Urbanism News
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
|
Boston's tall buildings reflect an inspired idea The High Spine. The Dorsal Fin. The Hogback. Call it what you want. It's Boston's spiky backbone of tall buildings. They run in a narrow, meandering path from downtown out along the line of Boylston and Huntington. The peaks in this chain of vertebrae are the Pru and the Hancock, but there are lots of others. And more towers are in the works. The High Spine -- that's its proper name -- gives the city a visible center and a shape it never had before. It also reminds the skeptical among us that big city-planning ideas aren't always something to be scared of. |
|
Mr Prescott, please save us from another supermarket mega-shed Just when Sunderland thought that its local authority was about to grant planning permission for a £300m redevelopment of its river front, the Deputy Prime Minister has taken the decision out of its hands, and is exercising his right to make the approval decision himself. |
|
Skyscraper a lightning rod for opinions Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Museum Plaza. Some say it will pull Louisville into the 21st century and create an icon for the city. Others call it a Tetris game gone bad. |
Monday, February 27, 2006
|
Greenwich Emotion Map Artist Christian Nold has been invited to collaborate with local residents from the Greenwich Peninsula to explore the area afresh and build an emotion map of the area that explores people's relationship with their local environment. |
|
The Truth About Jaywalking
Besides being dangerous, is there a silver lining to pedestrians’ unruly habits? |
|
Let Traffic Flow and So Will Commerce, Groups Tell City "Necessity or Choice: Why People Drive to Manhattan," raises questions about how passenger cars affect the city's economy. It found that most people who drive into Manhattan below 60th Street do so because of the comfort and convenience of their cars, ignoring easily available public transportation. |
Saturday, February 25, 2006
|
Building New Orleans 2.0 Hurricane Katrina left a devastated New Orleans in its wake. But a new architectural exhibit has come up with some ideas for the Big Easy's new look. Who's behind the project? The Dutch of course. |
Friday, February 24, 2006
|
Arup Developing Green City in China With its booming economy and often-unchecked development, China is not exactly known for its environmental stewardship. But the country is starting to move in a different direction, as evidenced by a plan being developed by Arup to build what it calls the world’s first sustainable city. |
|
Plans to build housing estate from tyres Plans were unveiled today to build an ultra-green housing estate in Brighton using 15,000 old car tyres. |
|
New York pans skyscraper escape pods he idea emerged after Jonathan "Yoni" Shimshoni and a team of aspiring inventors in Israel watched a television documentary about victims trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. |
|
Suburbia: from avant-garde to no place special In the past while -- for no reason other than the common desire of men pushing 65 to understand something about the times we've lived through -- I have been revisiting the architecture of suburbia. It means, among other things, making lists of the movies and TV shows I've seen (and happened to remember) that had suburban settings. There was, of course, Leave It to Beaver from the 1950s, and more recently -- after the myth of suburban bliss collapsed -- Edward Scissorhands, American Beauty and The Ice Storm. |
Thursday, February 23, 2006
|
Silvercup Studios Sets $1 Billion Complex With New York City suddenly awash in film and television productions, Silvercup Studios has unveiled plans for a version of Hollywood on the East River, a $1 billion complex with soundstages, commercial space and housing on the Queens waterfront south of the Queensboro Bridge. |
|
London to install city-wide wi-fi network The City of London today announced plans to install a dense and comprehensive wi-fi internet network throughout London's Square Mile financial district. The city has contracted UK wireless provider The Cloud to install and manage the network. |
|
'Refugee Camp' To Be Put Up In Central Park Visitors to Central Park and Prospect Park this September will encounter an 8,000-square-foot tent city. The "refugee camps" won't house any actual refugees, but are designed to help New Yorkers understand what it is like to live in one. |
|
Public Smog Public Smog is a public park composed of intangibles and built in the economic realm of carbon offset trading. Offsets purchased and controlled by the public will be inacessible to polluting industries. The Park will exist as a construct of heightened air quality occuring in this unfixed public space. The park's size will vary,k reflecting shifting financial control of carbon offset shares, compounded by naturally occuring seasonal fluctuations in air quality. |
|
His design is to meet human needs To architect Cameron Sinclair, the bigger the problem, the more ways there must be to solve it. His goal is to find low-cost solutions that inspire. |
|
Transport experts have seen the future, and it's got pedals The right to travel when and where we please will be eroded over the next 50 years as the shortage of cheap oil and environmental concerns force us to lead more local lives, according to a government report. |
|
The Koolhaas Kids Come of Age Joshua Prince-Ramus explains why disciples of Rem Koolhaas are moving beyond the iconic Dutch architect's ideas, with a more collaborative style. |
|
