Urbanism News
Monday, January 31, 2005
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Dan Dare and doll's houses Will it be the architects or the vandals who build Thames Gateway? |
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Robert Moses, a Towering NYC Figure, Is Deconstructed in Boozy Les Freres Corbusier, the Off-Off-Broadway theatre company that created last season's Obie Award-winning A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant, examines the life and times of controversial New York City urban planning czar Robert Moses in its latest piece. |
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This year's model Tokyo's streets are a glittering catwalk of chic shops. But Toyo Ito's latest creation steals the show. |
Friday, January 28, 2005
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THE CITY EVOLVES, AGAIN A new computer model gives a detailed glimpse of the new immigrants and how their way of life is redefining NYC's identity. |
Thursday, January 27, 2005
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Model citizens In the future applying for planning could mean architects uploading their designs into an online 3D model of the city so that citizens can ‘visit’ the scheme and have their say. |
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Reinvigorating The Rural Urban initiatives’ diverse and ongoing work for the city of Greater Shepparton takes the day-to-day development of the public domain seriously. The result is a humane and generous public realm. |
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Urban underground 'faces risks' Natural disasters can be a threat to the growing expansion of big cities underground, the United Nations says. |
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Culture Call: An Interview with Bruce Mau Designer Bruce Mau's career has been wide-ranging. In 1995, he collaborated with Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture on S,M,L,XL. In 2000, he published Life Style, an investigation into contemporary image culture. This year, he returns with Massive Change. |
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A generation lost in its personal space I almost ran over a student the other day. He was walking casually down the middle of a leafy suburban street in Cambridge. As I approached I assumed he would hear me and move onto the pavement. It would have been rude to have tooted the horn, so I didn't. But he didn't move, and only became aware of me as I braked to a halt right behind him. |
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Philip Johnson dies at 98 Philip Johnson, whose austere "glass box" buildings and latter-day penchant for incorporating whimsically old-fashioned touches in his designs made him one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, has died at 98. |
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
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Chaos in the City. Architecture, Modernism and Peak Oil Production Some people seem to take pleasure in boasting about how long it takes them to drive to work. Like the Yorkshire men in the Monty Python sketch, they get up half an hour before going to bed the night before in order to arrive at work on time in the morning. They live, for the most part, in the suburbs. |
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Royal standard Hank Dittmar detests cars and admires John Prescott. Prince Charles's new urban design adviser talks to Peter Hetherington about housebuilding, shopping malls and suburbia. |
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Foreign Growth Why should we care what happens to Chinese cities? Because the Chinese care what we think. |
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Selling out to the star gazers Is an architect’s star status the result of their unmatched ability as a designer, or is it developed and maintained as a marketing tool? There is a growing feeling in the profession that it is becoming too much the latter. |
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Britain's radical take on homelessness London — In a filthy pedestrian tunnel underneath Trafalgar Square last night, a tough 33-year-old Irishman named Jock demonstrated how he and several of his friends break the law each night. |
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Urban innovations At their best, cities can be laboratories of innovation and progress. Here are examples of innovative programs from cities in North America — examples that show the value of thinking holistically about environmental quality, economic development, and quality of life. |
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
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All the world's a car park How do you make an interesting movie about urban sprawl? |
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Stranger in a Strange Land Five years ago, my husband and I responded to an empty nest by moving to a farm in Loudoun County. It's been an adjustment. His commute by train can take hours. I enjoy tales of his train society, but I now spend more of my time with dogs, cats, horses and garden than I do with human beings. |
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Holyrood is ‘without parallel’ in 100 years of architecture IT may have been three years overdue and cost 11 times more than initially estimated but the Scottish parliament is a new modern icon, according to academic Charles Jencks. |
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How Cities Bounce Back Rebirth often follows catastrophe. |
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Net curtains not allowed in goldfish bowl tower CALLING all exhibitionists. A 16-storey tower earmarked for Dublin’s docklands will be completely transparent, providing a perfect home for individuals with a penchant for being on 24-hour show. |
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From the barren desert, a booming metropolis "Sun, Sin & Suburbia" captures the intangible nature of the dynamic, ever-changing city. |
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US firm beats UK stars to Creative Planet job US practice William McDonough & Partners has beaten competition from Will Alsop and Grimshaw, among others, to design a groundbreaking new exhibition and collections centre in Wiltshire thought to be the largest in Europe. |
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‘More vision needed’ for Thames Gateway A panel of superstar architects tasked with overseeing design in the Thames Gateway is failing to deliver a vision for the region, members claimed this week. |
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Nations Ranked as Protectors of the Environment Countries from Northern and Central Europe and South America dominated the top spots in the 2005 index of environmental sustainability, which ranks nations on their success at such tasks as maintaining or improving air and water quality, maximizing biodiversity and cooperating with other countries on environmental problems. |
Monday, January 24, 2005
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Hazards of Sprawl The recent mudslides in Southern California reiterate the long-standing critiques of suburban development that argue that environmental realities of diverse landscapes are frequently ignored, causing areas of human settlement to be subject to environmental disasters. |
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Behnisch, Behnisch Designing Ambitious Park in Las Vegas A new urban oasis may soon be coming to the Las Vegas desert. Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner is designing a 150-acre mixed-use park in Las Vegas, Nevada, that combines toy galleries and entertainment venues with landscaped gardens and children's playgrounds. |
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The hills are alive Exciting, colourful, beautiful buildings ... and that's just the abattoirs. Swiss architecture has a lot to teach us. |
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'Naked streets': Sounds crazy but might just work Entire towns in Europe have no traffic lights or signs, and they've never been safer. |
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Road design? He calls it a revolution In spite of the apparently anarchical layout, the traffic, a steady stream of trucks, cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, moved along fluidly and easily, as if directed by an invisible conductor. |
Friday, January 21, 2005
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Suburbs banished by trans-Pennine city Architect sets out an urban 'living zone' measureless to man, encompassing cities across England from Liverpool to Hull. |
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Yearbook Landscape Architecture and Town Planning The new edition of 'Landscape Architecture and Town Planning in The Netherlands 01-03' from Thoth Publishers. Recognisable design and almost identical to the previous four volumes. Containing some forty well-chosen, inspiring and not-so-inspiring projects, the book offers a survey of town planning in the Netherlands today. |
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Harlem Park Dramatically illuminated at night Harlem Park will strike a prominent profile on the northern Manhattan skyline. |
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Chicago Does Stars Chicago is one American city where architectural talent has proved to be a tangible asset for over 120 years. |
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Cyclists can see better road ahead Multimillion-dollar plans will link trails and lanes so riders and hikers can go where they want. |
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How do you brighten up a dingy village? Mirrors. Lots of big mirrors. At least that is what scientists at the Bartenbach Light Laboratory in Aldrans, Austria, believe. |
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Ego alert What happens when you ask 23 of the world's leading architects to work on a single building? |
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'Super city of north' is unveiled A vision of a northern England in which people could live in Hull, commute to Liverpool, shop in Leeds and go out in Manchester in one day has gone on show. |
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Further Evidence Architects are the New Rock Stars Last night, the Master-Disaster Architects Duel saw two teams of architects competing to build the most magnificent model at a Tribeca bar. |
Thursday, January 20, 2005
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West Side Plans Lack a Unifying Vision It is hard to imagine an area more ripe with potential than the Hudson Yards, a 40-block site at the edge of Midtown Manhattan that is the focus of one of the city's biggest development projects in recent memory. |
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Hong Kong-Shanghai rivalry goes creative Over the past decade, China's premier business centers, Hong Kong and Shanghai, have engaged in a friendly rivalry, touting their relative strengths in hopes of attracting investment. Now they are waking up to the theories of a growing number of experts that cities must nurture their "creative capital" in order to entice capital of a more conventional sort. |
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Putting science before inspiration UCI professor creates formula for designing landscapes best suited for people's well-being. |
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Lebbeus Woods. Into the Woods Michael Sorkin believes that Lebbeus Woods practises an “architecture of persuasion”: cosmogonic landscapes created by carefully interwoven pencil colours that nonetheless describe a different way of producing architecture, with absolute conviction. |
