Real estate developer Two Trees Management has unveiled new images of the James Corner-designed Domino Park to coincide with the announcement of the park’s opening date, slated for Summer 2018. Located along the East River in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, the park is a central component of the 11-acre Domino Sugar redevelopment site, which will feature several new residential towers and a transformation of the former Domino Sugar factory by the Partnership for Architecture and Urbanism and Beyer Blinder Belle.
As the impacts of global climate change escalate, forward-thinking architecture firms have committed to being part of the solution. Increasingly, these firms are signing on to the 2030 Challenge and American Institute of Architects’ supporting initiative, AIA 2030 Commitment, which provide a framework to reduce fossil-fuel dependence and make all buildings, developments, and major renovations carbon neutral by 2030.
The 2030 Challenge has been adopted by 80 percent of the top 10 and 65 percent of the top 20 architecture, engineering, and planning firms in the United States, as well as many state and local government agencies. Among these are Eskew+Dumez+Ripple (EDR), a New Orleans–based architecture and planning firm; HOK, a global design, architecture, engineering, and planning firm; and CTA Architects Engineers, an integrated design, engineering, and architecture firm with offices throughout the Western United States and Canada. Here, five professionals from EDR, HOK, and CTA share seven key tactics they’ve employed to move toward the 2030 target—and a sustainable future for the planet.
https://www.archdaily.com/869056/7-ways-architects-can-work-toward-carbon-neutral-buildings-by-2030Heather Head
We all know that the skyscraper was born between Chicago and New York (depending on who you ask or what you consider a skyscraper, but that's for another discussion). But what about the rest of the US? How does each state stack up in the race towards the sky? This infographic by highrises.com gives us a scaled approximation of the "height" of each state--with New York coming out on top and Vermont, well... Vermont's tallest building is an 11-story public housing project built in the 70s.
The infographic also breaks down the purposes of the surveyed buildings, revealing that nearly 2% of the tallest buildings in each state are churches! Another interesting factoid? Nearly 1/3 of these highrises are named after banks.
https://www.archdaily.com/869549/the-tallest-buildings-in-each-state-of-the-usaAD Editorial Team
These may well be the ultimate, true romantic architects, said Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, President of The Chicago Athenaeum. Form4 Architecture’s design philosophy conveys a ‘vision of the future’ and all the artistic possibilities of imagination, emotional meaning, and lyrical expressionism for a consequentially better and more enlightened world around us.
Italian architect and photographer Francesca Perani decided it was time to address the issue of garbled copyrights and tired stereotypes in architecture cutouts. With her site cutoutmix, she explains that she and her "creative gang" of female designers are, "improving the rendering visualization world with the help and talent of international artists." Right now users can access two of the collections for free, under a creative commons license.
With yesterday’s grand opening ceremony in the books, Times Square’s 8-year-long transformation has been pronounced officially complete.
Led by Snøhetta, the project saw the United States’ most visited destination change from a congested, horn-honking vehicular area into a world-class public plaza with the addition of over 100,000 square feet of pedestrian-exclusive space.
TIME Magazine has named architect David Adjaye to their annual list of 100 Most Influential People, recognizing the world figures who have had the most impact on society in the past year in five categories: Pioneers, Titans, Artists, Leaders, and Icons. Unlike Bjarke Ingels and Wang Shu – who were selected under the Artist category in 2016 and 2013, respectively – Adjaye was nominated in the Icons category alongside champions including media personality RuPaul, subversive photographer Cindy Sherman, and US Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights leader who was the original advocate for a National African American Museum in Washington, which was eventually designed by Adjaye and inaugurated last September.
In the citation for the award, Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem (and currently working with the architect on an expansion project for the museum), describes Adjaye as “one of the great architectural visionaries of our time,” and lauds his work as “deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history."
Massachusetts is destroying its toll plazas. By the end of this year, every single one on the Massachusetts Turnpike will have been demolished. Drivers will still pay to use the road—they will zoom through the metal arches of electronic tolling infrastructure—but the routine of slowing down, stopping to grab a ticket, and waiting for the barrier to rise will be gone.
Massachusetts is being more aggressive than most places about sweeping away its old tolling infrastructure, but all across the country, from New York to Florida, Texas to California, road authorities are switching to all-electronic tolling. While it’s too soon to declare the tollbooth dead, it’s easy to imagine a future in which roads are unencumbered by boxy plazas and simple gates.
