Urbanism News
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
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Forty years on, the future has arrived The radical 1960s architectural collective Archigram is finally achieving recognition for its extraordinary visions. Why did it take so long? |
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Amazing Archigram: how a bunch of English architectural fantasists conquered the world. When a group of young English architects with slightly dull day jobs named themselves Archigram and started spending their evenings drawing up fantastical, science-fiction buildings at the start of the 1960s, two things did not seem likely. Firstly that they would get to build very little during their careers. And secondly that they would become globally famous. |
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The Untitled Project The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph. |
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Pitt gives movies the go-by to be Brad the builder After trying to tear down the walls of Troy, Brad Pitt wants to turn himself into a master builder. The star is planning a break from filming blockbusters to learn the secrets of modern design at the Los Angeles studio of Frank Gehry, one of the world's leading architects. |
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
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How free should tourists roam? Hordes of tourists at Independence Park responded to new security procedures yesterday with some bemusement - and some exasperation - as the park began its effort to funnel all visitors to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall through one security facility on Market Street. |
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A changing Hayes Valley wants to retain funky vibe After 31 years of serving soul food on Hayes Street, Emmit Powell couldn't afford the recent doubling of his rent. |
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Big-box store ban may be repealed Wal-Mart sued county over ordinance keeping retailers out away from unincorporated areas. |
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The White Zone Is for Loading and Unloading Art People don't often go to an airport for the art, but that might begin to change next month when travelers start hustling by Gate 122 of the new Terminal 1 at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. |
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Building on faith The city is hoping that Enrique Norten can serve up a restorative new architecture in Brooklyn and Harlem. |
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Architects join fight against flab If there is a lift to take you up to your office every day are you really going to choose the stairs? |
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A Grand Debate Gehry Team Accused of Breaking Rank. |
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The Reflecting City The Reflecting City: Reconstructing Dublin is a mixed media exhibition/cd-rom/website focusing on urban transformation in Dublin. The inner-city of Dublin has experienced massive change overthe past decade flowing from an influx of private and public investment - The Reflecting City examines this process. |
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Square of the Patriarch..São Paolo, Brazil The Square of the Patriarch is an important place in São Paolo, Brazil. Its location makes it part of a connection between the old town and its new extension. So it seems appropriate that a project for the Square by Paulo Mendes da Rocha would be forward thinking while respecting the historical context of the city. |
Monday, March 29, 2004
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Looking back on a better way Expansion was on the horizon from the moment Canada's first subway system opened in 1954. |
Sunday, March 28, 2004
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Do Unbuilt Architects Get Paid? How an architect who produces countless designs but few buildings can be a success. |
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Portland draws international urban planners The city's reputation as a leader in green development attracts an increasing number of delegations. |
Friday, March 26, 2004
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European Central Bank Competition The European Central Bank (ECB) has completed an international urban planning and architectural design competition for its new premises. |
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Architects Protect a Controversial Modern Building For 40 years, Wilmington's only office building designed by a modern architect of international stature has sparked contrasting opinions in this downtown of classical style corporate headquarters. |
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The miracles of Curitiba Miracles happen even where cities are concerned. Cities that are condemned with the excesses of urban ills can come around and show that "the city is not a problem but a solution." Such a city is Curitiba, located fifty miles off the coast in the south of Brazil, that has earned an international reputation for being a model city. |
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Skyscrapers transforming City skyline Despite gloomy forecasts that the days of the skyscraper were numbered post-September 11 and frequent warnings of terror threats in the capital, planning applications for high rise buildings continue to drop into authority in-trays. |
Thursday, March 25, 2004
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Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School Last month, The Architect’s Newspaper published a piece by Michael McDonough, the accomplished New York-based architect, writer and teacher, called “The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School.” Reprinted at Design Observer. |
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The Ultimate Ride Coney Island gets a new subway station—the most technologically progressive in the MTA system and the first real advance along the boardwalk since the Wonder Wheel. Anne Guiney takes us to the end of the line. |
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Maison Folie de Wazemmes - NOX This year Lille in France is one of the Cultural Capitals of Europe. Maison Folie de Wazemmes will be one of the locations where events take place. |
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Barcelona Runs Deep Deep below the apparently horizontal building is the key to its uniqueness: a complex hydrological system that fuels the building's climate control systems, and that of neighboring buildings, while addressing several other problems at the same time. |
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Cities losing soul as councils play safe Twitchy local authorities, obsessed with safety and frightened of compensation claims, are turning urban areas into "fun-free, soulless" spaces, says a campaign launched today. |
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Chain Stores in Crosshairs Proposed S.F. law calls for limits on 'formula retail' businesses |
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Seeds of change in East L.A. There are no yoga classes on this side of town. No gourmet grocery stores, or bevies of wannabe actresses sipping low-fat chais. |
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Video Gamers Race On Times Square Billboard High above Times Square, there is now a gigantic video car racing game that anyone with a cellphone can play. Of course, you need to be nearby to see the screen, at 43rd and Broadway. |
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Architect defends 'ugly building' The architect who designed the building voted Britain's ugliest has defended its design - on the day it is being torn down. |
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'Pasadena Gets It' A watershed moment for the picture-perfect streets of Old Town Pasadena came more than 20 years ago. |
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DESIGN 2012: Visualizing a land fit for Olympians The finalists have cooked up some high-style strategies for disaster. |
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Government makes design a priority Britain has heeded calls from the celebrated architect Lord Rogers and the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba), who say that the aesthetics of building projects should be incorporated into future planning applications. |
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
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Wal-Mart going urban Retailer sets its sights on urban areas eager for retail. |
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Learning through the built environment Now is the time for more structured and sustained initiatives that constructively consider young people's perspectives and experiences of their built environment to be taken into account, not only on a educational level but also on a political one. |
Monday, March 22, 2004
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US Urban Planners Try to Maximize Walking in the City Obesity will soon overtake tobacco as the major cause of death in the United States, according to a new study. In response, federal health officials are asking Americans to eat less and exercise more. Getting physically fit may soon be a bit easier in Boston. Urban designers working on a renovated downtown are factoring in new opportunities for walking and exercise. |
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He Measures Oakland's Beat, and Parks Bloom Places, like people, can get the blues. Walter Hood listens to them. |
Saturday, March 20, 2004
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Unlocking the gates Imagine it's Britain 2014 and there's a gated community on every street corner. Outside the gates, armies of the excluded riot while the rich cower behind their electric fences, barely protected by armed guards who are on the verge of losing control. |
Friday, March 19, 2004
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Eichler tracts in Palo Alto may attain historic status San Francisco has its Presidio. San Jose has its Peralta Adobe. Now Palo Alto will have its . . . Eichler tracts? |
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Beyond the Manege: Historical City or Architectural Wasteland? One of the capital’s most historic buildings burnt ominously in the heart of the capital on the night of the presidential elections. When the fire was put out, only the walls remained of the Manege, a 190-year-old neoclassic edifice situated right next to the Kremlin. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov promised the next morning to restore the relic. The problem is — restoring the building to its former splendour using new materials is easier said than done. The same goes for the rest of Moscow’s architecture. |
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Libeskind builds modestly in London Architect Daniel Libeskind has moved from his master plan for New York's ground zero to something more modest. |
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Iconoclast architect becomes a trend When Thomas Gordon Smith comes to New York, it's not to see Times Square or the latest store in SoHo designed by Rem Koolhaas but to revisit a stretch of dingy gray buildings on Lafayette Street in the East Village. |
Thursday, March 18, 2004
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Stockport keeps it grey Planning officials at Stockport council have insisted that the 25-metre (82ft) chimneys at Sovereign Rubber should be painted grey - so they blend in with the miserable skyline. |
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Tuning Tuning is a strategy developed by Peanutz Architekten for "re-loading" used and worn-out structures with new possibilities. Initially, they look for any existing potential and what happens when the confront this potential with other ideas. |
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Home in Stockholm One hundred new apartments in downtown Stockholm may be a hint that urban living is slowly returning to the city's shopping and business district. The mixed-use redevelopment "Klara Zenit" is a transformation of a gloomy 1971 office monolith into a colorful block of apartments, offices, and shops. |
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China's designer revolution is based on thoughts of mortgages, not Mao With banks ready to offer 80 per cent low-interest credit, the rich are abandoning their proletarian apartments in communal blocks for residential developments with names such as Palm Springs, Fifth Avenue, Aristocrat Towers, Chateau Regency or Merlin Champagne. |
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
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Common of Earthly Delights Even those of us who are too young to have known Times Square in its age of glory -- even many people who have never been to New York, for that matter -- carry in their heads a nocturnal black-and-white image of glowing signs for Camel cigarettes and the Bond Clothing store, of humpbacked taxis coursing through the X-shaped crossroads of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, of crowds of men in dark suits and fedoras gazing up at the news zipper on the Times Tower. They're nostalgia magnets, these pictures. We look at them and think, That was life. The hats, the crowds, the shows, the bars -- yes, here was life in the center of the city that was the center of the world. And as Times Square is in so many ways the incarnation of urban life itself, so nostalgia for Times Square is nostalgia for a lost idea of urbanness, or of urbanity -- for a time, before the advent of television and the suburbs, and before riots and drug wars, when everyone knew that city life was the best life of all. |
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An urban dweller writes a guide on living the metro life If Kyle Ezell's vision comes true, Americans are on the verge of a mass movement back to the cities, and San Diegans are already leading the way. |
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Paintings of Sarah Trigg Sarah Trigg’s paintings, made with both traditonal and digital media, explore the connection between geography and biology. |
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Discreet Landscapes Laurie Olin’s graceful greenspaces are also secret security systems. |
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
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The joy of concrete More and more brutalist buildings are earmarked for demolition. |
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Towns can expect more - even from Wal-Mart
This fantasy Wal-Mart is a shimmering, glassy presence, its vastness broken up by luminous bays. There are no cars in sight; they're all underground. |
Monday, March 15, 2004
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Food System Planning: Setting the Community’s Table Food system planning is a relatively new concept that grows out of American society’s increasing concern for what it eats, where and how its food is produced and the inequities that exist in the distribution of food resources. |
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Guru of the creative class Today's technological nerds and geeks are foundation members of this new revolutionary class, tucked in with scientists, engineers, architects, those who work in the media and the more familiar members like artists, writers and musicians - anyone whose function in their work is "to come up with meaningful new forms", as he puts it. |
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Up on the Roof The new Academy of Sciences will cap a trend toward green roofs. |
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High Anxiety Right now, the designers of the Freedom Tower are struggling to master three colossal forces that are at work in the stark, empty sky above the World Trade Center site: gravity, wind and, perhaps most formidably, fear. |
Sunday, March 14, 2004
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Bowhunting in the Back Yard?
Suburban sprawl has created the perfect breeding ground for deer, which roam through and around neighborhoods and subdivisions without fear of predators. |
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Wind Power Gains Force in New York State The Brooklyn Brewery recently gave its customers one more reason to feel good about drinking beer: the company uses wind-generated energy to produce its beverages. Although supporting this renewable resource raised the New York-based company’s electric bill more than 15%, president Steve Hindy thought the extra expense was worth setting a community example. “I think we might be selling more beer because of it,” he speculates. |
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Our very own Roman amphitheatres To many observers, the plain, powerful geometry of grain elevators has long represented a broad-shouldered counterpoint, worth preserving, to the increasingly glassy, high-tech appearance of cities. |
Friday, March 12, 2004
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Urban Barn Raising While big developers work nearby, Cascade neighborhood residents preserve a block for eco-friendly renovation. |
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Contain Yourself! When it comes to housing, can thinking outside the box mean living inside a box? |
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The Art of Selling Luxury Condos as Art Izak Senbahar a developer of luxury condominiums in Manhattan, was commenting this week that neighbors should not complain about a glass tower overlooking the Hudson River that he is planning. It is being designed by Richard Meier for a site just south of the two Perry Street buildings the architect also created. "Simply by the fact that a new building by Richard Meier is being sold there, values will go up," Mr. Senbahar said. "Do you want to have a printer next to you or another high-class pure Richard Meier building next door?" |
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Save our eyesores! Another icon of New Brutalism faces destruction after the Government refused to protect the unloved Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth. But some of these concrete monsters are important classics. |
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Let the Design Sprint Begin Five architecture teams have prepared designs for an Olympic Village, to be in Long Island City, Queens, to help New York win its bid to be host to the summer games in 2012. |
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No Safe Arbor in the City Trees are disappearing from urban areas. Most people don't realize the significance of the loss, but one man is fighting for a place in the shade. |
Thursday, March 11, 2004
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Robot builder could 'print' houses A robot for "printing" houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect's computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs. |
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Glossy with Content Some of Holland's most talked-about TV personalities have their own popular magazine. And now Rem Koolhaas has one as well. His handy-sized hip glossy isn't called 'Rem' or ® but 'Content'. But does it contain any 'content' or are we dealing with an obligatory personality cult? |
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Mass Fix-Up, Mass Displacement, Mass Destruction or Mass Renewal? 1 It took a few years, but the sweeping restructuring of post-war residential neighbourhoods seems to be underway at last. Renovation, demolition and reconstruction are in progress throughout the country, from Den Helder to Maastrict and from Delfzijl to Vlissingen. Discontentment about monolithic neighbourhoods full of monotonous and obsolete blocks of dwellings that no longer meet the wishes of today has finally given way to action. More... & |
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Country's ugliest building to be torn down Britain's ugliest building, a concrete shopping centre and car park in Portsmouth, is to be demolished after the government today refused a request to list it. he Tricorn centre, completed in 1964, enjoys cult status among architecture students as a classic of the "new brutalism" style. But it was also voted Britain's ugliest building in 2001 and was described by Prince Charles as "a mildewed lump of elephant droppings". |
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Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) is a $142 million, 203,000 s.f. project on the edge of the school's main campus overlooking Troy, New York. |
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NYC unveils finalists for 2012 Olympics village If New York City wins the 2012 Olympics, one of five Olympic Village designs unveiled Wednesday would not only become the centerpiece of the games, but an economic boon that would transform the East River waterfront in western Queens. More... & More... & |
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Building modernism on a pre-fab budget Royal Homes's new Q series invents a new aesthetic with a design and philosophy that is more Le Corbusier than trailer park. |
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New rich trade gray flats for trendy homes As China's parliament meets to amend the communist country's constitution and protect private property rights, China's new rich are abandoning proletarian apartments in communal blocks and moving into trendy duplex apartments and suburban villas. They are pursuing the very capitalist antitheses of the drab, uniform and crowded quarters once extolled by the ideologes of egalitarianism - beautiful and distinctive single-family homes. |
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Beijing's building revolution In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is changing its public face, with the world's most expensive and innovative architects designing a new crop of projects which are sweeping away swathes of the old city. |
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Top Ten Planning Issues Of 2003 From congestion charging to Wal-Mart's impact, PLANetizen editors outline the top 10 planning issues from 2003. |
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
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Urban Planner Stuck in Traffic of his Own Design Bernard Rothstein, an urban planner and traffic-flow modulation specialist with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, found himself stuck in rush-hour traffic of his own design for more than an hour Monday. |
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
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Where others fear to tread Thrill-seekers delight in visiting off-limit venues. |
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THE TERRAZZO JUNGLE
Fifty years ago, the mall was born. America would never be the same. [Via] |
Monday, March 8, 2004
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Chip off the old block How a sculpture by Christopher Le Brun became the template for the office of the future. |
Sunday, March 7, 2004
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Life with the vertical villagers
Downside: Elevator rush hour. Upside: It's a short commute. |
Friday, March 5, 2004
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Non-Swimmers Club A now frequent example of intermediate use of municipal space is art on wasteland areas in cities. The aim is to employ cultural incentives to draw the attention of investors to such areas and concede greater value to them. |
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Mauritskade Apartments, Amsterdam. Sited in the Dapperbuurt area of Amsterdam, twelve luxury apartments sit opposite the anthropological museum, Tropenmuseum. |
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‘We will do pedestrian safety, but only when it doesn’t come at the expense of the flow of traffic.’" We’ve been trained in this country to call automobile killings "accidents." |
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The return of high-rise Britain? Work starts this week on the UK's tallest residential building - a 47 storey, 171m high glass tower in Manchester. Similar projects are planned in cities across the nation; will we all be living high-rise in years to come? |
Thursday, March 4, 2004
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Subway systems of the world, presented on the same scale search terms - nuclear capable nations - chicago, mile by mile - very low quality jpgs - knit fabric - very poor formatting - credos - It's The Song I Hate - DAQ - buy |
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Architect's homage to Russian painters piques critics The plans, critics say, are as vulgar as the people they were designed for. In one of the most exclusive and historic areas of Moscow approval is almost complete for a renowned western architect to build five blocks of luxury flats, each block decorated in the style of a Russian artist.
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Beirut Gets Its Groove Back "It's a city where everything is changing," Ms. Karim Kassar said. "You have no option but to push yourself and participate. It is good to have new thoughts." |
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For New Buildings, Digital Models Offer an Advance Walk-Through When the Philadelphia Phillies' $458 million ballpark opens in April, some ticket holders may experience something akin to what Yogi Berra famously described as "déjà vu all over again." |
Wednesday, March 3, 2004
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California tries to slam lid on big-boxed Wal-Mart Wal-Mart's relentless rollout of new stores has foundered in California like a beached whale. |
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Soaring price of land drives popularity of mixed-use designs in S. Florida It seems that nearly every new development project announced in South Florida lately is a mixed-use project. And, from a developer's perspective, there's a good reason for that. |
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
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15 Rules for Rebuilding the World When architect Christopher Alexander released his 1977 manifesto A Pattern Language, he argued that good architecture is simply a matter of applying core principles. |
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For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button For years, at thousands of New York City intersections, well-worn push buttons have offered harried walkers a rare promise of control over their pedestrian lives. |
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Not Just Pizza: Goods and Services Come to Your Door Columbia Heights resident Karyn Cassella-Martin used to like going to the grocery store in her old Mount Pleasant neighborhood in the District. "There was a great sense of community; it was an adventure to walk along and shop," she said. |
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The mall comes home With land at a premium, developers are transforming old, underperforming strip malls into attractive complexes that blend residential and commercial use. |
Monday, March 1, 2004
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Up from the ashes How to reverse urban blight in five not-so-easy steps. |
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Urban design finalists have 'impressive' plans for Strip parcel Four teams of graduate students have been selected as finalists in an Urban Land Institute competition to redevelop, on paper at least, 57 acres in the Strip District near the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. |
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Singles flock to suburbs Married couples with children--long the main family unit of suburbia--are outnumbered in some places by singles who find living easy outside city. |
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Seoul's plan to revive a stream to be recognized at ninth architecture biennale The urban plans dedicated to restoring the city's streams will get world wide recognition at Venice's ninth International Architecture Biennale, one of the world's most prestigious international architecture exhibitions. |
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The road to riches? Richard Florida has built a thriving career on the theory that the "creative class" drives urban economic growth. But critics increasingly say his ideas just don't add up. |
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