Urbanism News
Thursday, September 30, 2004
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The Building Site - A Symbol of Life The world is full of building sites. Sometimes they please, sometimes they irritate but, in any case, the following always applies to outsiders: »Keep out - Parents will be held responsible for their children«. Anyone who believes that the earth was deliberately planned and created by a higher being must also see the world itself as a kind of building site. After all, what distinguishes one building site from another is the plan. Without a plan, there can be no real building site. |
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Grand designs With 10 babies born a day and 70,000 new houses expected in the next 30 years, drastic building plans were called for in Milton Keynes. |
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Let It Be Architects can’t resist the lure of buildings—even if the brief doesn’t really call for them. |
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Designs for the little guy Eleven years ago, in Newbern, a tiny, rural community in Alabama, architect Samuel Mockbee set up his school. The Rural Studio was nearly 100 miles from any major metropolitan area. There, in an unconventional learning environment, Mockbee taught his students to create architecture that was "warm, dry and noble." |
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Motorway with a dose of urban design All in all, the various motifs may well inspire motorists and residents to contemplate the area's wider environmental context and heritage. |
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
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The New Urban Penalty For millions of older Americans, living in a big city isn't the vibrant, cosmopolitan experience that it is for others. For such people, the metropolis is a place of poverty, isolation and vulnerability. |
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The End of Easy Oil
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist or a Michael Moore enthusiast to think that Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues in the Bush administration are being disingenuous when they declare that the war in Iraq is not about oil. |
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Sex and the Cities The rule of law and the gelding of urban America. |
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Well-designed open space propels urban growth Cities across America are looking for new tools to revitalize downtowns, stabilize neighborhoods and convert failed shopping centers, railyards and brownfields into vibrant new communities. Urban parks and open spaces are rapidly becoming the tool of choice. |
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The Gardens Shopping Mall Touted to be one of the largest themed malls in the world and certainly with largest façade of over 1.2 km, the Garden Shopping Mall is being architecturally designed and constructed to resemble the lands visited by the 14th century traveler. |
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
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Suburbs May Be Hazardous to Your Health Living in a sprawling suburb may be hazardous to your health. |
Monday, September 27, 2004
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The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road) The autonomists want to do more than play defense. They want Americans to love the car again. They quote Walt Whitman from ''Leaves of Grass'': ''Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first?/The earth to be spanned, connected by net-work.'' |
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Download, Peel and Stick, and All the World's a Gallery "It works particularly well in walking cities," said Alice Twemlow, who organizes shows about visual culture as program director at the American Institute of Graphic Arts. "Walking brings intimate encounters with the stickers that could not be experienced while driving. There is also an immediacy with which people can respond." |
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Oregon offers lesson on pedestrian courtesy On a recent visit to the Rose City, I discovered another transportation trend we might want to adopt here at home. It's much less expensive than light rail, though in these lead-footed, lightning-fast times, no less controversial. They call it stopping for pedestrians.
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Memory prosthesis Everybody, it seems, is now an artiste, busy on their own little conceptual art works: digital renderings of their miserable little lives. |
Saturday, September 25, 2004
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Ticking the Right Boxes In today's quest to add value at all costs, are we not losing sight of the most important aspect of all - the architecture itself? |
Friday, September 24, 2004
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The feds get funky A government program promotes out-of-the-ordinary public buildings. |
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Our man in China The firm that brought us Federation Square is about to work its peculiar magic on the world's largest construction canvas. |
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Ciabatta cities In our town centres, local degeneration marches hand-in-chain-store-glove with urban regeneration. |
Thursday, September 23, 2004
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Town overrun with old people on scooters Stricken with arthritis, Connie Haller gave up strolling the streets of this mountain town. But when the 78-year-old woman learned that the government would buy her a motorized scooter, she gladly accepted. And so did her elderly friends. And their friends. And their friends. |
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In Venice, the Future Takes a Twist Move over, tall towers with your lean and mean silhouettes — a new shape's coming to town. |
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Something funny happened to the radical architecture firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The establishment came calling.
