Urbanism News
Saturday, January 31, 2004
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Infinite Ingress A human wave is breaking over California, flooding freeways and schools, bloating housing costs, disrupting power and water supplies. Ignoring it hasn't worked. |
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Loft living in the suburbs For as long as memory can recall, builders have stayed true to the layout and design of the traditional home. |
Friday, January 30, 2004
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The Taming of the Wild - Individual Living in Almere Large parts of the landscape in the Netherlands are an invention of its inhabitants. In a struggle lasting centuries, they have systematically withstood the natural force of the sea to regain usable land. |
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Identity in the age of global networks We live in a globalised world. We may condemn it but we cannot deny it. The media landscape supplies us with images and reports of projects from every continent. |
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What can we learn from the American classics? Why travel? The well-known Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz (1885-1975) was the principal designer of, among other landscapes, the grounds for the Woodland Cemetery south of Stockholm (competition 1915). It is said that he did his work in complete solitude. In order to cut out any impressions from the exterior, he worked in a closed room with no windows: it had a black floor and black walls. He wanted no outside influence. However, it is also said that this is a myth invented to keep alive the image of the creative genius, who draws ideas only from his brilliant mind. |
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Nomad histories 002: Korea Coming to Korea for the first time is, for those that fixate on such details, like stepping through a rippling mirror into the invert world that awaits behind it: of anywhere I've ever been, this is the place with absolutely the lowest market penetration of the Japanese consumer brands that so predominate just about anywhere else. |
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Suburbs scour new avenues for revenue Ads on police cars, water towers among tactics to raise cash. |
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It Ain’t Bilbao: Frank Gehry Unveils the New Art Gallery of Ontario Frank Gehry, perhaps the world’s most celebrated living architect, returned to his roots Wednesday when he unveiled the $195 million redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario, located near the Toronto neighbourhood where he was raised. |
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Why 'wiggly metal' wasn't right Frank Gehry defends his restrained design, and now the public weighs in. |
Thursday, January 29, 2004
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Smart Architecture
Smart Architecture, recently issued by 010 Publishers is a light-hearted book that presents a range of solutions for sustainable architecture with none of the sandals-and-woolly-socks business, writes Luc de Vries. |
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Is Gehry in the building? Before reading this, you need to know a thing or two about what fires the mind of architect Frank Gehry.
His love of hockey is already well known, so it wasn't surprising that Gehry immediately acknowledged the presence of Mats Sundin, Ken Dryden and Senator Frank Mahovolich at the Art Gallery of Ontario yesterday before speaking about his redesign and expansion of the AGO. |
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On Track: Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station at Secaucus Junction by Brennan Beer Gorman Architects Commuting is made easier (and grander) with a transit hub 10 years in the making. |
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
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Art Gallery of Ontario Frank Gehry has designed a landmark building that offers unique and memorable experiences with art. |
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Birnbaum v. Henry Petroski The next time your imperfect car breaks down perfectly, remember, someone designed it that way. New Hampshirite Robert Birnbaum talks to author and former engineer Henry Petroski about the effects of design in our lives. |
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Once Underground, Ant Farm Burrows Out Did you know that Buckminster Fuller was once kidnapped by a bunch of radical hippie architects? In 1969, Fuller was invited to lecture at the University of Houston's engineering school. When the young rads at the college of architecture heard about this godly visitation they decided Fuller was better off in their hands, so one of them called the engineering school and, posing as Fuller's assistant, said his plane had been canceled, that he'd be on a later one, and please don't send anyone to pick him up. |
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Great Public Spaces by Project for Public Spaces For the past thirty years, Fred Kent and the Project for Public Spaces have been working with cities and public agencies to improve the form and function of town squares, markets, plazas and the like. |
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Changes brewing for BAM building The board chairman of the shuttered Bellevue Art Museum on Monday said the organization is working with the building's architect (Stephen Holl) to make the space warmer and more welcoming. |
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Civic identity We can't stand still -- the Portland area needs to recharge its civic identity with bold, new urban symbols. |
