Rob Ford, the Toronto Mayor famous for making enemies of "urban thinkers, designers and practitioners," has been ousted from office for violating a conflict-of-interest act (he spoke and voted on a matter which allowed his own Football Foundation to financially benefit).
Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is known for her massive, colorful architectural sculptures/playgrounds. The most famous example of her work is the expansive net-structure inside the "Woods of Net" Pavilion at the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan - which Horiuchi MacAdam knitted, entirely by hand, over the span of a year.
We took a moment to speak with Ms. Horiuchi MacAdam about the Pavilion and her other works, how they bridge the worlds of art and architecture, and how they irresistibly invite the world to play. You can read our interview, and see more images of her fascinating work, after the break...
There’s a saying that goes “Those who can’t do, teach.” But many could also claim: “Those who can’t do, critique.” Criticism, particularly Architecture Criticism, tends to get a bad rap for being subjective, impenetrable, and - ultimately - useless. But Paul Goldberger, a champion of the craft, would disagree.
In his acceptance speech for the Vincent Scully Prize earlier this month, Goldberger, the long-time architecture critic for The New York Times and current contributor to Vanity Fair, suggests that Architectural Criticism isn’t just vital - but more important than ever before.
With the advent of visually-oriented social media like Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, it’s never been easier for the architectural layman to observe, share, and consume architecture. However, in the midst of this hyper-flow of image intake, Goldberger argues, meaning gets lost.
That’s where the critic comes in.
Yesterday's article "Forget the Rankings, the Best US Architecture Schools Are..." argued that students should judge architecture schools for their strength in areas that are relevant to the profession today (not for their rankings). Today, we bring you an Editorial from Architecture Professor at the University of Melbourne, Stanislav Roudavski, who takes that argument one step further - suggesting that architecture students should look for education opportunities that embrace the architectural world of the future.
Those who look to the future understand architecture as a dynamic system of relationships. These relationships blur the distinctions between digital and physical, natural and artificial, simulated and observable in the wild. Such an interpretation calls for broader collaborations and a commitment to explorations outside established “comfort zones.” But the life outside disciplinary comforts can be harsh. With old certainties left behind and new potentials not yet discovered, one can feel overwhelmed by the richness and complexity of available information and practices. In the contemporary condition of constant and accelerating change, what should an architect know and be able to do? From where should this knowledge be acquired and updated, from whom and in which way?
Innovation (and the learning of the new, needed for innovation to occur) can be encouraged through various strategies. [...] Innovation can also be augmented outside existing professional territories via other types of critical, open-ended learning that is deliberately oriented towards uncertain futures. In striving to address unknown demands, such learning is necessarily speculative and risky. What strategies can be adopted to benefit from such risk-taking?
More on the future of Architectural Education, after the break...
Every year, when DesignIntelligence’s latest rankings of the Best US Architecture Schools comes out, most of the anticipation is centered around one question: who’s number 1?
But despite our laser-focus on the rankings, the report is actually much more. It is also a survey of hundreds of design educators and professionals, an invaluable insight into the current state of architecture and architecture education today.
So with this in mind, and with the rankings aside, which universities are really producing students best equipped (and most marketable, in this competitive market) for the architecture profession today? When you look at the data, only two Universities stand out from the pack.
Read more to find out which two Universities are best preparing students in 2013, after the break...
JDS Architects and 4 other national/international firms have been shortlisted to design a Master Plan for Town Branch Commons in Lexington, Kentucky.
The Competition, which attracted over 23 proposals, poses an interesting challenge: to bring the Town Branch Creek, which has been underground for over 100 years, to the surface (an idea originally proposed in 2011 by architect Gary Bates and the Norway-based firm Space Group), and redesign the Commons as a two-mile linear stretch of green space to connect the eastern and western sections of downtown Lexington.
Lexington's Downton Development Authority and the dean of University of Kentucky's College of Design, Michael Speaks, were floored by the quality of the proposals they received - a fact Speaks attributes to Jeanne Gang's influence; the well-known architect has designed two plans in Lexington and lectured there recently. As Speaks told Kentucky.com, "Firms have heard that Lexington is friendly to good design, that the mayor is knowledgeable and wants good design."
Find out which other firms have been shortlisted, after the break...