Though the idea of a vacation in Mexico usually brings to mind images of margaritas on white-sand beaches, it seems the country is slowly but surely gaining recognition in other aspects as well. Among the most populated urban cities in Latin America and the world – not to mention The New York Times' number one "Place to Go in 2016" – Mexico City offers a particular cultural diversity evident both in its traditions and in its architecture. Considering it's the main tourist, educational, cultural, economic and political center of Mexico, it makes sense that it's the perfect scenario for the social encounters of its multicultural inhabitants and tourists.
The sites of architectural interest alone are worth the visit, with prehispanic, classic, modern and contemporary examples ranging from Juan O'Gorman and Luis Barragán to Felix Candela and David Chipperfield. Add to that the fact that its gastronomic scene has garnered much praise and attention in recent years, and you've got a perfect combo. Below is a carefully curated list of 30 sites that every architect should know and visit.
A simultaneous celebration of their cultural iconicity and distillation from their various contexts, Beautified China is a photographic essay by Kris Provoost (one-half of the vlogging duo behind #donotsettle) that tracks the evolution of Chinese architectural landmarks over the course of the past 7 years. Beginning his investigation with the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Provoost considers a decade of architecture proposed for China by the profession’s biggest names, many of which have been built now with monumental reputations in rising cities.
Now in its 21st year, the COTE Top Ten Awards program was established to honor projects that protect and enhance the environment through an integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology.
The Trienal de Lisboa have today announced that a team of nine, led by Parisian architect Éric Lapierre, has been appointed as the curatorial team of the 5th edition of Lisbon Architecture Triennale which will be held from October to December 2019. Lapierre, who runs the Masters in Architecture & Experience at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Marne-la-Vallée, Paris, will collaborate with philosopher Sébastien Marot, who is also a critic in architecture and landscape design. Other members of the curatorial team include Ambra Fabi, Giovanni Piovene, Mariabruna Fabrizi, Fosco Lucarelli, Laurent Esmilaire, Tristan Chadney, and Vasco Pinelo de Melo. A grand total of 48 proposals were submitted to the organization, comprising 155 participants from 16 countries.
https://www.archdaily.com/869546/eric-lapierre-appointed-as-chief-curator-of-2019-lisbon-architecture-triennaleAD Editorial Team
With employees beginning to move into Apple’s Campus 2 this month, the Foster + Partners-designed main building is down to its finishing touches, as shown in this drone video captured by aerial videographer Matthew Roberts.
Also nearing completion are the solar-panel-covered parking garage and the F&D facility, with the Steve Jobs Theater expected to follow sometime this summer. Landscaping, including the central pond and unprecedentedly ambitious tree planting plan (reported to have caused a shortage of nursery trees in the San Francisco area), are also moving full-steam ahead.
https://www.archdaily.com/869544/drone-video-captures-apple-campus-2-as-employees-begin-move-inAD Editorial Team
The 'Customer Involvement Program' of Autodesk's research department has, over the years, compiled a database of over 60 million individual commands created by anonymized users. Each reveals shortcut paths and thought flows among its customer base. The team have visualized the product usage (here described as the Command Usage Arc project) by ordering known and new commands from the most-frequently-used to the least-frequently. Revealed as a sequence of infographics, the results demonstrate how people work – and how they often deviate from prescribed usage.
https://www.archdaily.com/869537/visualizations-of-the-most-used-autodesk-autocad-revit-and-3dsmax-commandsAD Editorial Team
The 150-foot-tall steel structure has been compared to a bedbug, a beehive, and a döner kebab. Its base is 50 feet wide and its upper span measures 150 feet. Image Courtesy of Forbes Massie, Heatherwick Studio
When Thomas Heatherwick—the nimble London-based designer known for work that defies easy categorization—unveiled his design for a new public landmark called Vessel at Hudson Yards to a crowd of reporters and New York City power players in September, questions abounded. What is it? What will it do to the neighborhood? And what does it say that Stephen Ross, the president and CEO of Related Companies, the primary developer of Hudson Yards, is financing the entire $250 million piece by himself?
