Tag: cold-war | ArchDaily

Oyler Wu Collaborative Selected to Design Cold War Veterans Memorial in Wisconsin

Dima Stouhi — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 06:30:00 +0000

The Pritzker Military Museum & Library has selected Los Angeles-based Oyler Wu Collaborative as the winner of an international design competition that aims to honor members of the United States Armed Forces who served during the Cold War. The winning design, titled Orbits, embodies the "dedication, optimism, and hope that is emblematic of the veterans' enduring spirit", as the structure emerges from the ground to become an architectural tribute to the war veterans.

Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War

Rene Submissions — Thu, 21 May 2020 13:15:00 +0000

In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East in order to bring modernization to the developing world. Architecture in Global Socialism shows how their collaboration reshaped five cities in the Global South: Accra, Lagos, Baghdad, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait City.

Łukasz Stanek describes how local authorities and professionals in these cities drew on Soviet prefabrication systems, Hungarian and Polish planning methods, Yugoslav and Bulgarian construction materials, Romanian and East German standard designs, and manual laborers from across Eastern Europe.

Berlin in Miniature: Tilt-Shift Video Transforms Perspective on the German Capital

Megan Schires — Sat, 12 Jan 2019 13:00:00 +0000

When we get wrapped up in everyday life, it can be easy to take the place we live for granted. In the MiniLook Berlin video, Okapi Creative Studio takes a step back to show the beauty of daily life in the city of Berlin via a stop-motion, tilt-shift technique that makes the city appear as if in miniature. The video highlights everyday street scenes and picturesque shots of nature, while some famous buildings make appearances as well.

In Tehran, Design Principles of American Suburbia Unexpectedly Persist

Olivia Jia — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 07:00:00 +0000

Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen is perhaps best known for pioneering the design of the American mall typology. His visions for these spaces sought to incorporate various aspects of the city into a single enclosed or indoor space, with a particular focus on consumption and commercial activity. His sprawling designs functioned as the perfect complement to America’s burgeoning leisure-driven consumer culture as a booming economy and an increase in car travel reinforced the possibilities of this new postwar way of life. Perhaps lesser-known, however, is Gruen’s commission from the Iranian government to design an urban plan for the city of Tehran in the late 1960s.

The Architecture of Chernobyl: Past, Present, and Future

Niall Patrick Walsh — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:30:00 +0000

April 26th saw the 32nd anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, with the explosion of the Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine causing the direct deaths of 31 people, the spreading of radioactive clouds across Europe, and the effective decommissioning of 19 miles of land in all directions from the plant. Thirty-two years later, a dual reading of the landscape is formed: one of engineering extremes, and one of eeriness and desolation.

AA Easter Rising: Visiting School to Easter Island

Rene Submissions — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 08:30:00 +0000

The 2017 Visiting School to Chile aims at studying from architectural, urban, and territorial perspectives, a series of infrastructures that since the 1960s have been installed in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) because of its extraordinary strategic location in the South Pacific Ocean. These include satellite tracking equipment, seismology and GPS tools, and radio-nuclear detection instruments that came to define global technological projects in the island. In particular, the workshop will focus its attention in the Mataveri Airport which – being the remotest runway in the world – was paved in the 1960s by the United States for the installation of a (currently abandoned) strategic base and extended again by NASA in the 1980s to become emergency landing for space shuttles. The island, in opposition to usual associations to isolation, was instead expedient for the setting of larger technological networks.

6 Structures Designed to Save Humanity From Itself

Rory Stott — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:50:00 +0000

On April 26th 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine suffered a catastrophic failure, resulting in a nuclear meltdown and a series of explosions which scattered radioactive material across large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. More than 50,000 people were evacuated the following day, and over the next 14 years another 300,000 people were moved, leading to an exclusion zone today measuring 2,600 square kilometers that will likely remain in place for hundreds of years. To this day, the human cost of the disaster is still unknown, with estimates that in their lifetimes, anywhere between 4,000 and 200,000 people will be affected by cancers attributable to the incident. Along with the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster of 2011, the Chernobyl Disaster is one of only two level 7 nuclear events in history.

Pratt Explores the Importance of Cold War Era Pre-Fabricated Building Systems

Karissa Rosenfield — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Pratt Institute's School of Architecture will present "COLD war COOL digital," an exhibition of 20 scaled prototypes of modernist, pre-fabricated, and globally-distributed Cold War era housing systems that were created using contemporary 3D printing technologies (opening reception 2/18 at 6:15, details below). The exhibition will investigate architectural modernism and its global influence and will connect with contemporary prototype pre-fabrication methods and digital research in housing and skyscraper design. A symposium that explores the technical, aesthetic, and political aspects of prototyping and pre-construction in architecture will be held tonight in conjunction with the exhibition.