In this video, Brookings expert Robert Puentes discusses the importance of construction projects and infrastructure investments that provide real and lasting value to the American economy. Puentes warns against thinly spreading around smaller infrastructure projects that only provide a short-term, seasonal boost in “shovel ready projects” that temporarily help job creation. Infrastructure investments can and must play a key role in the next American economy. Puentes urges that these smaller infrastructure projects must be connected to a larger infrastructure strategy that focuses on exports and globalization, technological innovation and clean energy. This will not only immediately create jobs and boost the economy, but also provide a framework that will sustain the American economy for the long term.

Also, if you are in the Washington DC area, Brookings will be hosting an event tomorrow, at the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, to discuss low-carbon development and clean energy in the United States and China. Follow this link for more information.

Ezra Stiles College under construction, 1961. Copyright Balthazar Korab Ltd.

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT–Yale’s Ezra Stiles College, designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1961, reopened to students last month after a one-year, $55 million dollar renovation. The project was the last in a complete overhaul of all the residential colleges at Yale, which started in 1998 and has cost over $500 million (adjusted for inflation).

Students are happy with the work, praising the new brick pizza oven in the dining hall, shift from single to suite-style rooms, and improved furniture and lighting. Jon Rubin ’12 told the Yale Daily News (YDN) the renovated Stiles is “definitely a step up” from the college he lived in two years ago.
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Construction at 1 WTC, by ShinyThings VIA Flickr

The AIA has issued a “comprehensive look yet at the built environment’s role in economic recovery, highlighting six specific policy steps that will generate jobs and help grow the American economy.” Coming on the eve of President Obama’s major jobs initiative, the report cites George Mason University economist Stephen J. Miller in arguing that every $1 million in new construction spending supports “28.5 full-time, year-round-equivalent jobs.”

Miller and the AIA blame tight credit markets blocking potential progress in this area. The publication, “The Built Environment’s Role in the Recovery,” is issued with this problem in mind. “We’re putting these recommendations forward now because it’s time for the Administration and Congress to get real about creating an environment in which people are willing to lend and borrow,” said AIA President Clark Manus, FAIA, quoted in a recent AIA press release. “When credit flows to worthy projects, it unleashes the job creation potential of the American economy.”

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Mayor Resendiz, from his Facebook page via CURBED

Sunland Park, N.M– Martin Resendiz, mayor of a small community near Las Cruces, admitted earlier this month to signing contracts with a San Diego–based parking design firm while drunk. The company, Synthesis +, is suing the city for nonpayment. Resendiz claims the contracts were never valid since the City Council did not approve them.

“The day I signed … I had way too much to drink. It was after 5 p.m. and I signed it (the contracts) and I didn’t know what I was signing,” Resendiz wrote in response to questions from Synthesis+ lawyers. “My sister had to pick me up.”

“Again, this was after two or three hours of us drinking, not exactly the best time to do business, not exactly the best time to read over legal documents, which he (Soltero) did not portray at any time to be legal documents,” Resendiz said in a deposition.

Soltero is a Synthesis+ executive. The deal is worth over $1 milllion; the drinking happened at Ardovino’s Restaurant in Sunland Park.

VIA The Washington Post and New Mexico Independent

John Penrose MP (R) and Prime Minister David Cameron MP (L), johnpenrose.org

A minor transatlantic controversy erupted last month after UK “architecture minister” aka Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport with responsibility for architecture and the built environment John Penrose apparently compared architects with other negatively-stereotyped groups, noting architects are “just one of those groups people love to mock.” The comments were part of a longer blog post about Rowan Atkinson, Dreamland, and VisitEngland’s new Smartphone-based marketing campaign.

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© Tom Doyle

Set against a backdrop typically reserved for postcards, the decaying bunkers of the Aleutian Islands Campaign serve to memorialize a little-known chapter of WWII lore. Read more about these distinctive relics after the break.

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Photo by Tambako the Jaguar - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/

Venice is commonly regarded as one of the wonders of the world, attracting over 17 million tourists each year. However, the city of Venice faces ongoing problems that threaten its ability to stay above water. The city’s flooding issues are notorious around the world. Every year water surges through its legendary labyrinth of streets wreaking havoc on architectural gems such as the Palazzo San Marco. With its architecture under threat, and dwindling population as many young people flock to the mainland, it is appropriate to think of Venice as a dying relic. read more »

Le Corbusier on the Swiss 10 franc banknote, © Will's Online World Paper Money Gallery

Le Corbusier’s politics are a divisive issue for architects and rightly so: his work is still highly influential, in both adoration and enmity, and his expressed political views are at odds with contemporary western democratic values.

It’s easy for the discussion of those views to lapse into a sort of ethical debate by-proxy, devolving into a discussion about whether or not Le Corbusier should continue to be included in the canon of twentieth century architects considering his apparent anti-Semetism and sympathy for the Nazi party. Such narrow and moralistic inquiry negates other issues pertinent to Le Corbusier’s  place in history. It is possible to both be aware of Le Corbusier’s political affiliations and to discuss his work as an architect, urbanist, and designer for its own merits. By way of explanation, I would like to revisit a recent controversy concerning Le Corbusier.

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© United Nations Photo

Two years after the largest international peacekeeping organization was founded, the United Nations began searching for the location of their world headquarters.  After numerous offers from cities around North America, the United Nations settled on a 17 acre plot of land on the banks of the East River in New York City after John D. Rockefeller donated the land.  With the effects of World War II still looming throughout the world, the United Nations decided to invited prominent architects from the founding nations to work in collaborative, peaceful manner rather than holding a competition.

