Cardboard cathedral being built in earthquake hit Christchurch – short news clip (1:45 min) about Shigeru Ban’s design for a cathedral made of cardboard tubes which is to replace the structure destroyed last year by earthquake. The city wants to use the cardboard building, designed to hold 700 people, …
Largest modular high-rise – post about recent groundbreaking in Brooklyn for what will be the world’s largest pre-fabricated building. The 32-storey / 363-apartment structure is the first of a planned 15. Designed by SHoP Architects (also image source). As quoted from the New York Times: …next spring, 125 …
HOK’s Leigh Stringer was part of a project team in Korea recently and makes great observations on Korean culture and work environment (love the photo, Leigh!). Here’s a selection: On being there in general: We didn’t see a lot of bikes but public transportation is good. Gangnam is an actual district where people actually …
Interviews with Zaha Hadid – links to eight interviews with Zaha Hadid, “one of the youngest people and only women to ever win the prestigious Pritzker Prize – the highest award in architecture.” One is from 2010, three from 2011, the rest from 2012.
Designers talk about books that have inspired them on Designers & Books‘ section on Designers. Choose from 127 (as of today; what you see here is the first of three pages) “architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals” and …
Oscar Niemeyer died last week at the age of 104, a Brazilian master of modernist architecture famous for his inventive use of concrete and for the architecture of Brasilia. Type his name into Google these days and you’ll get pages of appreciations of his work. Here’s a selection – …
A Treehouse Made From The Trunk Of A 100-Foot Tree – park structure in Indiana uses every part of one huge tree trunk, assembled puzzle-like by Visiondivision. The shingles are maintenance free for 80 years.
The Architect and the Plantsman – short piece on the collaboration of Peter Zumthor and Piet Oudolf, first on last year’s Serpentine Gallery (2011, image shown below; source) and now on the transformation of a former factory, De Meelfabriek, in the Dutch city of Leiden into high-end lofts. From Zumthor on …
Le Corbusier meets Albert Einstein – Corbusier relates a conversation he had in 1946 with Einstein about Corbu’s Modulor. The architect appreciated the scientist’s clear insight.
Modernists At Play – the children of mid-20th century architects and designers talk about their childhoods. From this Metropolis post: Michael Gotkin, a landscape architect who is currently writing a book on modernist play environments, says the concept of children’s play was radically reinvented by artists, architects, landscape architects, …
Just discovered Talkitect | architecture, art, & design, a blog covering contemporary architecture and design. The posts aren’t that frequent but they’re pretty interesting. Some examples: Bambooline Berlin by Peter Ruge Architekten – “Bambooline Berlin explores the city’s urban development and proposes a new approach for the temporary, interim use of sustainable …
Q&A: Robert Ivy, CEO, the American Institute of Architects | SmartPlanet – Ivy talks about how architecture effects public health. A huge area where design can affect public health is materials selection. Our choices of materials make an enormous difference in both individual and mass health. An unhealthy system can …
Exhibition in San Francisco – Grand Reductions: Ten diagrams that changed urban planning – “suggests the simple illustration’s power to encapsulate complex ideas.” You can see the ten in this post from The Atlantic Cities. “The diagram can cut both ways: It can either be a distillation in …
Solar Carve Tower / Studio Gang Architects – proposed mid-rise for New York City curves to optimize sunlight access for nearby High Line.
Check out ArchitypeReview’s issue on Architectural Graphics. This site is a great place to look for examples of specific building types, as you can see from their Issues page.
Kamppi Chapel of Silence – small chapel in a busy urban section of Helsinki was designed by K2S Architects. Light touching down on the curved surface and the feeling of warm materials define the space. The chapels inner walls are made of thick oiled alder planks. The furniture is …
Check out the topic “Collective housing” on the blog of Spanish architectural publishers a+t. It looks like they’ve drawn a number of more recent posts from their books. A lot of projects from the Netherlands.
Tall building specialists reveal concept for 1.3 sq km satellite city outside Chengdu – WAN post about “dense vertical city that acknowledges and in fact embraces the surrounding landscape” just outside of the Chinese city of Chengdu. Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture envision it as very pedestrian-friendly, with …