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In redesigning the Gateway Arch Museum that opened in July, Cooper Robertson — along with James Carpenter Design Associates and Trivers Associates — made it a priority to integrate Universal Design, which goes beyond ADA regulations to create buildings that can be equally accessible to people... View full entry
The name change, however, also reflects two facts that have long bedeviled the arch and its role within the National Park Service. Saarinen’s soaring arc of steel is an icon of the automobile age, an attraction that has always been more about playing to the passing audience of the interstates than any particular relevance to the idea of national expansion. It also honors historical events that are now understood as deeply problematic within the larger trajectory of American history. — The Washington Post
It's a big day for the city of St. Louis, which is celebrating the grand reopening of the Gateway Arch. The monumental renovation project includes a new name — the Gateway Arch National Park, a new museum, and a major redesign of the park's urban landscape. The exhibitions inside the museum... View full entry
... [Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates] have renovated and expanded the arch grounds, originally designed by famed Modernist landscape architect Dan Kiley. New parks adjacent to the grounds are intended to funnel activity to the riverfront and work as connective urban tissue for the city’s most iconic feature, as well as to serve as a pedestal for that quicksilver curve. — citylab.com
The winning design by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates has reconnected the St. Louis Gateway Arch with its surrounding environment. The $380-million renovation allows for tourists and locals alike to enjoy the entire space around the Arch. The freshly landscaped grounds are mostly open now... View full entry
How do you restore community? Do you honor local context? Or do you bulldoze everything and try to start again? Few places embody that choice more starkly than Botanical Heights, the St. Louis neighborhood formerly known as McRee Town. Looking east from Thurman Avenue, one sees gated blocks of... View full entry
Segregation is no accident.Nearly five decades after the Fair Housing Act of 1968, American cities remain racially, culturally, spatially and economically divided. Entrenched conditions and persistent biases undermine the policies and priorities that would heal lingering wounds.So argues Catalina... View full entry
Each generation likes to think it is unique, or at least living on the cutting-edge; but archaeologists have long known that history has a way of repeating itself. Although North America is often considered to be part of the "New World," inhabitations on this continent date back millennia. In this... View full entry
Many current architecture students are excited about the removal of styrene mainly because of the various health hazards...[However,] others are worried that it will negatively impact their work and productivity. Sophomore Sam Landay explained that it’s not uncommon for architecture students to put their projects before their health.
Even outspoken opponents of styrene admit the necessity of utilizing the material.
— Student Life, Washington University in St. Louis
More on Archinect:When the pressure is on, dedicated architecture students show how to power nap like a proOne night's bad sleep equivalent to six months on a high-fat diet, new study findsAnother study warns that 3D-printers pose potential health risks for users View full entry
This morning, Southwest Airlines announced that non-profit organizations in six U.S. cities will receive Placemaking grants to help them reimagine and reactivate important but underutilized public spaces in their city. [...]
Albuquerque, New Mexico: Civic Plaza
Ft. Myers, Florida: Lee County Regional Library
Jacksonville, Florida: Hemming Park
Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 4th & Wisconsin Area
Portland, Maine: Congress Square Park
St. Louis, Missouri: Strauss Park
— pps.org
Today the Pruitt-Igoe site is once again in the spotlight, but this time because of a new bid to “get the economic flywheel going in the right direction again,” in the words of private developer Paul McKee, the force behind the proposed NorthSide Regeneration project. [...] The lynchpin of it all would be to get the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency—the high-tech eyes and ears of the Defense Department—to relocate to where the towers of Pruitt-Igoe once stood. — citylab.com
Is architecture a trade or an art?For Alvin Boyarsky, the answer was clear. As longtime chair of the Architectural Association (AA) in London, and one of the most influential figures in 20th-century design education, Boyarsky argued that architecture was not only a profession but also an artistic... View full entry
The exploration of new ways of thinking about the built environment is at the heart of a new exhibition at St. Louis', MO Bruno David Gallery which opened June 27.Key piece of the show is M-velope by artist Michael Jantzen (read Archinect's 2009 interview with Jantzen here), an art retreat... View full entry
During a lecture given at Kansas City Design Week earlier in the year, Gullivar Shepard of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) called the St. Louis Arch Ground project, known as CityArchRiver 2015, one of the most challenging projects he has been involved in. — thisbigcity.net
Previously: The "Park Over the Highway" is now underway View full entry
Officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the start of the aptly named "Park Over the Highway" plan in St. Louis, Missouri earlier this month. The plan's objective is to connect the iconic Gateway Arch grounds and Downtown St. Louis by building a... View full entry
More than decade after Abbott's imaginative drawing, Eero Saarinen submitted a design for a gleaming metal curve to a competition, and the saga of the Arch began. Campbell, a history professor and the co-director of the Wendell Ford Public Policy Research Center at the University of Kentucky, joins Scott Simon to talk about the controversy around the design, the African-American residents who were displaced to build the Arch and whether the monument really symbolizes the opening of the West. — npr.org
If you live in any large ‘rustbelt’ city in the Midwest, and St. Louis in particular, you’re probably all too familiar with the site of vacant lots. Empty land where homes and businesses used to be present a tough challenge for cities.
This weekend, ground will be broken on several projects which aim to change the way neighborhoods and cities deal with vacant property.
The Washington University Sustainable Land Lab Competition chose five winning designs from 48 design submissions.
— marketplace.org
