Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes captures London’s hazy skyline in both day and night. Although still under construction, The Shard appears to already dwarf most to the city. The building is designed by Renzo Piano and is slated to become the tallest in Europe. In addition, Norman Foster’s infamous Gherkin, formally known as the Swiss Re Building, is instantly recognizable in nearly every frame as it is a landmark within the dense metropolis. read more »

The video above, produced by ITDP Mexico is a surprisingly fun look at the dire traffic situation in Mexico City. With the help of two Barbie Ken dolls (who else?), the video describes two types of drivers: the Everyday Driver, who drives everywhere no matter what, and the Shadow Driver, who drives only when it’s most convenient.

The situation facing Mexico City isn’t too far off from that facing American Suburbia (as our infographic “Burbs Going Bust” and our two-part “Saving Suburbia” series recently highlited). The ‘burbs, designed to convenience the Everyday Driver, have essentially turned Shadow Drivers into Everydays. Hence why passenger cars account for up to 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in some car-intensive communities in the U.S.

It gets you thinking… if we could design Suburbia for the Shadow Drivers (or the “Disencarchised” Driver, who can’t afford a car at all) and make driving less convenient for the Everydays, then maybe we could convert the Shadow drivers (to the “light”side) and increase the demand for walkable streets and denser communities.

Via The Atlantic Cities Blog

For more on Suburbia: Infographic: Burbs Going Bust and The Saving Suburbia Series - Part I: Bursting the Bubble & Part II: Getting the Soccer Moms On Your Side.

New technologies keep surprising us every day. 3DESTRUCT is a fantastic audiovisual installation, built last year as part of the Scopitone Festival 2011.

Antivj, the studio behind this installation says the idea started in 2007 and adapted the best way they could to the old cellar they could use. The effect that the projections have is quite spectacular.

Filmed back in 2009, this TED Talk by Daniel Libeskind has yet to diminish in popularity. Once a free-verse poet, an opera set designer and a virtuoso musician, Libeskind has evolved into an internationally-renowned architect with an illustrious style that has been praised and criticized by many. In just seventeen words, Libeskind describes what inspires his unique approach to architecture. Believing that optimism is what drives architecture forward, he begins by stating, “Architecture is not based on concrete and steel and the elements of the soil. It’s based on wonder.”

Enjoy the talk and continue after the break to review Libeskind’s seventeen words of architectural inspiration. read more »

Colin Rich took 6 months to shoot this amazing time lapse video of Los Angeles. His idea was to “capture the electric radiance of Los Angeles at night and paint a portrait of my city”. Cinematography, direction and editing was done by Colin himself. Enjoy!

On April 19th, architect Richard Meier, known for buildings such as The Athaneum, the Douglas House and thd Getty Center was honored with the 2012 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards by the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation at Ellis Island in New Jersey.  Meier was one of two recipients, the other former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, whose grandparents emigrated through Ellis Island.  Angela Lansbury was honored as well, having immigrated to America herself at the age of  fourteen.

Continue reading for more after the break. read more »

Courtesy of Knafo Klimor Architects

Proposed by Knafo Klimor Architects, Agro-Housing was the winning project in Living Steel – Competition for Sustainable Housing (2007) for China.  Part housing, part greenhouse, the proposal provides agricultural freedom to city dwellers.  A combination of rural and urban amenities, the proposal is an exciting take on individual urban farming.

For a closer look at this innovative way of thinking about a sustainable urbanity, join us after the break.

read more »

Tom Dixon took over Milan and the National Museum of Science and Technology during Salone del Mobile, transforming parts of an old monastery into an impressive exhibition space for the latest developments in design. MOST, Dixon’s ambitious environment for innovation and culture consisted of a handpicked selection of designer friends and brands as well as Dixon’s own work, Luminosity, an exploration of light. German industrial design manufacturing company Trumpf brought over eight tons of machinery to demonstrate how to make a signature Tom Dixon chair out of steel, stealing the limelight from other highlights including gelato-making classes taught by the Carpigiani Gelato University and a pop-up restaurant run by Dock Kitchen’s Stevie Parle.

Join Crane.tv on a tour of the Rough Luxe Hotel with architect and designer Rabih Hage. Flawlessly balanced between the artistic and the functional, the hotel intricately merges contemporary and antique furnishings. This unique layering between the modern and the traditional features from the original building create an truly opulent and bespoke atmosphere for any guest.

As we have shared with you earlier, CNN’s The Next List has profiled the young, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Originally aspired to be a cartoonist or graphic novelist, Ingels quickly became fascinated with architecture when a Fall storm rolled through his hometown in North Copenhagen, knocking over trees and leaving him a surplus of lumber. It was then that he was inspired to design his first project, the ultimate childhood “fantasy fort” with a moat, drawbridge and all.  In Ingels first experience with value engineering, he quickly learned that “unless you really begin with the perimeters of reality you’ll end up sort of amputating your ambitions quite quickly.” Enjoy the video and be sure to check out CNN’s recent video focusing on the bold ideas behind BIG.

Additionally, Ingels contributed an essay entitled “Rethinking social infrastructure” on CNN’s What’s Next blog. You can check it out here.

Reference: CNN, Archinect

We had the incredible opportunity to interview Winy Maas, the M in MVRDV, one the most influential contemporary practices, which has been able to push the boundaries of our field in different scales, from buildings to master plan, from construction to theory. In this interview Winy shares interesting thoughts on the role of the architect and how he runs this design/research practice.

Upon graduating in 1984 from the RHSLT Boskoop in landscape architecture, Winy Maas (Schijndel, 1959) resumed his education at Delft University of Technology where he completed his degrees in architecture and urbanism, graduating in 1990 with honors. Shortly after and together with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries, Maas founded MVRDV in 1991.

Since then, the Rotterdam-based practice has earned a leading role in international architecture. MVRDV’s first commissions, both located in the Netherlands, included the television center Villa VPRO and the housing estate for elderly WoZoCo. Maas lectures and teaches throughout the world and actively takes part in international juries. Currently, Maas is a visiting professor of architectural design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is professor in architecture and urban design at the faculty of architecture, Delft University of Technology. Prior to this, he served as professor at Berlage Institute, Ohio State and Yale University. In 2008, Maas founded The Why Factory (t?f), a thinktank on future cities at Delft University of Technology where he remains director. You can see an example on the Urban Farming In Numbers video.

Maas is also a member of the research board of Berlage Institute Rotterdam, president of the spatial quality board of Rotterdam, supervisor of the Bjorvika urban development in Oslo and advisor to the city of Almere. To add to his ever-growing list of achievements, Maas has been made honorary member of the AIA, received the international fellowship of the RIBA and the French Legion d’Honneur. In addition to being an architect, he designs stage sets, objects and was curator of Indesem 2007.

MVRDV projects previously featured at ArchDaily:

• Balancing Barn
• The Water Cube (Yeosu Expo 2012)
• WoZoCo
• Le Monolithe
• Celosia Building
• Market Hall
• Almere 2030
• Westerdok Apartments
• Didden Village
• Sky Village
• D.I.Y. Urbanism
• Glass Farm
• The Cloud
• Master Plan for Bastide Niel
• Flowerbed Hotel
• ROCKmagneten
• Alphabet Building
• Comic and Animation Museum in Hangzhou
• Guosen Securities Tower

Courtesy of Grimshaw Architects

Grimshaw Architects is one of two finalists selected in a competition for the master plan of central Tirana, Albania.  The competition brief called for a comprehensive strategy that built upon the international identity of the city – particularly its waterways and the major boulevard running between them.  It also called for an integration of transportation links – a city-wide transformation to streamline the infrastructure and bring vitality into the experience of the city.

Read on for more on Grimshaw’s strategy to enrich Tirana. read more »

The Principals, a Brooklyn-based practice that work on industrial design and interactive environments, are posing a question to the design community: What would it be like if the environment we inhabit responded to our present in an active way? What if we shift the scale of the way in which our devices operate to the way our buildings function? The questions posed by The Principals are the considerations of a project called Cosmic Quilt that is planned to be exhibited on Design Week 2012 on May 19-21. In order to create a mock-up of this type of space, the group is enlisting the help of 20 students from the Art Institute of New York and the help of financial backer’s through Kickstarter.