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Crusade afoot to create shade for the Valley London has Big Ben. Paris has the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. What does Phoenix have? |
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Beijing not a test field of architects Beijing is abuzz about the designs of some landmark buildings under construction or to be constructed. Some Chinese architects and critics say foreign architects have turned the capital city into a test field, some say the designs are avant-garde and some others see these designs as ugly. |
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Flying cars swoop to the rescue As motorways become more and more clogged up with traffic, a new generation of flying cars will be needed to ferry people along skyways. |
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
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The Business of Design Lots of companies are now discovering what Target, Pottery Barn, BMW, and Apple knew all along: Great design is a strategic advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace. |
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It's Home Sweet Home on a Mall A pioneering design puts townhomes atop stores in Huntington Beach. That makes for a great view and useful downstairs neighbors. |
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A Place To Learn Science Hartford desperately wants a bold architectural statement from its new science center, and on Monday it got four. |
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
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Transformation and artifice Nations jostle for position at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale. |
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The Thrill of Excess The transformation of the city's skyline is a dizzying spectacle. |
Monday, September 20, 2004
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Suburban office parks get urban injection Many of today's young professionals, the creative engines of the knowledge economy, don't want to feel stuck in a glass box. They prefer 24-hour, urban neighborhoods where they can work, walk, shop, dine and live. |
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Flower power It looks like a giant display of potted plants, it sings in the breeze - and it's one of the best places to live in Paris. |
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Maul-of-America When urban sprawl runs amok and a 'city within a city' is not. |
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Little by little by lots Artists David Hoffos and Kim Adams prove that less really can be more as they craft tiny, imaginary worlds and capture unexpected moments of human interaction. |
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To make your city, first take an egg Paul Noble has been drawing his enormous and dazzingly detailed imaginary town for 10 years. It's deserted - but not empty of meaning. |
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China Pulls Up the Drawbridge For a while, it was looking like the Wild Wild East here. After essentially sealing the country off from foreign architects for much of the 20th century, the Chinese government kicked off the 21st by turning itself into the biggest single patron of avant-garde architecture in the world. |
Friday, September 17, 2004
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Metamorphosis and Transcending Hype: Observations from the Field
The Venice Biennale offers a message of optimism and exuberant anticipation for architecture in a post-9/11 world -- for the most part. |
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Squeezing the tube How did a map (that wasn't a map) reshape London? |
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Towns' revival can be a work of art A LEADING urban design expert yesterday called for artists to be let loose in towns to brighten up desolate communities. |
Thursday, September 16, 2004
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When dreamers wield hammers More and more architects are turning moonlight redevelopers, with small projects of their own. |
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In suburbia, it's a wild, wild life As he sipped coffee on the sunny back porch of his tidy downtown home in Northampton, Mass., Andrew Shelffo suddenly caught sight of a dark, hulking presence, standing six feet high at the shoulder. |
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Beautiful revolution in building design There is nothing more beautiful the human eye can focus on than a 1960s concrete carbuncle at the moment it is transformed into dust by demolition experts.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2004
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Local politicians like to quip that Portlanders hate two things: urban sprawl and density. A Portland architecture competition picks 49 "skinny" house projects to help overcome resistance to small lots and narrow homes on them.
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Exploring Design as Metamorphosis It is fortunate that many people seem naturally drawn to architectural models because, without them, the ninth Venice Architecture Biennale would be reduced to photographs, drawings, videos and words. |
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
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Blobs, boxes and grand gestures The Architecture Biennale, which has just opened in Venice, is teeming with designs that try too hard to respond to a changing world. |
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Cooper Union Engages the Neighborhood With a shimmering metal facade punctured by the swollen form of an atrium, the design bursts with communal energy. |
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Architects sans licenses In the past, an architect was just what his Latin name suggested -- a "master builder.'' Practical experience was the most important schooling such a person could have, and architects thus trained gave us the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the Parthenon, and all the cathedrals of the Middle Ages.
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Sin cities It's violent, eccentric and full of poo-people in sex orgies. But Paul Noble's work is the height of sophistication. |
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Seven Fallacies in Architectural Culture As an architect and educator I am worry about the intellectual and pragmatic challenges that currently bedevil architectural practice and pedagogy. |
Monday, September 13, 2004
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A Building Less Bright “Light is part of the building’s architecture,” says Roy Endsley, the building manager at 311 South Wacker in Chicago. “Part of the building’s appeal is its prominence in the nighttime skyline.” Yet 311 South Wacker turns off its lights—along with many other prominent Chicago buildings, including the John Hancock Building and the Sears Tower—when migratory birds make their way through the Chicago area. |
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Pods and monsters The Venice Biennale is bursting with blobs, gimmicks and computer-aided design. But there's no substitute for imagination. |
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A New Frontier For Suburban Builders Land scarcity has tract developers tackling blighted urban properties. |
Saturday, September 11, 2004
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Changing Skyline A celebration of Ant Farm, architecture's rock band. |
Friday, September 10, 2004
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The greener future For lessons in environmental friendliness it would be hard to beat Kingsmead School. |
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Beyond the city limits Humanity is about to cross the line from rural to urban. |
