Freecell Architecture's proposal for the PXSTL Competition was recently announced one of the three finalists by the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University. Participants were asked to reimagine a vacant lot in St. Louis’ Grand Center cultural district while exploring the critical role arts and culture play in creating vibrant, growing communities. The competition aims to demonstrate how small-scale interventions can spur large-scale urban transformation, and Freecell's proposal was selected for their ability to visualize Grand Center’s long-term vitality, emphasizing community engagement, interactive elements, and cross-disciplinary collaboration among St. Louis’ many cultural organizations. More images and information after the break.
Taking place at The Center for Architecture in New York, 'Practical Utopias' presents a body of recent work by American and other international firms in five cities across East Asia. Conceived as extensions or embellishments of existing capitals of finance and culture, these new cities within cities serve as focal points for future visions and global ambitions. Over the past twenty years the pace and scale of urbanization in Asia has been unprecedented in both the emerging and maturing economies of the region. Curated by Jonathan Solomon, this exhibition provides a framework for education and cultural exchange between New York and the global cities of Asia. The exhibition runs October 1 - January 18. For more information, please visit here.
The Portland Building, by architect and product designer Michael Graves, is considered the first major built work of Postmodernist architecture. The design, which displays numerous symbolic elements on its monumental facades, stands in purposeful contrast to the functional Modernist architecture that was dominant at the time. As Graves explains of his architecture: it’s “a symbolic gesture, an attempt to re-establish a language of architecture and values that are not a part of modernist homogeneity.”
Read more about this controversial building after the break...
Text description provided by the architects. MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab has exhibited the Fluid Crystallization project as part of the 2013 Architectural League Prize Exhibition at the Parson’s Gallery in New York. The Fluid Crystallization installation - a collaboration between MIT Self-Assembly Lab director Skylar Tibbits and The Molecular Graphics Lab director Arthur Olson - investigates hierarchical and non-deterministic self-assembly with large numbers of parts in a fluid medium.
After years of extensive research that unearthed countless untold stories and hundreds of beautiful unbuilt designs, curators Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin will be celebrating the opening of their highly anticipated exhibition - Never Built: Los Angeles - today at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles.
Instead of perceiving water as something to defend against, The Open Workshop took on the challenge of repositioning the water as a performative feature that connects across the obstructions currently on Arvene East of Far Rockaway. Taking the logic of the stabilizing rock jetties, the 'Recon-Figure' proposal utilizes a series of nested figures to augment the existing coastline. The figures engage the water, functioning as groynes and breakwaters that also offer recreational spaces, stabilize the coast, and concentrate wave action and associated energy capture. More images and architects' description after the break.
South Beach ACE, the collaborative team made up of Tishman, a national real estate development firm led by Dan Tishman; international architecture firm OMA, led by Pritzker Prize winning architect Rem Koolhaas; and Miami Beach developer Robert Wennett, were just announced by the Miami Beach City Commission as the winning team in a competition to redevelop the Miami Beach Convention Center and the surrounding 52-acre site. Looking forward to bring the project to fruition, the team firmly believes a renovated convention center, adjacent hotel, and re-imagined convention center campus are critical to Miami Beach's ability to maintain and grow its desirability as a tourism and convention destination. More images and the team's description after the break.