New York Wonders: An Island Fit for What? It's the kind of choice development site that would have made an old-school planning czar like Robert Moses salivate: 172 acres of waterfront property just off the tip of Manhattan. Yet city and state officials clearly are at a loss about what to do with Governors Island. |
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
|
Bite-size city takes the biscuit Thousands of biscuits and sweets are being used to build a cityscape in a London department store. |
|
Rotterdam Shows Art, Architecture, Design and Visual Culture from Today's China Can we learn something from the huge, breakneck changes taking place in what is almost the world's largest country? |
|
Landscaped Beyond all Recognition To me the city square offers the perfect balance between landscaping and enjoyment, the work of a few providing leisure for many. As far as I’m concerned, they should be our yards of the future. |
|
A vision for Najaf: Milton Keynes of the Middle East One is famous as a new town, the other as an old town, but this week the fates of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire and Najaf in southern Iraq were indelibly linked: the firm that turned the former into a model modern town in the 1960s is remodelling the Iraqi city that has faced suicide bombers and bloody firefights. |
|
Extreme weather 'blighting buildings and beauty spots' Britain's heritage is being endangered by climate change, the National Trust has warned, as extremes of wet and dry weather take their toll on buildings and beauty spots. |
|
Gritty Inner-City Lofts Make Their Way Into the 'Burbs Next month, Martin Sickles is moving into a loft apartment with all the hallmarks of a converted urban warehouse, from wrought-iron railings to a spare brick exterior out of the Industrial Revolution. But his loft isn't in a century-old factory building on a gritty inner-city block. It's in a new development in rural Palmetto, Ga., surrounded by meadows, stables and an organic farm that will grow things like asparagus and edible flowers. "It's my little piece of New York," says Mr. Sickles. "But New York is too urban for me." |
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
|
Seven deadly sins of driving As civilized human beings, we have discussed throughout the centuries how to live our lives in a manner that is fair and benevolent to all. One of the early written codes was a description of "The Seven Deadly Sins," compiled in the 6th Century to help people live a more righteous life. |
|
Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art The important question for contemporary information artists working with geographic information systems is, "How do we view the landscape according to database logic?" |
|
Wireless network to cover City The City of London is to offer ubiquitous wireless internet access, with hardware installed in lampposts and street signs. Internet provider The Cloud is joining with the City of London Corporation to turn the entire business area into a gigantic Wi-Fi hotspot. |
|
Thomas Jefferson: The Founding Father Of Sprawl? On this President's Day, are you stuck in traffic from your exurban house to the sale at the local Hummer dealer? It's Thomas Jefferson's fault. The genius who drafted the Declaration of Independence also espoused a far-ranging anti-urban philosophy, with policies setting the stage for two centuries of sprawling development and political biases against cities. |
Monday, February 20, 2006
|
The Radiant City When we look at the New York City skyline after dark, we see an urban landscape particular to modernity, one in which the significance of each building is designated not by form or position, but by light. "Transformed by Light: The New York Night," an exhibition coinciding with the centenary of the IESNA, celebrates this particularly American vision of the city. |
|
Hopeful Images for New Orleans Is there any point in making suggestions in the Netherlands about how to rebuild New Orleans? Should outsiders even want to offer solutions? Can architecture play a role after a disaster? Aren't engineering works - dikes, storm barriers, drainage systems, roads, telephone lines - more urgently needed? |
|
By 2025, Planners See a Million New Stories in the Crowded City With higher birth rates among Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers, immigrants continuing to gravitate to New York City and a housing boom transforming all five boroughs, the city is struggling to cope with a phenomenon that few other cities in the Northeast or Midwest now face: a growing population. It is expected to pass nine million by 2020. |
|
Dude, Where’s My Car? “I’d be lost without my car,” says Carl Balser, chief of transportation planning for Howard County. “It’s tough [not having a car] in our car culture.” Yet there are more than 200,000 residents of Baltimore City who don’t have access to a car. They are, as Balser describes it, “lost.” Not only is it harder for them to get around the city, but it’s also difficult for them to get to work. They must seek jobs along bus routes or pay for taxis to get to jobs, and they often have to pass up opportunities for higher-paying jobs that are located beyond city limits. |
Saturday, February 18, 2006
|
If You Build It, They Will Come -- on Foot "Cultures and climates differ all over the world," notes architect Jan Gehl, "but people are the same. They will gather in public if you give them a good place to do it." |
|
Towering over Mies
A proposed office tower by Norman Foster, 610 Lexington Avenue, would |
|
'First' Suburbs Growing Older and Poorer, Report Warns Half a century ago, millions of young white couples left America's central cities for greener places to build homes and rear families. Their move created booming commuter communities and a new way of life.
