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Madrid-based studio Zooco has completed an extensive renovation and extension of a 1970s concrete structure in Santander, Spain. The Cantabrian Maritime Museum restaurant has been constructed inside an architectural complex that also includes an Oceanographic Center designed by Vicente Roig Forner... View full entry
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design has unveiled plans for a slate of renovations that will culminate next year and are aimed at improving the user experience for students and faculty at 51-year-old Gund Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project will help preserve the familiar John... View full entry
Brooks + Scarpa has proposed an adaptive reuse renovation of the Marcel Breuer-designed Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in Washington, D.C. in an effort to address the chronic issue of empty office space plaguing the city’s economic growth and downtown core. The proposal is included in a new... View full entry
The transformation of an aging brutalist monument to communism into a new tech education center geared toward teenagers in the capital city of Albania has been officially inaugurated following a three-and-a-half-year revitalization effort led by MVRDV. The project remade the 127,000-square-foot... View full entry
Local Boston news outlet WBUR has offered an insight into the multi-million dollar operation to repair and renew Boston City Hall. The Brutalist icon, now 55 years old, was recently allocated $80 million to address ongoing issues. The most extensive renewal project to be undertaken in the building... View full entry
Sotheby’s said Thursday that it has purchased the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Brutalist building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025.
The deal — which Sotheby’s and the Whitney refused to confirm in response to queries from The Times in April — finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has hung in the balance since the Whitney moved down to the meatpacking district in 2015.
— The New York Times
The auction house will operate a rotating exhibition space out of the building — in addition to hosting live auctions — beginning in September 2024. There are no plans for the subterranean level restaurant at this time. The Frick Collection, which has been leasing the building since... View full entry
A new bill introduced by Republican Indiana representative Jim Banks has once again returned the years-old debate around Classicism and the design of federal government buildings first begun by Donald Trump during the final year of his Presidency. Banks’ proposed new H.R. 3627 bill &mdash... View full entry
An important Kenzo Tange design is facing an uncertain future in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture after reports that authorities there are moving forward with the demolition of his 1964 “Boat Gymnasium” over disrepair and an apparent inability to fund seismic structural upgrades. The Brutalist... View full entry
The city of Philadelphia is prepared to release a report detailing a months-long community engagement effort officials say will inform the fate of the Roundhouse, the unusual concrete building that served as police headquarters for more than six decades.
Many of the residents who participated in that process said they want to see the shuttered building at 7th and Race streets repurposed as a community hub that recognizes the site’s long history of police abuse.
— WHYY
Philadelphia has a long-frayed relationship between its police department and the community, including most notably the 1985 MOVE Bombing that claimed the lives of 11 activists while displacing another 250 people and destroying 61 homes. The Roundhouse has a central role in this fraught... View full entry
NBBJ has been selected by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to lead the redevelopment of Paul Rudolph’s iconic Charles F. Hurley Building at the Boston Government Service Center. The move was announced last week after years of speculation as to the fate of Rudolph’s endangered Brutalist... View full entry
Soloviov’s virtual tours, which he announces on his Instagram page, have also become a way of coping with present circumstances. He says that during the pandemic and now the war, he has missed meeting visiting foreigners, some of whom were his most inquisitive tour participants. Now, he’s meeting them in their living rooms. — The Washington Post
Dmytro Soloviov is unlike the many Ukrainian citizen journalists using social media to inform the non-traditional, non-television-connected audience about their war-torn home. Evacuated at the outset to the western Carpathian Mountains region, he began offering in-person and then (upon his return... View full entry
“Given the dire shortage of affordable housing in London and the valuable real estate occupied by the Trellick, it is almost certain that someone will build on the site in the future. But residents would like their say. [...] Many fear the build would only attract more developers to the surrounding neighborhood, spoiling the character of the site.” — The New York Times
This fall, residents were able to halt a Haworth Tompkins scheme for a new 16-story tower block in the place of its demolished nursing home that would have obstructed sightlines, a graffiti wall, and exterior views of the Grade II* listed structure. Some units have already been converted into... View full entry
Almost 60 years later, Balfron’s streets have been scrubbed up and the residents’ facilities turbo-charged, but the kind of community that Goldfinger imagined has long since been evicted [...]
Where once Balfron looked out over declining docks, it now winks across the Thames at the towers of Canary Wharf, whose bankers are a target audience for the new flats, which went on sale this weekend.
— The Guardian
A spokesperson for the developer told the Guardian critic that the prospective buyers have mostly been well-to-do architects and design-hip young professionals thus far. Up for grabs is the famed Bond villain namesake Goldfinger’s personal apartment on the top floor, along with the five other... View full entry
What do you do with a building that was built to glorify an oppressive Communist system but, ravaged by rain and snow and stripped bare by thieves, is now a wreck? Should it be torn down in the spirit of reckoning with history — just as the statues of Confederate generals have been toppled in the United States and monuments to Soviet hegemony have been demolished across Ukraine, particularly since Russia invaded in February? — The New York Times
After receiving two rounds of funding totaling $245,000 from the Getty Foundation in back-to-back years, the ever-popular photographer’s subject is struggling to raise the millions needed to restore it to the former 'glory' seen in what its designer Georgi Stoilov called “morally and... View full entry
Dedicated in 1972, plans are underway to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Paul Rudolph’s design for the First Church in Boston.
In 1967, a fire destroyed most of the original 1867 gothic revival church by William Ware and Henry Van Brunt. The congregation considered proposals from Marcel Breuer, Joseph Schiffer, Joseph Eldridge, and Paul Rudolph. They voted in favor of Rudolph’s design [...]
— Docomomo US
In celebration of the anniversary, several events are scheduled at the church building for this weekend, April 30th and May 1st, including an Architects Panel on Sunday from 2–4 pm. View this post on Instagram A post shared by @docomomous View full entry