Once the fourth largest city in America, Michigan’s primary Metropolis, Detroit has recently filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States. Among the many reasons for Detroit’s decline, two stand out: an undiversified economic model, reliant on the production and sale of automobiles, and an unprecedented degree of sprawl. Currently more than 77% of jobs in the metropolitan area reside more than ten miles from the city center, making Detroit the most job-sprawled city in the US and stretching city services beyond capacity. Detroit’s deterioration is just as much about urban decline as it is about industrial decline. Detroit is located in the Midwest portion of the United States and is part of a larger band of cities known as the Rust Belt which have gone through a process of decline over the past decades.
In January of this year, the latest work by Smiljan Radic, the Chilean architect chosen to design the next Serpentine Pavilion, opened to public acclaim. The Museum of Pre-Columbian Art (Museo de Arte Precolombino), located in Santiago de Chile, is a restoration project that managed to sensitively maintain an original colonial structure - all while increasing the space by about 70%.
What appears here is not strictly a battle between an institution that wants to reflect the spirit of the time vs a building that is inherently specific to its place. It represents a lost design opportunity. What if the American Folk Art Museum had been considered an untouchable civic space in the city of New York, much like the The Museum of Pre-Columbian Art is for the city for Santiago? Then a whole new strategy for adaptive reuse would have emerged.
The days of elevator small talk could be coming to an end with Hitachi planning to deliver the world's fastest elevator by 2016. Capable of travelling at speeds of 72km/h (44m/h), the record-breaking lifts will be able to hoist passengers up 95 floors in less than 40 seconds. Khon Pedersen Fox's 530-meter Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre will be the first to house the super-speed elevators, amongst 13 other high-speed elevators and 28 double-decker elevators. Currently, the world's fastest elevator is by Toshiba and only capable of reaching speeds of 61km/h (38m/h) within Taipei 101. You can learn more about the super-speed elevators, here.
https://www.archdaily.com/500944/worlds-fastest-elevator-coming-soon-to-guangzhouStephen Stanley
Dundee, Scotland, 2003 by Frank Gehry / Courtesy of Maggie's Centres. ImageThe third center was designed by Frank Gehry, a close friend of Maggie's. “Frank gave us so much publicity, and allowed us to raise the money,” Jencks says. Each center is self-financed through donations.
Maggie's Centres are the legacy of Margaret Keswick Jencks, a terminally ill woman who had the notion that cancer treatment environments and their results could be drastically improved through good design. Her vision was realized and continues to be realized today by numerous architects, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Snøhetta - just to name a few. Originally appearing in Metropolis Magazine as “Living with Cancer,” this article by Samuel Medina features images of Maggie's Centres around the world, taking a closer look at the organization's roots and its continued success through the aid of architects.
It was May 1993, and writer and designer Margaret Keswick Jencks sat in a windowless corridor of a small Scottish hospital, dreading what would come next. The prognosis was bad—her cancer had returned—but the waiting, and the waiting room, were draining. Over the next two years until her death, she returned several times for chemo drips. In such neglected, thoughtless spaces, she wrote, patients like herself were left to “wilt” under the desiccating glare of fluorescent lights.
Wouldn’t it be better to have a private, light-filled space in which to await the results of the next bout of tests, or from which to contemplate, in silence, the findings? If architecture could demoralize patients—could “contribute to extreme and mental enervation,” as Keswick Jencks observed—could it not also prove restorative?
Unified Urban Field. Image Courtesy of Estate of Lebbeus Woods
This summer, the drawings, theories and works of architect Lebbeus Woods are headed to the city that Lebbeus considered home. After a five-month stay at SFMOMA, the exhibit "Lebbeus Woods - Architect" will be at the Drawing Center in SoHo, Manhattan until mid-June. The following story and overview of the exhibition, by Samuel Medina, originally appeared at Metropolis Magazine as “Coming Home".
It’s all too biblical an irony that Lebbeus Woods—architect of war, catastrophe, and apocalyptic doom—died as strong winds, rain, and waves barreled down on Manhattan, his home for some 40-odd years. Woods passed the morning after Hurricane Sandy flooded Lower Manhattan, almost as if the prophet had succumbed to one of his turbulent visions. But this apocryphal reading is just one way to view Woods’s work, which, as often as it was concerned with annihilation, always dared to build in the bleakest of circumstances.
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Death in Venice will focus partially on the changing design of hospitals, places that many people die in every year. Image Courtesy of The Wellcome Library
This year’s Venice Architecture Biennale focuses on the fundamentals of architecture, and the theme of "absorbing modernity." Official exhibitions will highlight the basics of modern building, but one exhibition (unaffiliated with the official biennale) will take a unique approach to the term. Architects Alison Killing and Ania Molenda will devote their installation to the most fundamental quality of all: death.
Titled Death in Venice, this presentation will focus on how architecture has facilitated the act of dying during the past 100 years. All of the funding for the exhibition materials has been provided by the Fund for Creative Industries NL, but to transport the show to Venice, Killing and Molenda have started a Kickstarter campaign.