But that idealized picture has been transformed and the future of those pioneering suburbs is in jeopardy, according to a study issued yesterday by the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington. |
|
Paris Looks to Los Angeles for Art and Architecture Paris might be where art is revered, and New York City where it is marketed, but there is a growing international recognition that Los Angeles is where a significant amount of new art is produced. Yes, something is brewing besides coffee in those Arts District lofts. |
|
Is City Traffic Killing Your Love Life? Ever wonder why, in such a crowded place as New York City, it can be so hard to find a mate? |
Friday, February 17, 2006
|
Dutch gather ideas for 'Newer Orleans' The new New Orleans could contain schools on hills, dikes thick enough to double as public parks, and a futuristic zigzag-shaped building with hanging gardens that will symbolize the city’s rebirth and summon home its scattered residents. |
|
Get rolling with bicycles Chicago has been recognized by Bicycling Magazine as the best "big" city for bicycling in North America. That didn't happen by accident, and Chicago's success in becoming "the city that bikes" offers a model to Harrisburg and other smaller cities about how to save energy, reduce congestion, cut pollution and improve citizen's health through encouraging the use of bicycles. |
|
Complex . . . but just what did Mayne mean? Most architectural lecturers who visit Ireland manage to refer to James Joyce in their talks and Mayne did not disappoint, comparing this complex thinking to Joyce's stream of consciousness. |
|
Big Dig benefit: A quicker downtown trip The $14.6-billion Big Dig project has cut the average trip through the center of Boston from 19.5 minutes to 2.8 minutes and has increased by 800,000 the number of people in Eastern Massachusetts who can now get to Logan International Airport in 40 minutes or less, according to a report that is scheduled to be released today. |
Thursday, February 16, 2006
|
Food Geography: How Food Access Affects Diet and Health In the United States, nutrition-related health problems are reaching epidemic levels. Reports from the Surgeon General indicate that the number of adults and children who are obese or at-risk for obesity has increased dramatically during the past decade. Furthermore, low-income and minority communities are by far the hardest hit as obesity and dietrelated disease rates skyrocket across America. Health disparities among US population groups are related to inequalities in socioeconomic status – disparities which may be affected by unequal access to healthy food. Emerging evidence suggests that access to healthy food in neighborhoods is associated with a health-promoting diet and that poor access is associated with poor health outcomes. |
|
The Mada Volcano His practice has built 1,204,000 m2 in five years. His portfolio includes everything from skyscapers to traditional Chinese houses. Qingyun Ma, founder of MADA s.p.a.m., is the emblem of a new generation of Chinese architects who, despite having trained in Western countries, are indifferent to the notion of “style”. |
|
Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology. |
|
Maya 2 Google Earth Maya2GoogleEarth is an open-source, cross-platform tool developed at Eyebeam for exporting 3D models from Maya into Google Earth. Once installed, it allows you to export 3D models from within your scene as a single Google Earth Placemark (KML) file. |
|
Officials Consider Plan for Gondolas Over New York's Harbor Governors Island in New York Harbor, now accessible only by ferry, may be linked to Manhattan and Brooklyn with aerial gondolas that would carry 3,000 people an hour as part of a development plan, officials said today. [via] |
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
|
Foreigner Cyclists in Beijing Beijing Today has reported Beijing's bicycle sales could be set to hit record highs this year as more foreigners are expected to take up cycling than ever before. Among the city's estimated 70,000 laowais, increasing number are buying bicycles in an effort to beat traffic and cut costs. And with warmer weather just weeks away, the trend looks set to spread. |
|
Beyond Richard Florida: A Cultural Sector of Our Own Now that Richard Florida has moved on from the "rise" of the creative class to the "flight" of the creative class, the cultural sector is left with the question: are we better off today than before he re-classified us? |
|
Seattle Waterfront to Be Reshaped by Park Artists and city planners are reshaping the city's largest undeveloped downtown water front -- a toxic vacant lot -- into a sculpture park, museum and environmental restoration project that officials hope will become a new landmark alongside the Space Needle and Pike Place Market. |
|
Face Values
Active façades are proliferating worldwide. What message is this new medium sending? |
|