It’s natural that Ross chose Heatherwick Studio to design his centerpiece, because the office’s creations stun. For the UK Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, it extruded 60,000 clear acrylic tubes from a center space to create a fuzzy, crystalline object whose apparent fragility is as mesmerizing as it is clever. As the studio moves toward ever-larger and ever-more-public commissions, the people who will live with its work will need to seriously consider what it will mean for their neighborhoods and cities.
The postgraduate programme is a unique and innovative approach to international architectural education: it combines the idea of the classical artist journey with the intensive, interdisciplinary and project-oriented workshop tradition and team-work, focusing on acute topics generating architectural knowledge and dialogue across greater Europe between cities as Tallinn, Lisbon, Helsinki, Berlin, Dessau, Ljubljana, Innsbruck and Haifa.
Residents of London's Neo Bankside residential building—a luxury complex of apartments designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners—have launched a legal bid against the Tate Modern to close one side of a public viewing platform, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and completed in 2016, which overlooks their properties. As reported by the Architects' Journal, "the applicants say that their human rights are being breached due to ‘near constant surveillance’ from visitors to the neighbouring attraction." The claim goes as far to argue that visitors to the Southbank gallery "constantly view their flats through binoculars, and post photographs and film of their homes on social media sites."
https://www.archdaily.com/869531/neo-bankside-london-residents-launch-legal-bid-against-herzog-de-meurons-tate-modern-switch-house-extensionAD Editorial Team
Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) has been appointed by Kaunas City Municipality to run a one-stage design contest for Kaunas’ new Concert Centre. The substantial new building for this leading Lithuanian city, which has just won the title European Capital of Culture 2022, will encompass a world-class concert venue as well as multifunctional spaces for public and community events.
The one-stage contest will launch in early summer and conclude in the autumn. The initiative follows the success of the recent Science Island contest, which was the most popular architectural competition in Lithuania’s history.
https://www.archdaily.com/869465/competition-announced-for-new-concert-center-in-kanaus-lithuaniaAD Editorial Team
Previously home to a beach-like ball pit, a giant maze, and sea of icebergs, this summer the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. will host the “Hive,” a 60-foot-tall domed structure made up of more than 2,700 individual paper tubes. Designed by Studio Gang, the installation is part of the museum’s Summer Block Party series, which invites architects to fill the building’s historic Great Hall with a temporary, immersive intervention.
Google Earth is no longer a clunky, data-intensive desktop or mobile application. As of today, one of the tech-giant's flagship (and unrivalled) products has been relaunched as a widely accessible web application for Google Chrome. This means that anyone can now access the full Google Earth product, free of charge, without having to install software or download mobile applications.
https://www.archdaily.com/869445/architecture-takes-center-stage-with-google-earth-relaunchAD Editorial Team
Digital technologies were supposed to kill the drawing. And in an obvious way they did, with CAD displacing hand draughtsmanship long ago. But drawing is more than mere delineation—measured construction drawings—or even the rendering, which has devolved into a mere marketing tool. Indeed, as Sam Jacob writes, it constitutes a fundamental “architectural act” that lies at the core of the discipline’s self-understanding.
Jacob describes a new “post-digital” mode of drawing that incorporates narrative cues, art historical allusions, and software-enabled collage techniques. It recalls Mies’s sparse one-point perspectives and de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings as well as the affected irreverence of Postmodernism. It’s a style popularized by blogs such as KoozA/rch, which was founded by architect Federica Sofia Zambeletti three years ago. We spoke to Zambeletti about the resurgence of architectural drawing and how the style could soon exhaust itself.
79 shortlisted buildings have been selected as winners of the 2017 American Architecture Awards, which honor the best new buildings designed and constructed by American architects in the United States and abroad, and by international architects for buildings designed and built in the United States.
Spring is finally here, which means over 100,000 people are making the trip to the California desert for the 2017 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. In addition to the top-billed musicians, the event has become known as a showcase for some of the best up-and-coming artists, designers and architects to work on a large-scale, instagram-friendly scene.
With the first weekend now in the books, we’ve rounded up some of the best art/architecture installations from this year’s festival.
.jpg?1492141820 "UNIVERSITY OF IOWA VISUAL ARTS BUILDING; Iowa City, Iowa / Steven Holl Architects. Image Courtesy of The American Architecture Awards")
.jpg?1492141945 "MICHIGAN LAKE HOUSE; Leelanau County, Michigan / Desai Chia Architecture. Image Courtesy of The American Architecture Awards")