Grimshaw Architects' dual focus on industrial and architectural design will be celebrated this month in a featured exhibit at Milan Furniture Fair. In this article, originally published by Metropolis under the title "Down to the Details," author Ken Shulman presents the firm's evolution in the context of the exhibit, touching on the projects being presented and more intriguingly — on how they are being presented.
Shortly after he joined Grimshaw Architects, Andrew Whalley was tasked with putting together an exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in London. Titled Product + Process, the 1988 show was decidedly counter-current—a parade of pragmatic, largely industrial structures Grimshaw realized in the UK in the face of surging postmodern fervor. Featured projects included the transparent building the then 15-person firm designed to house the Financial Times’ London printing facilities, and a flexible, easily reconfigurable factory Grimshaw built for Herman Miller in Bath. But it wasn’t the selection of projects that caught the public eye. “We asked our clients to take apart pieces of their buildings, and then rebuild them for the exhibition,” says Whalley, now deputy chairman of Grimshaw. “This wasn’t a typical show of architectural drawings and models.”
Burswood Peninsula Master Plan. Image Courtesy of Government of Western Australia
The West Australian government has confirmed, HASSELL, COX Architecture and HKSwill collaborate to design Australia’s largest ever stadium project. The $900million project will see Perth’s Burswood Peninsula transformed into a world-class sporting precinct by 2018. Included in the master plan is a new stadium that will hold some 60,000 spectators, a public tennis facility, significant transport infrastructure upgrades, such as a new train and bus station, and large public parklands. As negotiations continue between the firms and the West Australian Government, we should expect to see detailed drawings of the scheme by at least July with construction expected to begin by the end of this year.
https://www.archdaily.com/500468/hassell-cox-architecture-hks-to-design-australia-s-largest-sporting-precinctStephen Stanley
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Courtesy of Javier Corvalan + Colectivo Aqua Alta
Paraguay means “water that flows toward the sea” in the language of the country’s indigenous Guarani people. It is no surprise, then, that Paraguay’s entry for the 2014 Venice Biennale uses water as the primary structural member. Titled “Aqua Alta,” the Paraguayan pavilion responds to the Biennale’s focus on modern fundamentals by stating that modern architecture must achieve more with less.
Glasgow has just unveiled its new multipurpose structure which will end up revitalizing the Clyde Waterfront, which went into decline and neglect for many years following the closure of the town's major shipyards. After 8 years of construction, Foster + Partners' SSE Hydro now reveals its ETFE facade which is lit up every evening. During the day it manages to blend in with the usual changing Glasgow skyline.
The structure of the SSE Hydro Arena is covered by a 1.400 ton steel housing – one of the largest domes in Europe - and the ETFE translucent building enclosure allows one to discern what is happening inside from the outside. A 260 ton ring which supports the lighting is suspended from the dome, which will allow spectacular and customized lighting for each show.
The modern technology applied to this project contrasts with its interior structure that has been based on the Roman amphitheater, allowing each and every spectator at an event -- which can be up to 13.000 -- to have an optimal view of the stage. The viewing angle and comfort of the user is furthermore guaranteed by the special seating system designed by Foster + Partners along with Figueras International Seating.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the opening of OMA’s Prada Transformer. This fantastical temporary structure, erected in 2009 adjacent to Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul, Korea, is one of Rem Koolhaas’ most popular projects to date. Composed of a stark white membrane stretched across four steel frame shapes, The Transformer was often referred to as an "anti-blob" --a hexagon, a rectangle, a cross, and a circle leaning against each other to create a tetrahedron-like object reminiscent of a circus tent. The name Transformer came from the idea that any one of the pavilion's sides could serve as the building's floor, allowing for four unique spaces in one building devoted to exhibitions of modern art, fashion and design.
The Prada Transformer played host to four such events, being lifted up and repositioned onto a different face each time via crane. The first was a garment exhibition, displayed using the hexagonal floor plan. The second, a film festival that took place on the rectangular floor plan. A fashion show was staged using the Transformer's circular floor plan, and an art installation was shown using the cruciform floor plan. As patron Miuccia Prada stated in an interview with The New York Times, “In my mind they [the arts] may be mixed but I want to keep them separate… So the Transformer concept was not for a generic space, but to be very specific, with all things separate in one building.”
We asked OMA's Vincent McIlduff to tell us more about this project. See his answers, a photo gallery and a time-lapse video of the transformation after the break!
Historically, large city-changing projects have depended on the personal interests of a powerful individual: someone able to swim across both political and financial waters. But recently, projects like the High Line have shown the power and potential of projects envisioned and led by local communities.
Back in 2011 we visted our friends at CASE in their West Village office and they introduced us to a small firm across the hall: Family. While the team was working hard on a model in the middle of their large table, partner Dong-Ping Wong showed us some of their recent projects. One of them immediately caught our attention. A floating pool for Manhattan. In the form of a cross, it would sit in the East River, filtering its waters into four pools. This amazing -- and seemingly crazy -- idea was tantalizing.
myThread Pavilion, Jenny Sabin Studio, September 2012; built, Nike Stadium, NYC. Interior view of knitted pavilion. Commissioned by Nike FlyKnit Collective. Photo: Nike Inc.