Designing outside the box In recent years architects around the world have stopped using straight lines. If this trend continues at its current rate, a child drawing a house 10 years from now will not sketch a square building with a straight floor and a shingled roof, but rather one more reminiscent of a soap bubble. |
|
Foster to lead £184m project to transform the ancient heart of St Petersburg He will follow in the footsteps of Dutch and Italian architects by transforming the now decrepit New Holland Island. |
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
|
Building civilisation Richard Rogers is celebrated for his many stunning buildings and his pioneering views on sustainable cities - not bad for a man who, as a child, was told he was lazy and stupid. At 72, and with two major new projects just opening, what has been his motto? Never take 'no' for an answer. |
|
Urban sprawl restricts panthers' habitat The estimated 87 breeding adult Florida panthers that still roam South Florida's swamps and prairies need more protection if they are ever to be de-listed as an endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, trying to wipe the egg off its face after having used bad science to support more development in areas where panthers roam, now is emphasizing preservation of that habitat. This is good. |
|
Wonders or blunders? How far will we go to attract tourists? |
|
'Micro' wind turbines are coming to town A handful of start-ups are floating an idea that could change the face of the wind power industry. Rather than build farms of towering wind turbines in rural areas, some companies are designing "micro," or small-scale, turbines that fit on top of buildings. The idea is to generate electricity from wind in urban or suburban settings. |
|
The birth of a building The design for a radical, new, 61-story skyscraper burst onto the Louisville scene Thursday, when Museum Plaza was unveiled to the public. But the story of the building began well before that. |
|
Cutting-edge Spain seizes design crown This week the New York Museum of Modern Art will open an exhibition devoted to the remarkable new wave of bold architecture that is sweeping across Spain. 'This is the hothouse of Europe in terms of new buildings,' says the show's curator, Terence Riley. 'The percentage of commissions going to high-profile architects in Spain is notably high.' |
|
Spain expands on its sense of place When "On-Site: New Architecture in Spain" first appeared on the Museum of Modern Art's calendar, it seemed unlikely to accomplish much more than anointing the latest national hotbed of architectural experimentation. Did we really need a big, expensive show mounted just to let us know that Spain is the new Holland, just as Holland was the new Japan a couple of years before that? |
|
Gains in Spain: Once-Staid Architecture Soars Ahead of the Curve A quarter-century ago, the idea that Spain might be considered a vivid center of architectural creativity would have been considered definitely silly, and possibly cruel. |
|
NOX D-Tower The D-Tower is a project where the intensive (feelings, qualia) and the extensive (space, quantities) start exchanging roles, where human action, color, money, value, feelings all become networked entities. |
Monday, February 13, 2006
|
Commuters all at sea as governments lose the plot The history of the city could be described as one punctuated by technological innovation. The invention of gunpowder in the 14th century impacted our urban form through increased city-edge fortifications, with the building of moats and outposts establishing a more distinct separation between city and country. But the emergence of an oil economy and the invention of the internal combustion engine blurred this distinction, creating a vast suburbia well beyond the reach of effective public transport infrastructure. |
|
Boom town
The fastest-growing city on earth, Dubai is spending mind-boggling sums on construction and is about to swallow up P&O in its bid to be a global maritime power. Given the scale of its ambition, could it become the most important place on the planet? |
|
A Survey of Spain, Architects' Playground Is there any show more overdue than a major one about contemporary Spanish architecture? |
Saturday, February 11, 2006
|
A Survey of Spain, Architects' Playground Is there any show more overdue than a major one about contemporary Spanish architecture? |
|
A Survey of Spain, Architects' Playground Is there any show more overdue than a major one about contemporary Spanish architecture? |
|
A Survey of Spain, Architects' Playground Is there any show more overdue than a major one about contemporary Spanish architecture? |
|
Satellite urban areas to change City’s face New urban areas of the like should solve some of the socio-economic problems of a new modern city, including master plans for transport, environment, housing, electricity, drainage and waste treatment. |
|
Your Hidden City The theme of the contest is uncovering the Hidden City, your Hidden City, the one you see every day. It may be in plain sight of everyone else, but it is your eye that finds the extraordinariness in a particular street corner, a unique stair, a crazy intersection, a visually arresting approach, or a particular tree in the city. |