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San Francisco obsessed with Vancouver
California city's planners positive about our urban development. |
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Not exactly la bella figura When Californians get their hands on Tuscan style, all sorts of horrors can emerge. |
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Dancers chronicle the city of angles The gritty Lower East Side of Manhattan is the setting for Stephen Petronio's urban, hard-hitting and relentlessly physical choreography. |
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
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Life in suburbia costs more than you'd think So you're moving to the suburbs to get twice the house for half the price? Not so fast, says a new study of housing and transportation costs in Greater Toronto. |
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Not In Our Backyard There are no billboards flaunting the latest luxury SUVs or fruit-infused shampoos on the front lawn of the Supreme Court of Canada. |
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Study: Anti-Sprawl Strategies Good for Construction Jobs A new study by Good Jobs First (GJF) finds that, contrary to common belief, smart growth policies are good for construction jobs. |
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McDonald's could not be reached for comment An Ontario Municipal Board decision giving the green light to a Toronto city bylaw banning any more drive-throughs to restaurants, banks and other businesses within 30 metres of homes has delighted various groups. |
Monday, January 26, 2004
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Creative Class War How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy. |
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If the Museum Itself Is an Artwork, What About the Art Inside? Just three days into a new exhibition this past September, the Bellevue Art Museum in Bellevue, Wash., abruptly closed its doors and suspended programming. Among the reasons, according to an article in The Seattle Times, were regional financial woes, an unclear mission and leadership conflicts. But another, less familiar issue was also raised: the museum's building, a three-year-old avant-garde edifice designed by the New York architect Stephen Holl. |
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Building a name
“I don’t want to be famous. I want to be important. A famous person is famous because of himself, a person is important because of his work.” |
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Architects bring the bush to the city An experimental project is hoping to transform the top of Australia's inner city buildings into mini-ecosystems. The idea aims to bring wildlife back into the centre of Australia's cities. |
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Rogers sees river as city's lifeblood One of Britain’s most celebrated architects has outlined his ambition to transform the River Clyde and his plans to resurrect derelict urban areas of Glasgow blighted by decades of decay. |
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The cabinet of Dr. Libeskind: he finally builds in London. But not where you'd expect. If you are leaving London, its shimmering perforated stainless-steel flanks point the way (let's hope they stay shiny). If you are arriving, that jutting façade acts as - well, not so much a gateway, more a 21st century tollbooth on the ancient turnpike. |
Saturday, January 24, 2004
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The art of misusing everyday objects Buildings made of crates normally used for carrying bottles are their trademark. The Frankfurt artist duo, Winter/Hörbelt, have been making them all over the world since 1996. |
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Basketbar The "De Uithof" university campus situated on the outskirts of the city of Utrecht is one of the most exciting architecture laboratories in the Netherlands. |
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National Swimming Centre PTW won the international design competition to create the National Swimming Centre for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in late 2003. |
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If you don't like him, 'move out' After reworking the rules of the planning approvals game, Mr. Diamond has pioneered the creation of a new regime that, for the first time in the city's modern history, values quality architecture and urban design as a legally enforceable public benefit. He is a leading figure in what he calls "a quiet revolution taking place among city staff and the more progressive politicians, a realization that the city has to inspire a much higher level of architectural design if it is going to remain competitive." |
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New neighbours for old fort The public is always ahead of the business world and what we tap into is the public's understanding of the city, which is not necessarily what conventional wisdom says. |
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The Bilbao effect As one of Canada's leading museums braces for "the Bilbao effect," the question will be asked: What does that phrase conjure up today, seven years after the launch of the Guggenheim's Basque extravaganza? Have its effects been largely good or bad? |
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The house of colour and glass Infill home: Model of environmentally sensitive design comes complete with a rooftop wildflower meadow. |
