acting to protect and preserve the structure?
Here’s one simple, obvious and cost-effective solution: Sheath the building with a tinted glass curtain wall — but not to create another modernist glass box.
— The Boston Globe
Related:How Boston City Hall was bornGerhard Kallmann, Brutalist Architect, Dies at 97 View full entry
The dean of a Michigan architectural school has been tapped to head the financially struggling Boston Architectural College, after a year-long search that started with the dismissal of longtime BAC president Theodore Landsmark.
Glen S. LeRoy, 64, who oversees Lawrence Technological University’s College of Architecture and Design in Southfield, Mich., will become president of Boston Architectural College Sept. 1.
— The Boston Globe
Marc Pelletier, Boston Architectural College board of trustees president, published this written statement on the school's website today:Dear BAC Community,We are tremendously pleased to share with you the news that after a national search, Glen S. LeRoy, FAIA, FAICP, has been selected to lead the... View full entry
Two years later, Manfredi’s focus on Olympics facilities is much more than professional curiosity. He is an essential member — and a public face — of a planning team racing against a June 30 deadline to deliver a new venue plan for Boston’s bid for the 2024 Summer Games. [...]
“It has benefitted enormously from time,” said Manfredi, a principal of Elkus Manfredi Architects, referring to the pending 2.0 plan, in development for months.
— bostonglobe.com
Previously:Boston wins U.S. Olympic Committee's bid for 2024 GamesWhich U.S. city will win the 2024 Olympic bid? Boston, LA, DC and SF duke it out View full entry
Khôra exhibition curators Robert Trumbour and Aaron Willette organized the Bigger than a Breadbox, Smaller than a Building competition as a means to explore the medium of installation in the architectural realm, specifically the medium's increasing appeal among emerging architects and designers... View full entry
The forest of elevator cores sprouting up around town tells us that we’re living in a once-a-century moment—a sugar rush of development unseen here since our parents’ parents’ time. But the dirty little secret behind Boston’s building boom is that it’s profoundly banal—designed without any imagination, straight out of the box, built to please banks rather than people. — bostonmagazine.com
Economic boom isn't always congruent with good architecture in other cities either:The new 5 over 1 Seattle, where "everything looks the same"Blair Kamin not impressed by Chicago's latest housing developmentsJeff Sheppard calls downtown Denver's new housing developments "meaningless, uninspiring" View full entry
When it opens next month in Boston, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate will be aiming to restore respect for Congress at a time when rancor and partisanship have seriously damaged its reputation. [...]
The 68,000-square-foot institute, designed by the architect Rafael Viñoly, is on the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts and has a 99-year lease on the site.
— nytimes.com
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter-Spring 2015Archinect's Get Lectured is back in session! Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any upcoming... View full entry
On Wednesday, developer Richard L. Friedman will formally kick off construction of the tallest skyscraper to be built in Boston in 40 years — a 700-foot tower at 1 Dalton St. that will include the city’s second Four Seasons Hotel and some of its most expensive condominiums. [...]
The skyscraper at One Dalton is being designed by Hancock Tower architect Harry N. Cobb, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, in collaboration with Gary Johnson of Cambridge Seven Associates Inc.
— bostonglobe.com