Friday, February 10, 2006
|
Livable Streets: A New Vision for New York Check out the ongoing exhibition in New York put on by three great public groups: The Open Planning Project, Transportation Alternatives and Project for Public Spaces called Livable Streets. The appealing concept of city streets transformed into pedestrian-friendly public spaces is the theme for Livable Streets: A New Vision for New York, an exhibition of images, graphics and multimedia. On display at the Urban Center, the exhibit launches the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign. For those of us that might not make it to NYC there are some highly recommended videos online that show the energy of this new campaign. |
|
New Orleans and the New Urban vision In a recent article in the Washington Post, architect and professor of architecture Roger K Lewis bemoans the proposed rebuilding New Orleans. 'Why, ' he asks, 'do we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there are places on the earth's surface - wetlands and floodplains, seismically active regions, arid deserts, steep hillsides and cliffs - where erecting cities endangers not only humans, but also the natural environment?' |
|
Next, he'll build a canyon With a postmodern penchant for plastic flowers and a résumé of urban park space, Ken Smith isn't the first landscape architect you'd think of to design the Orange County Great Park. |
|
No bicycles, no signs, no peace ... no way! On the street near Haim Bar-Akiva's home, a sign warns children that riding bicycles is forbidden. |
|
Oil town gets a makeover plan Strangers stand on a corner in downtown Drayton Valley, talking about what works -- and what doesn't. |
|
Winner: Most Sociopathic Superbowl Vehicle Ad
Congratulations, General Motors! Your stock may be in the toilet, but your Hummer H3 "Little Monster" television commercial has been named the 2006 "Most Sociopathic Superbowl Vehicle Ad." |
|
Maps By Architecture Students Track Sex Offenders A team from Texas A&M University's College of Architecture is developing computerized mapping techniques to help police track locations and estimate risk-levels for registered sex offenders. |
|
Oil addiction: Feds can help us recover How can President Bush chide the American public for its addiction to oil when his administration has done nothing but encourage and feed this addiction? At every turn, the current administration has steered away from alternative renewable energy development and automobile fuel-efficiency standards. |
|
Skyscraper to transform Louisville skyline It will thrust 61 stories into the sky, a trio of towers that will dominate Louisville's skyline. It will feature an acre-sized "island," open to the public, that will hover 22 stories in the air. |
|
Two against four: the war of the wheels I don't think cars are evil, but I think it's easy to misuse them. There's a legitimate purpose. But why does anyone need a Cadillac Escalade? |
Thursday, February 9, 2006
|
Marcus Prize-winning architect issues call for high-flying ideas In a Journal Sentinel interview last May, after the prize was announced, Maas joked that the firm saw itself as "the anti-Calatravas," working in a grittier, more earth-bound design language than that of Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry, both known for their buoyant, expressive forms. Maas likened those superstars to architectural "hairdressers." Publication of that comment prompted Gehry to contact the firm and complain, "Who is this Winy?" Maas recalled. "He asked, 'Who is he calling a hairdresser? We need to talk.' " They have yet to get together, Maas said. "But who knows? Maybe I will end up teaming up with Gehry." |
|
Metropolitan World Atlas In addition to the trusty Bosatlas and all the other atlases that show maps of each country and continent, there's now an atlas that focuses on the city: the metropolis, that is. |
|
A drive toward fewer cars Steep gas prices. Flabby bodies cruising for diabetes and heart trouble. Global warming. Air pollution. |
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
|
The Next Design City: Bilbao Effect As cities worldwide increasingly count on art and architecture to draw sophisticated travelers, some are defining themselves as "design destinations. |
|
A Florida City Awaits the Payoff From Its Bet on Condos As the stepchild to its more beautiful sisters in southwest Florida, Naples and Sarasota, this city has struggled for decades to revitalize its picturesque downtown and attract snowbirds and tourists. |
|
Poor people, poor homes We are told that good mass housing is not a question of aesthetics or style. What a lot of rot. |
|
In a fight for light A Santa Fe architect is challenging an Albuquerque developer’s plans to build a three-story condominium , saying it would interfere with her solar rights. |
|