In 1947, the UN commissioned Wallace K. Harrison to lead the international design team to create their new world headquarters to be a symbol of the bright, peaceful future ahead that did not dwell upon the past.

More on the United Nations after the break. read more »

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, © Daniel Schwen

As part of an international competition to design Boston’s City Hall in 1962, three Columbia University professors, Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles, diverted from the typical sleek, glass and steel structures that were being requested by popular demand.  Rather than basing their design on the material aesthetics, their goal was to accentuate the governmental buildings connection to the public realm.

Completed in 1968, the Brutalist style city hall bridges the public and private sectors of government through a gradient of reveal and exposure that allows the public to become integrated, either physically or visually, into the daily affairs of the governmental process.

More on the Boston City Hall after the break. read more »

©Dave Morris Photography

Widely known for it’s extreme cost of construction, the Scottish Parliament is a remarkable example of incorporating architecture into it’s surroundings.

“The Parliament sits in the land. We have the feeling that the building should be land, built out of land. To carve in the land the form of gathering people together… Scotland is a land… The land itself will be a material, a physical building material…”

More on the Scottish Parliament by Enric Miralles after the break.

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© Paul Warchol

For Weiss/Manfredi’s International Retreat – a conference center for international organizations to discuss issues and politics –  the project exemplifies the firm’s emphasis of the integration of architecture and landscape.  A series of existing early 20^th-century buildings sit on the 400 acre site, and the project uses a network of gardens to create a framework for these renovated and programmatically transformed structures.

More images and more about the project after the break. read more »

© Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Modernist architecture is traditionally understood to be utilitarian, sleek, and most of all without context, such that it can be placed in any context and still stay true to aesthetic principles and its functional requirements.  However, Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building of Bangladesh in Dhaka is an extraordinary example of modern architecture being transcribed as a part of Bangali vernacular architecture.  The National Assembly building, completed in 1982, stands as one of Kahn’s most prominent works, but also as a symbolic monument to the government of Bangladesh. read more »

During an election year in Sweden, public squares are filled with temporary bases to display the political parties.  Although only temporary structures, these “huts” play a vital role in the political networking system of  the country.  Such structures allow the politicians to meet and interact with the voters, answer any political questions and spread information, or even debate with those in neighbouring huts with different political ideas.  “In the best case, such a structure is a manifestation of a parties’ political identity and priorities. It is therefore ironic that campaign-structures are similar, independent of what party they represent,” explained Antman Gorsetman Architects. In an effort to redesign the huts and allow each structure to embody their individual parties’ ideals, Antman Gorsetman Architects approached the political parties during the election year of 2006.  The FI Party, the Feminist Initiative, was campaigning for the first time and decided to work with the architects to solidify their image in the public squares.

More about the election pavilion after the break.

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Los Angeles is often portrayed as the example of the car-friendly city. The traditional image of the town is an endless pattern of single family dwellings, interconnected by traffic-clogged freeways, where transit is undeveloped and the air is choked with smog.

However, Los Angeles is changing. The city’s Transport Authority has planned in the last years a series of measures aiming to improve quality of life through improving transit and walking and providing alternative to car commuting.

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The model #1: Napoli, quartieri Spagnoli (image: flickr)

If the mainstream view on the slums describes them as places to escape from and as to destroy as soon as possible, more and more people look at slums in a different way.

The first glances at slums were from some of the architects involved in urban renewal projects, who started to integrate in their projects some elements of the slums. Some of the recurrent features are:

• narrow courtyards and alleys
• division of the building into small blocks
• use of different colors and materials within the same building.

(part 1/2)

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Peak oil is approaching. In the next future, most of the oil-dependent suburbs in which we live now will be abandoned and decay, turning into ruins, inhabited only by the few ones who where too fat and too car-dependent to escape back to the city. Little by little, nature will take over suburbs, but this process will be extremely slowly.

In order to give Mother Nature a hand, Andrew Maynard Architects have designed CV08, the suburb-eating robot.

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“Slumdog Millionaire” is the movie of the year. Its story of a young guy from Mumbai’s slum of Dharavi, who manages to change its destiny through the “Who wants to be a Millionaire” game has charmed many people, including the Oscars’ jury, who awarded the movie with 8 prizes.

At the same time, the movie has created a debate around slums and how the movie portrays them. “Slumdog Millionaire” follows the mainstream vision of slums, described in the XIX century by writers like Daniel Defoe or Charles Dickens: dark, dirty places, with people packed in small rooms with no water facilities. In slums, riots are frequents, and police can hardly enter: the perfect place for criminals to hide and plan their threats to the society, and the perfect incubator for all sort of diseases.

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In reaction to US President-elect Barack Obama’s Sunday’s declaration on CBS ’60 minutes’ on 16.11.2008 (his first sit-down interview since winning the November 4 presidential election) where he has confirmed his intention to close Guantanamo’s Detention Center, zerOgroup made this proposal, called ‘I LOVE GITMO’ to upgrade the American enclave in Cuba into a mass tourism destination.

The ‘I LOVE GITMO’ proposal is one of the works that have been elaborated at the ‘Con Embargo Sin Embargo’ workshop organized by Supersudaca, supported by the Prins Claus Fund, and held at the IaaC Barcelona (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalunya) in September 2008.

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