The Architectural League Prize, one of North America’s most prestigious awards for young architects and designers, has been awarded to six emerging practitioners. Each recipient, whose work was deemed to be “exemplary and provocative” by the jury, presented their portfolios under the theme of “Overlay,” as the term “directs - rather than merely reconstructs - process.” This theme will now set the stage for a public forum in which each winner will use to exchange ideas.
They also used this data to find a number of correlations between sprawl and poor quality of life, finding that people living in sprawling cities have higher living costs, shorter life expectancies, increased risk of obesity and diabetes, and lower economic mobility than those in dense cities.
Read on after the break to see the list of the 10 most dense and 10 most sprawling US cities
French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti has revealed that negotiations for a “pop-up” Pompidou in Mexico City are underway. “The Centre Pompidou is exploring the possibility of establishing a temporary space here, a ‘pop up’ Pompidou,” Filippetti told the Mexican newspaper Reforma. “It will come with their exhibitions, their expertise, not only the brand.”
In a compelling opinion piece on the Guardian, Lloyd Alter argues that our current obsession with increasing the density of our cities - mostly by building ever-taller skyscrapers - might be severely misguided. Alter believes that, without tall buildings, cities can achieve a "Goldilocks Density" - just dense enough to support lively streets, but not so dense that they become inhabitable. You can read the full article here.
Framebench, an online tool for visual collaboration, seeks to alleviate the digital sharing problems architects and designers commonly face in practice. Aiming to do away with file storage systems, FTP clients and other kinds of complex software, this web application allows for teams and individuals to share, discuss and annotate drawings in real time. Framebench suggest that "this could be the online space where you can organize all your drafts and finals, get feedback and approve the work that's finished" - in realtime.
The system works by creating workspaces for teams to quickly share their files with one another. You can share any image, video, or document with your team, who can then view it right there without any downloads or installation. While viewing, anyone can annotate on top or leave comments; these comments transform into discussion threads that can be referred back to and added to later.
The entry by Team Render for Homs, Syria. Image Courtesy of Render (Marwa Al-Sabouni & Khaled Komee)
A universal problem facing cities worldwide today is mass social housing. This issue manifests differently in different places: in some cases, housing built on modernist principles has proven unsustainable and socially problematic; in others, the challenge is to replace informal construction with safe, universal housing schemes -- without repeating the mistakes of modernism.
To address these issues, UN Habitat launched a student competition in September to provide designs for local, specific social housing solutions for cities around the globe. We've collected the winners in the overall competition, as well as some of our favorites from the 6 regional and 38 national winners, after the break.
Austrian artist, architect, designer, theoretician and Pritzker Prize laureate Hans Hollein has passed away twenty five days after he celebrated his eightieth birthday. Hollein, particularly known for his museum design, including Vienna’s Haas House (1990) and Frankfurt's Museum of Modern Art, was once described by Richard Meier as an architect whose "groundbreaking ideas” have “had a major impact on the thinking of designers and architects."
Richard Serra has been announced as the first artist to win the Architectural League of New York President’s Medal. Serra, an American sculptor known for his large-scale sheet metal installations, was honored for “contributions his work makes to the way we think about space, viewer and object, site, and materiality, concerns relevant to both architects and the artist.”
Foster + Partners has submitted plans for what would be the tallest residential tower in the UK. The “world-class development” includes a 73- and 36-story tower that would add more than 900 homes and 6,000 square meters of public space to the Isle of Dogs in east London.
“We will provide much-needed new homes, including new affordable homes, over an acre of new and enhanced public open space, a re-activated waterfront on to South Dock and the Millwall Cutting, as well as space for retail, bars and restaurants,” Berkeley Homes regional managing director Harry Lewis. “This is a rare opportunity to deliver such significant, high-quality public realm in Canary Wharf.”
ELEMENTAL has given us details on a proposed 14.5 km pedestrian and bike path within Santiago, Chile that will run along the base of San Cristobal Hill and connect the city's many distinct communities. According to ELEMENTAL, the proposal - named "Metropolitan Promenade" - seeks to facilitate the use and quality of the city's public spaces.
The total project will cost about $16 million USD and will be constructed in two stages. The first is expected for March 2015 and will deal with 7.2 kilometers in the western sector of the park. The second stage, which should be ready in September 2015, will complete the following 7.3 kilometers in the eastern sector of the park.
Read the full architect's description, after the break.
.jpg?1397700541 "Fife, Scotland, 2006 by Zaha Hadid Architects / © Werner Huthmacher. ImageAll sharp angles and painted a sinister black, Zaha Hadid's Fife center isn't the first thing you'd expect from a Maggie's Centre. The exterior invited comparisons to a bunker, despite the airy, humane spaces within. \"Zaha got a lot of criticism and her building is bloody good,\" Jencks says of his former student's design. The building was the architect's first in the UK.")
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