Light Pollution and the return of Night Who wants to look at stars – who needs astronomy? – when there's a "sports complex with a driving range and multi-purpose dome" nearby, burning with floodlights and halogens, incandescent in the American night? Who wants constellations when you can watch a "billboard on Route 22 in Wingdale, New York that is lit by a dedicated floodlight"? Who, after all, wants to put up with something called nighttime? |
|
Barrier redesign knows no bounds They now come in a jaunty nautical style. And a somber federalist version. There's a shiny, sleek modernist type. Some are fashioned into giant, pseudo golf balls. Whether made of copper or bronze, aluminum or granite, all could stop an 8-ton truck barreling into them at 50 miles per hour |
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
|
Exhibition : Future City From Archigram to Zaha Hadid, Future City traces the history and development of international experimental architecture since 1950. This exhibition at London's Barbican Centre runs from June 15 to September 17, 2006, and features 60 visionary building projects and urban plans from around the world. These ground-breaking projects illustrate the energy and experimentation that characterise radical architecture, and raise questions about the nature of buildings, cities and society. |
|
L.A.'s future is up in the air Sometime in the next five years, traffic all across L.A. will freeze. The freeways that were once a fast-moving way to get from one part of the city to another will become part of a slow-moving glacier, edging down the hills to nowhere. |
|
Taking the rapid out of transit An Antarctic expedition is tough, but try going to LAX by train or bus. |
|
Amsterdam 'No Toking' Signs Being Pilfered If you can't beat 'em ... joint 'em? The City of Amsterdam has begun selling recently introduced "no toking" signs to prevent the official ones from being stolen as collector's items, a spokesman said Friday. |
|
Chipping Rock for 50 Years To Keep the Faucets Working They call me Vinnie the Mole," said Mr. Crimeni, an operating engineer in the driver's seat of the machine digging City Tunnel No. 3 far beneath Manhattan's street level, part of a 50-year, $6 billion project to upgrade New York City's water system. |
|
San Francisco to consider limit on parking spaces at new buildings Parking in downtown San Francisco -- an area not known for having very much of it -- could get even tougher under a measure being considered today by the Board of Supervisors. |
Monday, February 6, 2006
|
Can we still believe in iconic buildings? Norman Foster's "gherkin" in London, Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim - is this the age of the iconic building? Or are they just expressions of political and architectural vanity? Two leading critics debate. |
|
Urban Media Panel - Transmediale Architecture and public space are increasingly permeated by media. Facades like the Spots light and media facade on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, developed by realities:united architects, not only bring media art into public space, but they turn architecture itself into an audio-visual, often interactive medium. |
|
In Memory of 1906, a City Shakes Like a Bowl Full of Jell-O In this centennial year of the great 1906 earthquake, San Francisco has tectonic shifts on the brain. Among the planned commemorations of the event are "Symphony No. 1: The Earthquake," to be played by the Contra Costa Wind Symphony, an "Earthquake Walking Tour of San Francisco" by the Northern California Geological Society and a tour of campus retrofit projects at the University of California, Berkeley. |
|
Modernism: the idea that just won't go away The British reviled modernism at first, now it's part of the fabric of our nation. The largest ever survey of the movement suggests the defining aesthetic of the 20th century may be just as influential in the 21st. |
|
Sleeping Beauty Governors Island, 172 acres of American history lying just off the southern tip of Manhattan, is terra incognita to most New Yorkers. Commuters, glimpsing it from the Staten Island Ferry, see only an array of abandoned modern buildings and two unpromising landmarks: a white ventilation tower belonging to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, and Castle Williams, a grim 19th-century fortification, dark red and pierced by black windows. |
Sunday, February 5, 2006
|
The Space Race It's a small world after all: Mike Davis's crowded look at global urban catastrophe. |
|
Albert Speer Jr. to Build "Detroit of the East" in China With its plans to build a city neighborhood dedicated to the car industry Changchun, China is taking another ambitious step toward becoming a key player in the global automotive industry. And the son of Hitler's architect is lending his services. |
Saturday, February 4, 2006
|
Into the heart of urban darkness ''I didn't want to write about nightlife, or clubbing, or the glitzy city," says Sukhdev Sandhu. "I wanted to write about something a bit more dogged and old-fashioned. I wanted to write about the people who make the city run at night." |