Despite reports that construction firm Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), a subsidiary of Broad Group, could not complete its 220-story Sky City tower in 90 days, the company's senior VP Juliet Jiang has announced that the skyscraper "will go on as planned with the completion of five storeys a day."
Thus, rather than in seven months, the world's tallest tower (838 m; 2,750 ft) will be finished in three - topping out at the end of March 2013.
As we've discussed before here on ArchDaily, the tower could truly be revolutionary in China; Broad Group's 95% prefabricated modular technology, which is responsible for the incredible rate of construction, is also radically environmentally-friendly, earthquake-safe, and cost-effective. In fact, Sky City, designed by engineers who worked on the Burj Khalifa, will cost a tenth of that famous skyscraper (only $1,500 per square meter) - and take a twentieth of the time to build.
More info on the world's tallest tower, after the break...
David Chipperfield, the curator of the Architecture Exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale, Common Ground (which wraps up this weekend), will be chatting live this Friday to offer his final two cents on the Exhibition's legacy.
According to the global affairs magazine Monocle, Britain's cultural cache is at an all-time high.
After being hospitalized, recovering, being hospitalized again, and then making a near-full recovery (even working from his hospital bed), famed Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer has now taken a sharp turn for the worst.
Pritzker-Prize Laureate Remment Lucas Koolhaas (you probably know him as "Rem") turns 68 today. The co-founder of one of the world's most renowned architecture firms, OMA, and an urban-planner/philosopher whose theories have provoked admiration (and ire) for over thirty years, Koolhaas is undeniably one of a kind.
In honor of Rem Koolhaas’ birthday today, we are bringing you all things Koolhaas: 14 Fun Koolhass quotes; a fabulous article by former New York Times critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff; this ArchDaily original editorial; and, later today, a Round-Up of all of OMA's latest works. Stay tuned!
Imagine London, but not the way you know it. Imagine it physically separated, much like Berlin once was, into two zones: one of pleasure and one of practicality. Consider how the city would eventually appear as inhabitants rushed to the pleasure zone; how the zone of practicality would eventually, inevitably become bereft.
This is the London of a young Rem Koolhaas’ imaginings, written for his Thesis at the Architectural Association School in London in the late 60s. Before Delirious New York, before OMA, and much before the CCTV Tower, Koolhaas was inspired by this idea of the divided city - and it’s a fitting image to start thinking about the ever provocative, often controversial Rem: a man who stands with one foot in the world of desire and the other, reluctantly, in that of practicality; a man who would perhaps prefer the title of urban thinker, despite clearly being one of architecture’s great masters.
It’s exactly this in-between-ness, this reluctance to fit into one supposed role, that has been Koolhaas’ greatest asset, that has allowed him to approach the profession from such unlikely angles. Using the city’s freedoms as his inspiration, and rejecting as given the expectations of what architecture is(even questioning its relevance at all), Koolhass, the “reluctant architect,” is also the most radical of our time, and the most vital for our future.
Fresh from the acclaimed openings of the Galaxy Soho in Beijing and the Eli & Edythe Broad Museum in the US, Dame Zaha Hadid can now add a new coveted project to her name.
Beating out 10 other finalists (including Populous, a firm known for their sports architecture, as well as Japanese heavyweights, such as Toyo Ito and SANAA), Zaha Hadid Architects were chosen by Tadao Ando and the Japan Sports Council to design the new Japan National Stadium. As Ando described the decision-process: “Our wish is to see a stadium designed by someone who shares this earth, with wisdom and technology that looks to the future of out planet.”
The new 80,000-seat stadium will replace the existing Kasumigaoka National Stadium in Tokyo. It will host the 2019 Rugby World Cup and potentially be the main sporting venue for the 2020 Olympic Games (if Japan's bid is selected). It will also be offered to FIFA as a venue for World Cup football matches.
The Stadium is scheduled for completion in 2018.
More images, after the break...
If you thought "Architecture for Dogs," the project in which world-class architects design "sincere architectural structures" for dogs, couldn't get any cuter, you were very, very wrong.
Today, the project's interactive web site, which allows viewers to browse each of the architect's designs and then download the free blueprints to make them on their own, launched. The site, designed by Yugo Nakamura, the web designer for Uniqlo, features an adorable introductory video, complete with scampering puppies, which imparts the site's mission: "brining a new kind of joy to the relationship between dogs and humans."