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From Underground, the PATH Station Becomes a Procession of Flight An exorcism was held yesterday at the World Financial Center Winter Garden at Battery Park City. The spirit of diminished expectations that produced the Winter Garden and buildings like it was severed from the soul of New York. In place of suburban shopping-mall atrium design, there emerged civic architecture of the highest order. |
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Coffee Culture Clash A Southeast Portland institution takes on its ultimate enemy. |
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Cars becoming 'Irresistible' in China Light traffic in Beijing Thursday marked the first day of Chinese New Year with drivers either staying home for the holiday or traveling outside the city -- an unusual calm in a city which is becoming increasingly busy with traffic as more cars compete with the ever ubiquitous bikes for space. |
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What Should a City Be? Redesigning an Ideal American cities should offer "stories" to its citizens that would accommodate competing claims and cultures. These could literally be narratives about city life but could also be figuratively embodied in buildings and designs that seem connected to a particular group's identity. |
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Pressure's building Always, before the unveiling of a project design, Frank Gehry feels a foreboding of public scorn. |
Friday, January 23, 2004
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Great Expectations If all goes according to plan, Southeast False Creek will soon become a 21st-century village of environmentally friendly buildings, community vegetable patches full of chatty neighbours, and parks that are home to actual wildlife. All this a stone's throw from downtown. By all accounts, it would be one of the most forward-thinking urban communities in North America, a kind of beacon for the rest of the continent-and the world-to follow. |
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Building tall and well, despite the controversy Skyscrapers are easy to dislike. |
Thursday, January 22, 2004
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The Plans For Downtown Brooklyn Ignore Both People And Public Spaces The city's planners are working overtime to clear the way for over 60 million square feet of new office space in such business centers as West Midtown, Lower Manhattan, Long Island City, and now downtown Brooklyn. |
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Sign-language town gets mixed reaction The developers are forging ahead with optimism, but some McCook County residents are split over whether to support the construction of a town for people who use sign language. |
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Shanghai '04 Whether you call them delusions of grandeur or visionary thinking, China's biggest city has plans that are nothing if not bold. |
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W. Palm to weigh height-affordability trade-off Time and again, people who work near Clematis Street approach Mayor Lois Frankel and say: "I would love to live downtown." |
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For a home that's out of this world
Feeling cramped and looking to get far, far away from it all? Martian Meadows may be the location for you. Call now to get a piece of the red planet while they last. Airfare not included |
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
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Main Street Niches In A Mass Sales World Steve Rand, owner-manager of the hardware store his grandfather founded in 1908, figured from the start that stopping the proposed Wal-Mart Superstore on the commercial highway outside Plymouth would be a losing battle. |
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Remaking, or Preserving, the City's Face Flickering before Amanda M. Burden, the city planning commissioner, was a vision of New York City of the future. A computer animation showed the view from a car driving toward the Greenpoint waterfront in Brooklyn. The industrial buildings were gone, replaced by a stately procession of five- and six-story brick and stone apartment buildings, culminating in high-rise towers scattered along a wide landscaped promenade along the East River. |
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Greece's Colossal New Guilt Trip After almost two centuries of frustration, Greece had a new plan: to use the 2004 Summer Olympics, during which the eyes of the world will be on Athens, to pressure England into returning the missing sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon. |
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
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'Big-Box' Stores Leave More Than a Void
To its neighbors as well as urban planners, a new "big-box" retail store brings choking traffic, an oceanic stretch of parking and soul-deadening architecture. |
Sunday, January 18, 2004
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Wireless lamp posts take over world! Computerised lamp posts look like being the basis of the biggest data network ever, as the world's traffic monitors set about controlling cars with wireless. |
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Probably the world's fastest train China's superfast express launches next week. Sean Dodson reports on a revolution in public transport. |
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The New Urban Sprawl Why are Oregonians so damn fat? |
Friday, January 16, 2004
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The Great Paving How the Interstate Highway System helped create the modern economy—and reshaped the FORTUNE 500. |
Thursday, January 15, 2004
