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Chicago’s most infamous vacant site of the 21st century is finally getting a tower. But will we be getting the architect’s best vision — or just half of a good design? A look at some recent history of large projects in the city offers some guidance, and reason for concern.
I have no reason to doubt Related’s stated intention to build both towers, but if history is a guide, it’s more likely than not that the single tower will never see its sibling.
— Chicago Tribune
The Windy City's newest architecture critic, Edward Keegan, explains 400 Lake Shore Drive (designed by SOM's Chicago office with David Childs) against five other similar projects that never saw the original vision of their architects fully realized. He says a potential void might become a... View full entry
The unfortunate "winner" of the UK’s Carbuncle Cup, which annually celebrates the country’s most detested new architecture, has been announced as the 2019 Liverpool Lime Street redevelopment scheme from Broadway Malyan. The contest, which is presented by the London-based magazine The Fence... View full entry
However, check out the stadium renderings accompanying this story. Look at how big that thing is. The size almost makes the Museum Campus buildings look like neo-classical LEGO blocks in comparison.
Judging from the renderings, the stadium looks pretty good as far as professional sports facilities go. It’s the right building but the wrong spot.
— Chicago Sun-Times
Bey’s effective teardown includes a slideshow of Manica Architecture’s new renderings for the reported $2 billion stadium, which replaces a scrapped plan to relocate the team to suburban Arlington Heights from its hallowed Soldier Field home. Bey said Mayor Brandon Johnson's team "stood... View full entry
Founded in Sweden in 2014 as a public Facebook group, [Architectural Uprising] is a collective of citizen design critics who object to what organizers call the “continued uglification” of developments in Nordic cities, and push for a return to classically informed design. [...]
The movement’s size and persistence, however, has earned it a seat in the discourse. “When [historians] talk about architecture during these years, [the Architectural Uprising] will be part of that history”
— Bloomberg
A new report in Bloomberg tells of the staying power of social media-driven architectural criticism. Projects lambasted by the popular (mostly) Scandinavian group include Oslo’s new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design by architect Klaus Schuwerk and estudio Herreros’ Munch... View full entry
Yet the courthouse reveals the limits of what architecture can do. Its spatial clarity and sedulous details don’t resolve some issues with where it is placed. This is a spectacular execution of a flawed recipe. [...]
Then there is a larger question: Is a centralized courthouse a good idea in the first place?
— The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic reviews the massive new RPBW and NORR-designed Ontario Court of Justice project, calling it characteristically calm, natural, and “friendlier” than other contemporary North American courthouse designs owing to a well-articulated... View full entry
The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture, today named Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell) to its masthead as architecture correspondent. Best known as the brains behind the brilliant and satirical architecture blog, “”McMansion Hell,” and following a wildly successful stint as a Nation guest columnist earlier this year, Wagner will contribute monthly commentary on architecture and the built environment—but not as always conventionally understood. — The Nation
Wagner succeeds Michael Sorkin, who died in 2020. The new correspondent said the post is “an ideal perch for me to explain how everything we see and everything we build is political.” She is now one of a select coterie of dedicated critics writing for American publications, including Michael... View full entry
Reactions in the UK are pouring in after the opening week of Lina Ghotmeh's 2023 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens. The annual installation’s 22nd overall edition features the Lebanese-born Parisian designers palm leaf-shaped timber À table pavilion, which encases a... View full entry
In this case, architecture is the issue and the engine of renewal. With its triple-height library and exalting, barrel-vaulted classrooms with huge punched windows overlooking Manhattan, the redesigned ice plant becomes one of the most spectacular school buildings in the city.
[...] the historical arc of 20 Bruckner, as the building is called, is instructive and tells a larger tale about the Bronx, change and renewal.
— The New York Times
The NY Times critic gets off the sixth train to explore Adjaye Associates' first American K-12 project in Mott Haven, The Bronx. Kimmelman mentioned his two best-known New York projects – 130 William Street and Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development – in addition to D.C’s National... View full entry
Playful, elegant additions to universities and colleges were the class acts to follow, while the newly opened Elizabeth line exceeded all design expectations. — The Guardian
Grimshaw’s long-awaited Elizabeth Line finished second (behind Grafton’s Marshall Building for the LSE). Moore said: “The Elizabeth line, when it finally opened in May, revealed an alternative universe of underground railway travel where everything is bigger, brighter and swisher. This is... View full entry
Poundbury, Paisley and Perspectives all ultimately failed to conquer the complex commercial and political challenges they faced. Their royal patron’s attempts to create human-centred townscapes have led to car-dominated suburbs. His efforts to uplift grand historic buildings have carved them into dreary flats. Our King is someone who sees the right problems but, ensconced in the very establishment that prevents meaningful solutions, he can only meddle around the edges of effecting real change. — The Guardian
The new British King is memorably the originator of the panned Poundbury estate that has failed to fall in line with its stated goals towards sustainability and car-free pedestrian orientation, according to Phineas Harper. He thinks the scion is hemmed in by a stolid commercial banking system and... View full entry
Formally known as the Sunset Spectacular, it consists of a trio of massive steel panels that converge at a height of 67 feet, two of their surfaces draped in irregularly shaped digital screens bearing ads for tech overlords Amazon and Meta. If a game designer for “Halo” were to imagine a billboard, this is probably what it would look like. [...]
There is an important story embedded in the design of the Sunset Spectacular. It has nothing to do with its forms.
— Los Angeles Times
Responding to the New York Times’ recent “puff piece” on embattled SCI-Arc professor Tom Wiscombe’s long-awaited Sunset Spectacular billboard in West Hollywood, critic Carolina A. Miranda offered a rather cutting take on Joseph Giovannini‘s “extra curious” failure to mention what has... View full entry
Theaster Gates’ hotly-anticipated debut as the first non-architect to win the Serpentine Pavilion commission has been causing quite a buzz online since premiering for the press yesterday in London’s historic Kensington Gardens. The installation has thus far been received domestically as... View full entry
2021 was a year where form continued to follow finance. Throughout the year, our coverage included many examples of the world’s largest architecture firms designing for some of the world’s largest companies. From sleek corporate headquarters to “work-and-play” tech campuses, such projects... View full entry
The storage has been forced to fit the quirks of the building, rather than the other way around, which seems like an odd way to design an art store. — The Guardian
The Guardian critic interviewed MVRDV frontman Winy Maas to find out if the inspiration for Rotterdam's new open storage museum came from a €3.99 salad bowl, noting its mirrored exterior affects the opposite of its intended invisibility and is also rather difficult to clean. “The... View full entry
The £235m mega museum of the tormented Norwegian artist stands as an ominous grey tower on the Oslo waterfront, lurching out at the top like a military lookout post, keeping watch over the fjord. It is a location scout’s dream for the ultimate villain’s headquarters, an almost comically menacing structure, bent over the pristine white iceberg of the city’s beloved opera house with a thuggish hunch. — Oliver Wainwright
Recently on Archinect, "estudio Herreros' Munch Museum to open in October." Photo: Adrià Goula, courtesy estudio Herreros.The Munch Museum’s opening had been pushed back to this week following years of political holdup swelling from concerns the 11-story museum would, as Wainwright noted in his... View full entry