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SuperCity vision goes on show Will Alsop's dream of a single SuperCity stretching from Liverpool to Hull will be unveiled at an exhibition in Urbis, starting today. |
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City of ghosts On November 8, the American army launched its biggest ever assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, considered a stronghold for rebel fighters. The US said the raid had been a huge success, killing 1,200 insurgents. Most of the city's 300,000 residents, meanwhile, had fled for their lives. What really happened in the siege of Falluja? In a joint investigation for the Guardian and Channel 4 News, Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil compiled the first independent reports from the devastated city, where he found scores of unburied corpses, rabid dogs - and a dangerously embittered population. |
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CHILLY DESIGN, HOT AQUA What will establish Aqua’s place in the design firmament of Miami Beach—and master-planned resort communities in general—is the absolute thoroughness of its planning and execution, in conjunction with a devotion to design excellence that’s evident at every turn. |
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
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Disaster Looms for Megacities, UN Official Says Earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters could kill millions in the world's teeming megacities and time is running out to prevent such a catastrophe, the United Nations point man on emergency relief said on Tuesday. |
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'Third places' are No. 1 in the hearts of patrons Whether it's sharing stuff, finding out what's happening, networking or immersing in camaraderie, the third place is as essential as the first (home) and second (work). |
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Seaside Sprawl: Who Will Learn From the Tsunami Catastrophe? The current tsunami disaster should cause serious rethinking of seaside development for all coastal locations, but there is little evidence that it will. When people and developers refuse to see the folly of living at the water's edge, then government must step in and effectively protect people from themselves and nature from people. |
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UCLA’s “L.A. Now” Project Wins Major Design Award The UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design has been awarded the 2005 Progressive Architecture Award (P/A) by Architecture magazine for "L.A. Now: Volume 3," an urban design research project encompassing 35,000 housing units in downtown Los Angeles. |
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Snřhetta’s Vision for the WTC Cultural Institutions Recently, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) selected Frank Gehry and the little-known Norwegian firm Snřhetta to create schematic designs for the performing arts and museum complexes planned for the World Trade Center site. |
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The Urbz: Sims in the City Most of the industry's facts and figures say that The Sims is the best selling PC game of all time. I think one of the reasons why it's so popular is that it's one of those titles that hooks even the people who swear they don't like games. |
Monday, January 17, 2005
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Dutch Electronic Arts Festival The end of distances, a loss of the notion of place, total independence from geographical locations: these are a few of the paradoxes that accompanied the arrival of new communications technologies. |
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The City as Canvas: Graffiti and Stencil Art from New York to Montreal If you live in the city, there’s a good chance you’re surrounded by street art. |
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Open: New Designs for Public Space A new exhibition opened at the National Building Museum exploring contemporary and future directions in the design of public space, proposing that new spaces can be the generators of urban revitalization. |
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How Did He Become the Government's Favorite Architect? At 60, this former bad boy now finds that his firm, Morphosis, is winning some of the most prestigious commissions in the country. |
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Babylon wrecked by war US-led forces leave a trail of destruction and contamination in architectural site of world importance. |
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Not a mall, it's a lifestyle center
It's got Ann Taylor, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma and a Barnes & Noble, just like a regular suburban mall. |
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
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Vacation I in Finland where I am speaking at the Aesthetics and Mobility Cogress. With limited internet connection. Check back on Jan. 20 for urbanism.org updates. |
Friday, January 7, 2005
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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 house...with all the possible comforts, and with all the pieces of modern furniture on the market...built following all ancient and modern styles, forming a homogenous and pleasant whole." |
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Architecture goes back to the future In the 1950s they knew what the future would be like. Everyone would wear one-piece silver jumpsuits and communicate by videophone from flying cars while en route to their living pod. All meals would come in handy tablet form, with hunger, disease and war things of the past, thanks to the onward march of science and reason. |