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Tearing Out the Heart of Moscow Old Moscow could soon be no more. The historical heart of the city is facing a grim future under Mayor Yury Luzhkov. |
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The Dutch Retouch Suburbia The Netherlands, a country that has set the international design standard for everything from glassware to corporate headquarters, made its first comprehensive attempts to grapple with suburban sprawl eight years ago. |
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Tree Play The tree house is classically conceived as a clever exploitation of the tree as a structural element in the provision of human shelter. But a recent exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Garden turned that perception around, exploring ideas for building in trees while protecting them and learning lessons from nature. |
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
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Greenest Of Them All - Audubon Nature Center Is Certified As Nation's Most Environmentally Friendly Building The National Audubon Society is getting the new year off to a "green" start. |
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Old-Time Fitness in Old-Order Amish Why Are We Less Fit Than our Ancestors? Amish Offer Clues. |
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
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A Walk on the Wild Side Disappearing sidewalks, impassable crosswalks, unstoppable traffic, malevolent driving. Does it have to be such a jungle out there? |
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Cities: The New Frontier The world’s cities are increasingly becoming the new front lines in the fight against poverty. |
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New Museum of Contemporary Art - New York City In May 2003, Japanese architects SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa) were announced as the winner of a limited competition to design the New Museum of Contemporary Art's new home on the Bowery in New York City. |
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Iconoclasm rules: how Herzog and de Meuron work with conceptual artist Ai Weiwei on Beijing's new Olympic stadium. Take one Han dynasty urn. It is more than 2,000 years old. Carefully paint a Coca-Cola logo across it. Then take several decorated Stone Age urns, anything up to 10,000 years old, and paint them white, or in garish colours. Next: gather several Qing dynasty tables and stools, only a few centuries old at most. Cut these up and join them together at unexpected angles. Return to the pots, select a particularly well-proportioned Han jar, hold it over a concrete pavement, and drop it so that it smashes into fragments. After all that, there's only one more thing you can do with Chinese culture. You join forces with Herzog and de Meuron to design Beijing's new Olympic stadium. |
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The greatest show on earth Jacques Herzog is one of the architects that almost everyone agrees is a genius. The Swiss superstar recently gave a lecture at London's Union Chapel, attended by the great and good of British architecture, at which he talked a rapt audience through some of the most innovative and beautiful building projects anywhere in the world. The comments of one architect at the end were final: "I think I might as well pack up and go home." |
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Grabbing your luggage as artistic experience
If the pharaohs had built an airport, Terminal 1 is what it would have looked like. |
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Developers build up public art Cities grant density bonuses, rezoning in return for firms funding works. |
Monday, January 12, 2004
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Taiwan Close to Reaching a Lofty Goal When the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan from the mainland at the end of China's civil war in 1949, they did not intend to stay long. The architecture shows it. |
Sunday, January 11, 2004
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Rogers' New Bridge in Glasgow, Scotland Will be a Destination In Itself. |
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Less privacy, please Once, it was luxury to have a roof over your head. Then it was about rooms and privacy. Now the walls are coming down. The modern home has become as fluid as the lives we lead. |
Friday, January 9, 2004
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Richer, stouter, and no happier
More than 1.7 billion people have entered the "consumer class". More people are adopting a lifestyle that leaves them dissatisfied and the Earth impoverished, US researchers say. |
Thursday, January 8, 2004
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Milton Keynes to double in size over next 20 years Biggest urban expansion for 50 years. |
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Bradford 'reinvents' its centre A vast but unloved swath of central Bradford is to be demolished during the next nine months to make way for shopping malls and two new central squares. Teams of demolition workers started cordoning off sections of the city's "Sixties Stalinist" blocks which replaced much-loved Victorian buildings 30 years ago. |
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For city's homeless, will it take a village? Portland has allowed the indigent to form a community, but now reconsiders. |
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Building a world-class city The only cities that have strategized India is where the chief ministers have taken individual responsibility and overridden urban governance. |
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Why California Must Burn