More on the planned project after the break. read more »

The architects behind Carsten Höller’s The Double Club and Pablo Flack and David Waddington’s Studio East, Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke have been responsible for the creation of several cultural structures across London over the past few years. The duo first met while working at David Chipperfield Architects and opened their own practice in 2006 upon winning a competition to design the Coney Island Parachute Pavilion in New York. This year Carmody and Groarke were commissioned to design the Frieze London 2011 space. Crane.tv met with Kevin Carmody and Anna Nilsson ahead of the venue’s launch to talk about their aims for the space, the importance of the materials used and the preparation that went into the project.

Architecture is seen by many as a man’s game, but Parisian Manuelle Gautrand is one woman who’s making her mark on the design world. Designing such architectural feats as the Citroën showroom in the Champs-Elysées and the new La Gaîté Lyrique, an interactive space for music and digital art, Gautrand is renowned for innovation in contemporary design. Here. Crane.tv visits Gautand at her studio to find out why she sees beauty in inner city spaces, and how to lose yourself in Paris.

Architect Matthew Grzywinski gives Crane.tv a tour of the Lower East side boutique establishment, Hotel on Rivington. Offering panoramic views of New York’s skyline through its floor-to-ceiling windows, this chic hotel plays part in the gentrification of the district du jour, the Lower East Side, once the city’s poorest and grittiest of areas.

Courtesy of Andreas Tjeldflaat and Greg Knobloch

With the guidance of their instructor Matthias Hollwich, students Andreas Tjeldflaat and Greg Knobloch from University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design have proposed an alternative to the traditional prisons seen throughout the United States. The innovative high-rise penitentiary acknowledges the fact that nearly two-thirds of the 14,000 inmates released annually from New Jersey correctional facilities will return to prison within five years. 499.SUMMIT offers a solution that intends to reverse that statistic and help inmates successfully transition back into society.

Continue after the break for more.

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The curvaceous Absolute Towers of Mississauga, a suburb located in the Greater Toronto Area, is a residential landmark many of you may be familiar with. Also known as the Marilyn Monroe Towers, the 56-story condominium tower serves as a gateway into the city and is known for its unique curves that correspond to the surrounding scenery. Residents are offered 360-degree views with continuous balconies that wrap the entire building, eliminating vertical barriers that are typically seen in conventional high rise architecture.

Absolute Towers were the first international win (2006) for the Beijing-based MAD Architects. First seen on Design Intelligence, this video shares with you the entire story behind this project. Want more? Follow these links to check out the towers in progress and more photos of them nearing completion back in June of 2011. read more »

Architect Nathalie Rozencwajg tells Crane.tv the story behind the refurbishment of the imposing Town Hall that has been in the heart of the East End since Edwardian times. Now christened Town Hall Hotel & Apartments, the hotel is old-world elegant but with a modern touch.

© BrightFarms

BrightFarms CEO, Paul Lightfoot is obsessed with efficiency.  Spending most of his career improving market supply chains he has now turned his attention to the market supply chains of America’s produce.  BrightFarms is an innovative and straight forward program whose goal is to eliminate the wasted energy expended on travel times between the farm and the shelf, to provide more nutritious and safer produce that is grown for the table and not for the endurance of days and weeks of transport, and to create a local market where consumers know their farmers and where the food is coming from and who is responsible for growing it.  Littlefoot describes the blatant problems with the food industry today – efficiently factory farming and preserving produce that moves from one and end of the country to the other and inefficiently providing nutritious and tasty produce.

The challenge is to create a model that ensures quality while keeping costs down and BrightFarms appears to have found a strategy that works: hydroponic rooftop gardening near supermarket distribution centers or local markets.  The newly renamed Federal Plaza #2, soon to be known as Liberty View Industrial Plaza to be developed by Salmar Properties, in Brooklyn, NY is set to be the world’s largest rooftop garden which will reportedly grow “1 million pounds of local produce per year, including tomatoes, lettuces and herbs”.  Find out how it works after the break! read more »