More info and Images on "Architecture for Dogs," after the break...
It turns out the David Wright House isn't the only unusual (and controversial) Frank Lloyd Wright-designed gem on the market.
Petre Island (sometimes called Petra Island) is an 11-acre, heart-shaped island 47 miles from Manhattan. While Wright hand-picked the site himself in 1949, and drew up plans for a 5,000 square foot "dream house" the following year, budget concerns forced him to scale down his vision, resulting in the construction of a smaller guest cottage.
Fast-forward 53 years later, and the island's new owner, John Massaro, decided to make those long-sitting plans reality; he hired architect and Wright scholar Thomas Heinz, who used ArchiCAD to model aspects of Wright's design that weren't obvious from the original renderings and updated the house with some modern amenities.
While the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation refuses to accept the house as authentic (they even tried to sue Massaro for claiming so), that hasn't stopped AHALife, the web site featuring the island for sale, from proudly selling the "spectacular Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house" for $19,900,000 USD.
More images and info on this Wright-designed island, after the break...
50 UN Plaza, Foster+Partners' first residential building in the U.S., broke ground this morning. With the Hearst Tower long finished, Tower 2 at Ground Zero near complete, and a new iconic building planned for 425 Park Avenue, 50 UN Plaza will only further solidify Lord Foster's mark on New York City.
The 44-story luxury tower's privileged spot at the United Nations Plaza will give it remarkable views of the UN Building, the East River, and the Manhattan skyline. According to Foster, the building's deep bay windows (which line each of the tower's 3 volumes) will maximize that view and, along with its steel and glass facade, give the tower a distinctive, "jewel-like quality": “The slender proportion of 50 United Nations Plaza is attenuated by the vertical stacks of bay windows, which give it a distinctive identity[...] The polished stainless steel detailing of the facade is in the sprit of earlier historic towers in the city and it reflects the sharp quality of light which is special to New York."
The building, whose construction will incorporate recycled materials, also has a strong environmental agenda, combining active and passive energy strategies.
According to the New York Observer, the tower's 87 units will range in size from 1,100 square feet one-bedrooms; three bedrooms as big as 3,000 square feet; full-floor residences; and a penthouse duplex, measuring about 10,000 square feet. One of the marquee features will also be a private driveway. The tower is expected to cost $500 million and be completed in 2014.
More images and Foster+Partner's description of 50 UN Plaza, after the break...
Hurricane Sandy has come and gone, but the destruction she left in her path remains a stark reminder of her strength.
Photographer Amanda Kirkpatrick has shared with us her images of The Rockaways in Queens, an upper-class beach neighborhood that was one of the areas hit hardest by the storm. Kirkpatrick's objective eye documents the twisted boardwalks and unrecognizably distorted homes in an almost "clinical" way, honestly portraying the damage from the perspective of the broken structures themselves.
If you're interested in getting involved with Hurricane Sandy Recovery Efforts, you can get more information here. For more images from Amanda Kirkpatrick, read on after the break...
Out of 65 submissions from 32 countries, six public-interest design projects have just been announced as this year's winners of the International SEED Awards. The SEED Network and Design Corps have singled out these projects as those which best incorporated social consciousness, community outreach, and sustainability into their designs.
The 6 projects represent the diffusiveness of public-interest design today, and how, by looking through the lens of design, many diverse (and yet often re-occurring) social problems can be addressed.
The Winning Projects, which you can see on display at the 13th annual Structures for Inclusion conference at the University of Minnesota College of Design March 22-23, 2013, are: SAGE: Affordable Green Modular Classrooms, Gervais, Oregon; Puyallup Tribal Longhouse, Tacoma, Washington (Puyallup Tribal Reservation); Rosa F. Keller Building, New Orleans, Louisiana; Firm Foundation, Banjarmasin, Kalimantan, Indonesia; Sudan Jalle School, Jalle Payam, Jonglei State, South Sudan; Maa-Bara: Catalyzing Economic Change & Food Security, Lenya (Bondo District), Nyanza, Kenya.
More info on these extraordinary public-interest designs, after the break...