Fire ecology is bad news for sprawl. |
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A love affair with geometry
Preston Scott Cohen, the new holder of the Frank Gehry chair at U of T, recently won a competition to design an art museum in Tel Aviv. |
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Superstudio: Pioneers of Conceptual Architecture
A bearded hippy wearing only his underpants emerges from what appears to be a subterranean concrete bunker. He's followed by a shaggy man in overalls, a topless woman with long hair, and another, and another, like clowns from a Volkswagen. A voiceover informs us that these people are leaving behind an "indescribably large housewith all the possible comforts, and with all the pieces of modern furniture on the marketbuilt following all ancient and modern styles, forming a homogenous and pleasant whole." |
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
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On Crime as Science (a Neighbor at a Time) Dr. Felton Earls was on the street, looking for something at ground level that would help explain his theories about the roots of crime. He found it across from a South Side housing project, in a community garden of frost-wilted kale and tomatoes. |
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Get me outta here! The suburbs seemed great - until reality set in and parked in the two-car garage. |
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Where everybody doesn't know your name For the private type, the suburbs are a spacious haven. |
Tuesday, January 6, 2004
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Seoul bulldozes its way into the future "Out with the old, in with the new," is the daily mantra of Seoul's developers and construction companies. |
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Architects' plans push Steel redevelopment envelope Concepts include furnace light displays and modern buildings. |
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The secret city London's architecture conceals a fascinating history. But how much of it is invented? |
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As with all cities, Berlin's architecture helps define its soul. "Lounging, dining, chilling" is the slogan on Kula-Karma's business card. The year-old restaurant-club is part of the imaginative, funky New Berlin. |
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Green Buildings The latest design of the Freedom Tower at Ground Zero includes power-generating wind turbines in the upper section - or "lattice" - of the building. |
Monday, January 5, 2004
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The Retro City What's new in cities today isn't really new. Everything in our urban revival, from architectural styles and ornamentation to the very idea of neighborhood living itself - all of it is self-consciously and unapologetically derived from the past. |
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Scrubbing First Amendment Ave. Who’s behind the war against the vendors? |
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Residents the spur to creating feel-safe complex One of Britain's biggest people-friendly street complexes is to be created in Port Glasgow. |
Sunday, January 4, 2004
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Big Sky Country Ron Milewicz's paintings of New York invert the idea of architecture as the dominant force in the urban landscape. |
Saturday, January 3, 2004
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How Will We Live in 2010? Metropolis predicts the city of the near future. |
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Best and Worst Case Scenarios for the Future We asked designers, urbanists, and city-dwellers to outline their personal best- and worst-case scenarios for the future: one idea they would like to see happen, or one they fear might be on the way. |
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Enduring Places: The Corner Store No matter how much a neighborhood changes, the corner store always exerts a pull. |
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Speed The maglev train is the future of twenty-first-century transit. Why won't we see it in the U.S. anytime soon? |
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Buildings Evoking Stalin Era Are All the Rage in Moscow Retro Look Brings Sense of Order, Hefty Price Tag. |
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Changing the Density of Our Neighborhoods Remains a Scary Subject for Too Many People The Boston Society of Architects sponsored a conference in September at which 350 participants talked a lot about the D-word: Density. They agreed that, to most citizens, the D-word is suspect, if not scary.
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In the shadow of New York's 'wailing wall' The Ground Zero competition put the spotlight on Libeskind, but the designers of Beijing's Olympic Stadium were the real stars. |
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Caruso Is at the Center of Open-Air Movement
The developer of the Grove says the future of retail is outdoors, with apartments atop shops. |
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Productivity
Innovative systems put Genzyme's new headquarters at the forefront of green technology. |
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Architecture Panorama: Once Around the Park Matteo Pericoli was looking at the shiny glass towers of the new Time Warner building at Columbus Circle the other day. Essex House, a faded stone skyscraper around the corner on Central Park South, might be jealous of this new big neighbor, he said. |
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