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Yonkers Plans to Uncover River Running Through It In the mid-17th century, a young Dutch lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck cleared a patch of wilderness and built a house and a sawmill on a bend in a winding tributary of the Hudson River. Mr. van der Donck was known as "the Jonker" - or "young squire" - and the town that evolved around his property became known as "the Jonker's land," and later Yonkers. |
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A Rich Menu to Choose From for the 'Belly of Paris' Until recently, no one could say that Paris was afraid of bold new buildings. The city was at the forefront of contemporary architecture for decades, from the 1977 Pompidou Center to the string of major monuments commissioned by François Mitterrand that rose in the 1980's and 90's. |
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The Call of the Primordial Communities across the country are building parks with fragments of, well, not wilderness exactly, because wilderness is untouched by man. Maybe they are recollections — of prairie, woodland and marsh — springing up alongside highways, under elevated rail lines, and on top of tunnels and old dumps. |
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Shopkeepers Are Antidote to Big Boxes Spending at neighbors’ stores changes the world |
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Shopkeepers Are Antidote to Big Boxes Spending at neighbors’ stores changes the world |
Thursday, January 6, 2005
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GADGETBAHN A few weeks ago, the state of New Jersey appropriated $75,000 to study the development of a personal rapid transit system for Long Branch, a shore town just south of New York City. If PRT projects elsewhere are a sign of things to come, it's the beginning of an epic boondoggle. |
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Postcard from Lelystad Sporting a striking new glass "climate zone" at its front entrance, the Tjalk shopping center is a new asset to the commons in Lelystad, the Netherlands. |
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Superstores come with too high a price In careful studies all over the country economists have found that Wal-Mart does not create jobs at all. In fact, Wal-Mart destroys jobs. |
Wednesday, January 5, 2005
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The future of homes and housing As we move further into the 21st century, it's natural to wonder what the future will bring: In what kinds of houses and communities will Americans be living in 2020? |
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Attractive barriers sought for plazas Bollards should shield government buildings with reassuring style, state architect says. |
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The Vanishing In “Collapse,” Jared Diamond shows how societies destroy themselves. |
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Sprawl takes rising toll on imperiled black bears More black bears are turning up in Central Florida's roads and neighborhoods as the threatened species fights to survive amid the state's sprawling development and ever-increasing traffic. |
Tuesday, January 4, 2005
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The Rise of the Microneighborhood How do buzz-craving real-estate agents and boutique owners decide where to go now that gentrification has washed over most of Manhattan (not to mention Brooklyn)? By conjuring zones of hipness as small as a single block. |
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Glimpse of the future of supercities A vision of the future of the north of England in which commuters can travel to four major cities in one day is to be displayed at a new exhibition. |
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Glimpse of the future of supercities A vision of the future of the north of England in which commuters can travel to four major cities in one day is to be displayed at a new exhibition. |
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Glimpse of the future of "supercities" A vision of the future of the north of England in which commuters can travel to four major cities in one day is to be displayed at a new exhibition. |
Monday, January 3, 2005
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Gardens Better For Wildlife Than Countryside Urban gardens often provide a better environment for wildlife than intensively farmed arable land, so creating new communities should go hand in hand with enhancing biodiversity. |
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‘Fear of the City Rotterdam’s public ground reveals a pattern which is to a large extent build to the comfort of its inhabitants. |
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Dreams and Schemes for an Abandoned Rail Line For years, debate raged over plans to transform the High Line, the defunct Chelsea freight railway, into an elevated public park. Now, as the city and a nonprofit group are moving ahead on those plans, central Queens has set out on a similar mission for its equivalent of the High Line. |
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Celebratory demolition? Here's a neat idea for a new television series. Let's get the public to nominate the six vilest books in the English language and in the grand finale, they get to burn them live on camera. |
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The Little Abandoned Train Line That Could, Did. In the midst of all the corporate redevelopment projects, the High Line crossed the dream-to-reality threshold—and became the most exciting one of all. |
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A Bumblebee for Walking Dan Burden is changing how towns think about traffic. |
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