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Going with the flow Science can be used to design cities according to rational laws. |
Thursday, September 9, 2004
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Room at the top The only way is up when looking for new habitats for urban wildlife, says Peter Marren. Roof-top sanctuaries are cheap, fashionable, and effective. |
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
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Homes of the stars A high-profile suburb for the Hamptons. |
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Seattle will again try zoning out drug deals From his second-floor artist's loft in Pioneer Square, Frank Worsham commands a grim front-row seat to the crack market on Yesler Way. He witnesses money change hands and pipes light up; shrieks of mother-this and mother-that; women doing sex acts for a hit and men urinating on his front door. |
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Traffic jams not just a big-city problem any more Los Angeles for years has had the worst traffic jams in the United States, but these days even the streets and highways in small and medium cities, from Brownsville, Tex., to Anchorage, Alaska, to Honolulu are giving rush-hour drivers fits. |
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10 unusual places to live Finding and buying your first home has never been harder, we are told, so it should come as no surprise that many people are looking for other ways to live. And there are more than you might think. Here are 10 of the most striking - though not necessarily practical - ways to get ahead without getting a house. |
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Rebuilding Les Halles The central Paris neighbourhood known as Les Halles has become infamous as an ugly playroom for self-indulgent architects during the 70s and 80s. Now Paris city hall has decided to tear it down - but the question is: what to put in its place? |
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Space Hijackers : 2nd manifesto The Space Hijackers are Anarchitects, we oppose the hierarchy that is put upon us by Architects, Planners and owners of space. |
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
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More developers are building 'green' "The costs of going green range from zero to 'the sky's the limit,'" said John Dalzell, a senior architect in the urban design department of the Boston Redevelopment Authority. |
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What Does It Take to Raise a Village? A decade after Santa Ana created Artists Village to perk up its struggling downtown, property values are soaring — but the trendy district is still struggling to draw visitors and forge a lasting identity. |
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Living streets concept grabs city Auckland City planners may hook into a manual co-written for a British charity by a Christchurch engineer for tips on how to reclaim city streets for community activities. |
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Making prefabs hip Nancy Hanover and Gerardo Reyes had already obtained permits to add a conventional bedroom/retreat to their 1923 bungalow when they happened to read a newspaper article last spring about a cutting-edge prefab called Glidehouse. |
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Cold reality of urban hot spots Whatever happened to that grand plan to remake Paris into one huge wireless hot spot? Weren't we supposed to be the most unwired European capital by now? |
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Giving buildings body awareness "WE walk on floors, goddamnit, we don't walk on images! You cannot live in a TV box. We are here physically on earth, not virtually." |
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Frank Lloyd Wright Stays Busy in Buffalo Half a century after Frank Lloyd Wright's renowned Larkin Administration Building was demolished here to make way for a parking lot, this city is taking ambitious steps to reclaim its Wright heritage. |
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Plant more than hot air Co-generation provides power when blackouts hit. |
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The New New York Skyline For New Yorkers who still feel stirrings of nostalgia for the prewar city, such sweeping changes are apt to provoke mild hysteria. |
Saturday, September 4, 2004
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Canal Controversy Divides Venice of the North
Amsterdam, the "Venice of the North," is divided over plans to reopen canals paved over more than 100 years ago. |
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Urban Markup Language The next time you pound the pavement, keep your eyes on the ground. You'll notice the curious spray-painted markings, leaping lines, arrows, crosses, swooshes, and strange acronyms that make up a form of street graffiti that's actually on the street. What do these weird tags mean? |
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Amsterdam Start-Up to Offer WiFi Internet Citywide Amsterdam's Web surfers could soon be liberated from their home computers and Internet cafes, with plans by a start-up firm to make their city the first European capital where laptops can hook up anywhere to the Web. [via] |
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Millennium Park - After the Hype Millennium Park - it's big, it's pretty; it's wildly popular. Does it make any difference? |
Friday, September 3, 2004
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Poverty in the Suburbs Hidden in a Census Bureau report on poverty released in late August is a factoid with significant political and social consequences. Poverty has moved to the suburbs. Or, more accurately, poverty has expanded to the suburbs. Today, 13.8 million poor Americans live in the suburbs--almost as many as the 14.6 million who live in central cities. The suburban poor represent 38.5 percent of the nation's poor, compared with 40.6 percent of the total who live in central cities. |
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Gridlock: Cities, Structures, Spaces Gridlock: cities, structures, spaces is the latest in a popular series of exhibitions at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery that examine artists’ responses to topical developments in contemporary culture. |
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To Save a Town, Why Did They Destroy It?
Santa Maria used to be a city of small stores and Main Street lives. Now, all that is gone -- and so is its soul. |
Thursday, September 2, 2004
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The Terminal: not just a Spielberg movie but architecture at extremes. Nobody likes airports if they are delayed there. |
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Philly Considers Wireless Internet for All For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot. |
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
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Music for Parking Lots If the streets of Los Angeles were a symphony, the underground parking garage would be the "rest." All day long the freeways and boulevards resound with bass engine rumbles, screeching horn sections and emergency siren arias (not to mention the occasional cacophony of a metal-on-metal cymbal "crash").
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A spectacle of anticipation: building the Lebanon of the future Seeking to inspire rather than impose, an architect blends design with development issues. |
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Eco-tourism for the city Why aren't the tourists flocking to Colombo city? What makes it less of an attraction than New York, London, or Paris. Just as importantly, why doesn't the ecotourism movement embrace urbanism? |
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