Friday, February 3, 2006
|
Architect starts with idea that space makes life possible. Are you ready to have all that you know challenged? |
|
High-Rises That Have Low Impact on Nature With its curtain wall and faceted crystal design, the Bank of America building rising at 1 Bryant Park in Manhattan probably seems unremarkable to New Yorkers accustomed to looming glass skyscrapers. But it's not architecture with a capital A that makes the tower unusual. |
|
Two Top Papers Ask: Is the Earth Heading for Doom? While most Americans remain preoccupied with war, terrorism, high gas prices--or the coming Pitt-Jolie baby--an issue that may dwarf all of those concerns receives major attention on the front page of the Sunday editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. |
|
Surveillance Prompts a Suit: Police v. Police The demonstrators arrived angry, departed furious. The police had herded them into pens. Stopped them from handing out fliers. Threatened them with arrest for standing on public sidewalks. Made notes on which politicians they cheered and which ones they razzed. |
|
Melbourne plans to axe cars from city centre CARS will be driven out of the city in favour of public transport and bicycles under a radical new council strategy that abandons plans for a multibillion-dollar cross-city tunnel and suggests slashing speed limits in the CBD. Under Melbourne City Council's draft strategy, commuters would be "weaned" off cars. |
|
Archigram goes public with £300,000 grant After 40 years of being stored in garden sheds, under beds and in cupboards, the archive of the 1960s collective Archigram is finally being made available to the public. |
|
Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend. This "tipping point" scenario has begun to consume many prominent researchers in the United States and abroad, because the answer could determine how drastically countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years. While scientists remain uncertain when such a point might occur, many say it is urgent that policymakers cut global carbon dioxide emissions in half over the next 50 years or risk the triggering of changes that would be irreversible. |
|
Living Ever Larger: Estates in the Sky For more than a decade, McMansions have been a fixture on the American landscape. Now apartments are being supersized, too. Make way for the McCondo. |
|
Global Warming and Urban Transport Urban transport in Australia’s cities is expensive, unhealthy, and dangerous. Add the reality of global warming and it is clear that we need a total rethink about the way urban transport is delivered. |
Thursday, February 2, 2006
|
Harbor Next The Homely Middle Branch is Set to Become An Urban Ecotopia (But Don't Talk to Speculators, and Don't Touch the Water) |
|
Architecture: If it ain't broke, why fix it? Mixing academic study with real work has produced world-class Australian architects. Now, the University of Technology, Sydney is rewriting that winning formula. |
|
Green is good for buildings and business Green buildings can command higher rents or prices, be quicker to secure tenants, enjoy lower tenant turnover, improve business efficiency, cost less to operate and maintain, and attract grants, subsidies and other inducements for energy efficiency and environmental stewardship. |
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
|
Naming Rites That punchy name on your new building may sound like a trifle—but it probably cost a bundle. |
|
London Olympics Chooses Planning Team London has taken the next step toward realizing its 2012 Olympics construction plans. On January 17, London’s interim Olympic Delivery Authority announced that the master planning team responsible for the city’s bid last year, including Foreign Office Architects, HOK Sport, Buro Happold, Allies & Morrison, WS Atkins, and Arup, will also develop London’s Olympic Park. |
|
It's humans vs wildlife in booming American West Mary Smith used to consider it charming when she saw the occasional mule deer traipsing through this small Idaho town. That was before herds of the long-eared animals native to this remote mountain region began camping out in her yard, eating everything in sight. "They practically ring the doorbell,'' Smith said of the bucks, does and fawns that have laid waste to thousands of dollars of landscaping. |
|
Condo competition adds flair to building boom Two developers hope to jazz up Mississauga's downtown skyline by bringing a cosmopolitan flair to a new 52-storey condominium tower being built near Square One. |
|
Commuting by Wits, Thumb
It's 4:15 a.m. on a workday, and John Schindel is in his kitchen in a rural part of Stafford County, running through his commuting checklist before he heads out into the dark, drizzly, pre-dawn. Got the blue lunchbox. Got the fluorescent vest. A quick spritz of Febreze fabric freshener on his flannel jacket and he's out the door. |
[Archives]
Search entries: