Urbanism News
Friday, August 29, 2003
|
Ecotopia on the Hudson Lessons in environmentally friendly living from New York City. |
|
Nicholas Grimshaw in Bath: a new spa for the 21st century. Bath may be a bit tatty, may have a pervasive smell of fried food, may have a summer population of new-age travellers with dogs - may be, in short, like an inland seaside resort - but in several respects it is perfect. |
|
Going Green on Top I think this is an example of how we can bring our dwellings back into the realm of the natural world - psychologically, that would be a wonderful step for all of us.
|
|
Bogotá Designs Transportation for People, Not Cars When Enrique Peñalosa became mayor of Bogotá, Colombia in 1998, he asked a question that is changing the way people all over the world think about cities: "In Bogotá, where 85 percent of the people do not use cars for their daily transport, is it fair that cars occupy most of the space on the streets?" |
|
When It Comes to Home Expansions, These Cities Are to the Banner Sworn Most homeowners adding a second floor to their house try to keep the remodeling project as low-key as possible in front of the neighbors. Not on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, though. Residents there take to the rooftop to shout out their plans for a new master bedroom suite or a new wing for the kids. |
|
Sprawling suburbs may help fuel obesity Sprawling suburbs that make it harder for people to get around without a car may help fuel obesity: Americans who live in the most sprawling counties tend to weigh 6 more pounds than their counterparts in the most compact areas. |
Thursday, August 28, 2003
|
It may be art, but can we live with it? Denver museum's provocative addition follows trend of turning showcases into statements. |
|
The Gehry effect It's 100th the size of the Bilbao Guggenheim but Frank Gehry's first building in Britain has his name all over it. |
|
Little wonders Nanotechnology is moving beyond science fiction into construction products and now it's getting really interesting. |
|
One step at a time As I ride into work this sunny Wednesday morning, I tip my helmet to that hearty and seemingly rare breed -- the pedestrian.
|
|
Is anyone out there looking? In streets and parks, at schools, airports or shopping centers, you won't go far in Japan these days without encountering artworks in some shape or form, from monumental sculptures to decorative tiles underfoot -- or even simply children's drawings on display. |
|
Cedric Price, Influential British Architect With Sense of Fun, Dies at 68 Better known as an intellectual figure than as a practicing designer, Mr. Price was a charismatic force in the 1960's, when the hard-edged style of Brutalism began to lose its hold on the liberal imagination and the Pop Art sensibility of swinging London swept in to take its place. |
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
|
Paard van Troje (Trojan Horse) “With most of the new construction located behind an ancient monumental facade Paard van Troje, Trojan Horse, is an appropriate name”. |
|
School of Fine Arts - University of Connecticut The combination is perfect; Gehry has a distinctive artistic flair. Herb Newman brings a functionality and practicality. |
|
New Acropolis Museum The design by Bernard Tschumi was selected as the winning project in the second competition for the design of the New Acropolis Museum. |
|
Breathing in Berlin In recent years, architects have begun to view the skins of buildings like the skins of living organisms: properly designed, they breathe, change form, and adapt to variations in climate. A building that demonstrates this in several ways is the GSW Headquarters in Berlin, designed by Sauerbruch & Hutton Architects, with engineering by Arup. |
|
Rem Koolhaas Praemium Imperiale Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has received the prestigious 2003 Praemium Imperiale Architecture Award. He is one of five honored this year by the Japan Art Association. |
|
Bucky Fuller History and Mystery The visionary inventor R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), who called himself a "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist," was respected in many disciplines. |
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
|
New Materials At a time when there is a general trend towards naturalness and authenticity, companies and universities are engaged in intensive research with the basic objective of finding new materials and technologies. |
|
DogmA 01 In a meadow by the gates of Groningens, in the rustic northern part of the Netherlands, an unusual building is presently being created. |
|
In the beginning was the fish Since the earliest days of his youth, Frank O. Gehry has been fascinated by the form of fish and in the course of his career has repeatedly attempted to capture their aesthetics in sculptures and "fluid" architecture. |
Friday, August 8, 2003
|
urbanism.org vacation Even urbanists need a vacation sometimes.... Will be back on August 23. Check the news. |
Thursday, August 7, 2003
|
A New Harlem Gentry in Search of Its Latte A good coffeehouse, like a friendly restaurant or a neighborhood shop, brings together lines that might not otherwise cross. These lines transmit the vital information of a community — what's the best preschool, whose son is dealing drugs on the corner — into the homes where it has weight. Add a froth of crema, and you are in business.
|
|
Firebrands of 'ecoterrorism' set sights on urban sprawl Burning of San Diego mega-condos demonstrates radical environmentalists' tactical shift to housing, commercial sites. |
|
Please fence me in The allure of gated communities is built on a simple premise: Gates keep criminals out and desirables inside. It's an idea that has appealed to many. But is it valid? |
|
Espoo's idealistic model city Tapiola turns fifty In September the garden city of Tapiola will celebrate its half-century. Tapiola, a suburb of Espoo - though it is ultimately more than that - was initially influenced by the English ideal of the garden city, as realised in places such as Letchworth Garden City (1903), Welwyn Garden City (1919), and the post-war "new towns" of Stevenage and Harlow (1947). |
|
Downtown rooftop garden is a crowning jewel for dentist Look, up in the sky! -- it's a garden! |
|
Rem Koolhaas Praemium Imperiale Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has received the prestigious 2003 Praemium Imperiale Architecture Award. He is one of five honored this year by the Japan Art Association. |
Wednesday, August 6, 2003
|
What monorail might look like downtown Nine months after a dramatic public vote to build the 14-mile Green Line through the western half of Seattle, monorail architects are beginning to produce the first realistic portrayals of what tracks and pillars might look like on city streets. |
|
Top architect to ourline his vision of 'Natural Skyscrapers' at Cityscape 2003 Everyone has heard of the hanging gardens of Babylon. But what about the hanging gardens of Dubai or Jeddah or Muscat? Fantasy? Not if acclaimed Malaysian architect Ken Yeang has his way. |
|
TomorrowLand Tycoon Minoru Mori wants to make Tokyo a more livable city. |
|
What's Right with Japan Forget about salarymen, gridlocked politics and zombie corporations. Japan is transforming itself into Asia's cultural dynamo —and might be reinventing its economy in the process. |
|
The New Old Thing More people would rather live like Grandma than the Jetsons. |
Tuesday, August 5, 2003
|
East Side Story Manhattan activists get what they wanted: along the degraded, industrial waterfront, a sinuous new park and an environmental center. |
|
Teen invasion rattles Birmingham Thousands of young people -- and not-so-young people -- jostle along a few square blocks. The sidewalks are an obstacle course of giggling 13-year-old girls pretending not to notice 13-year-old boys. Downtown Birmingham, for years a quiet enclave of upscale boutiques, is suddenly cool. It's what Gov. Jennifer Granholm was aiming for last month when she urged Michigan cities to try to become places where young people want to live, work and spend time. |
|
The Color of Grass, the Color of Money A lot of serious environmentalists, especially those who make a living from its ways and means, carry more than a whiff of the deep woods. They're worshippers of the wild, the endangered, the ancient and the pristine. |
|
Housing the Machine The idea of turning industrial facilities into more aesthetic, sculpted forms is gaining acceptance and is likely to become more prevalent in the future. |
|
Muzak to our ears Forget about those bland cover tunes, there's a hip new indie sound in retailing.
|
|
Unreal buildings for the public imagination Be as good as you can. And try to avoid being a whore. We all have to whore it sometimes. We all have bills to pay. Try to deal with your passion responsibly and imaginatively with some creativity and wit. That's the main responsibility of the architect |
Monday, August 4, 2003
|
Looking at the big picture in the park "Everything is going to be beautiful," landscape architect Walter Hood, of Hood Design in Oakland, says excitedly of the landscape he is creating around the new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. |
Saturday, August 2, 2003
|
Memento Mori The entire Roppongi Hills experience is exemplary of the worst in contemporary architecture and urban planning. It's a throwback to early 1960s notions of city and space, wreathed perhaps in the rhetoric of digital cities and global dataflow, but even then only to the detriment of its potential. |
|
Gardens Renew Cuba's Urban Core Although the streets of Havana, Cuba, are dominated by decrepit buildings, it is rare to come upon an abandoned lot strewn with rubble and weeds. Instead, these disused plots are coveted prizes: sites that precipitate heated standoffs between gardeners with trowels and boys carrying baseballs and bats. But, because the Cuban state favors redistributing vacant plots to those willing to grow food on them, the gardeners usually win. |
|
Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life The prolific output by designers from the fields of architecture, product, furniture, fashion, and graphic design that, particularly over the past decade, has evolved a new landscape of products and spaces will be examined in the Walker Art Center exhibition Strangely Familiar. |
|
High hopes for the High Line New Yorkers campaigning to turn an abandoned elevated railway into a public park feel they are now on the right track. |
|
Gehry wins commission They look, so local wags claim, like "four giant transvestites caught in a gale". And they are without doubt the most exciting thing that has happened in Hove since AH Wilds built his Anthaeum - an early glass precursor of the Millennium Dome - on the lawns of Palmeira Square in 1832. |
|
Tackling Architecture With a Table Saw The seven members of MADE, a young architectural firm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, were sitting in their office working two weeks ago. The office is a makeshift metal shed inside a woodworking shop in a 19th-century brick warehouse. It looks more like a trailer parked on a job site than an architectural office. |
[Archives]
Search entries: