Urbanism News
Monday, October 30, 2006
|
Architect Foster brands it like Beckham to grab extra fee A fee of several million pounds might seem enough for most architects. But Lord Foster, the man behind the gherkin skyscraper in London, has begun demanding extra payments if clients want to claim that he has personally designed a building. A developer has disclosed that Foster demands a premium to allow it to boast that its building is designed by Norman Foster rather than Foster and Partners, his multinational practice. |
Saturday, October 28, 2006
|
Agroparks: the concept, the responses, the practice Some people may be wondering what happened to the idea of the agropark. How has it developed sice the initial suggestion? Has any progress been made? This publication provides the answers. It seeks to inform and to inspire further thought about the future of sustainable agriculture in ther Netherlands. |
|
OMA again now in Hague The scenario and identity study completed by OMA explores development ambitions for Binckhorst at three different interest levels: regional, national and international. The study, which focuses exclusively on research, will serve as the critical basis for design as OMA prepares to begin work on the masterplan. |
|
Man power: a great alternative Pressure pads under pavements could generate electricity from every step we take. |
|
The building which inspired Le Corbusier is now crumbling to pieces The World Monuments Fund says the Narkomfin apartment block in Moscow is top of its endangered list. |
|
Fat City: Questioning The Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Obesity Researchers at the University of Toronto conclude that linking sprawl and obesity is misguided. |
|
New frontiers in the fight against fat Experts are calling for a major campaign against obesity, starting with research on car-friendly urban planning. |
Thursday, October 26, 2006
|
m-ch A few lucky students in Europe have experienced the "micro-compact home" (m-ch), an aluminum cube that offers the basics of modern living in less than 665 cubic feet (19 cubic meters). They are appreciating that living in small quarters doesn't have to cramp their style. |
|
Remaking L.A. Three major plans for a new state historic park in downtown Los Angeles were revealed to the public last week. Given proper funding, the park will be constructed on what the L.A. Times calls "a slender, 32-acre parcel squeezed between Chinatown and the L.A. River." |
|
Dia Art Foundation Calls Off Museum Project With no director and a board in flux, the Dia Art Foundation has scrapped its plans to open a museum at the entrance to the High Line, an abandoned elevated railway line in Manhattan. The area, running from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, is to become a park with the help of city money. |
|
Group pushes to transform 42nd Street into pedestrian mall Urban planners are pushing to transform 42nd Street into a pedestrian mall, complete with its own street-level rail line. The transformation, which advocates say would turn the clogged streets into a narrower version of an Italian piazza, would boost business on the strip by up to $500 million a year while cutting crosstown travel time in half. |
|
Housing Generator revisited
In 1996, two years after the first post-apartheid elections were held in South Africa, the Academy of Architecture in Rotterdam initiated the Housing Generator Competition for South African Cities, a project that involved various South African institutions. The task was to design housing for low-income groups. Participants could choose from three different locations: the townships Cato Manor (Durban), Duncan Village (East London) and Wattville (Benoni). The project concluded in 1997 with a publication, an exhibition and a conference. |
|
Its Not the People You Know. Its Where You Are. Meet the 20-minute rule that guides fateful decisions in Silicon Valley. Craig Johnson, managing director of Concept2Company Ventures, a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, Calif., who has 30 years of experience in early-stage financings, said he knew many venture capitalists who adhered to this doctrine: if a start-up company seeking venture capital is not within a 20-minute drive of the venture firms offices, it will not be funded. |
|
The reverse graffiti dilemma If someone washes a message into a dirty city wall, is that a crime? |
|
The Invention of Shopping How the department store brought us teenagers, naval disarmament, and Salvador Dali. |
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
|
Reinterred City Simultaneously indulging the fantasies of Dr. Strangelove and the Soprintendenza, Warden Vanes wants to deploy a robot to cities devastated by an earthquake, whereupon this burrowing robot negotiates through the unstable rubble and solid earth, creating an interred, inhabitable structure from recycled debris. |
|
Urban Cactus Urban Cactus is a housing project in the Vuurplaat section of Rotterdam by UCX Architects / Ben Huygen and Jasper Jaegers and done for Vestia Rotterdam Feijenoord/Estrade Projecten. Due to its siting at the end of harbor, the architects chose to conceptualize the project as belonging to the "green nerve" rather than the surrounding urban structure. |
|
Humans using resources of two planets, WWF warns The world's ecosystems are being degraded at an unprecedented rate, and by 2050 humans will need at least two planets' worth of natural resources to live as they do now, the conservation group WWF warned today. |
|
Back to the alley At a Hayes Valley salon of artists and designers, architects show links between back alleys and an organic new urbanism. |
|
Toward a New Archipelago Clusters of self-sustaining suburban villages can be the way we growwithout sprawling. |
|
A Citys Waterfront: A Place for People or Traffic? Proposals are under consideration to replace Seattles Alaskan Way Viaduct which runs along the citys waterfront. |
|
Can The U.S. Learn From The Slow City Movement? With its emphasis on good food, sustainable living, and local community, the Slow City movement is spreading across Europe. But what potential is there for the movement to make the jump across the Atlantic? |
|
William H. Whyte, Meet Pokemon How far is too far when it comes to commercial activities in public parks? |
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
|
Clarke Quay - Singapore Alsops first major project in Asia, a dramatic redevelopment of the river front district of Clarke Quay in Singapore, gives the area a new identity and repositions Clarke Quay as a vibrant and attractive destination. |
|
Environment: Approaches for Tomorrow Environment: Approaches for Tomorrow is the first showing of installations by Clment and Rahm in North America, and juxtaposes their distinctive concepts of natural landscapes and artificial environments. The exhibition proposes a shift in perspective that takes the environment, and not human demands on the environment, as the starting point for reflection. |
|
Shed your preconceptions The British are getting back on their bikes. In the past five years, the number of bicycle journeys being made in London each day rose by 50 per cent. But cycling to work in this country remains nothing short of an extreme sport, and if you do make it to your destination in one piece, you may still need to manhandle your bike up several flights of stairs if you don't want it to be pinched. |
|
Is there something in the sea air? Things are looking up in Brighton - from high-rise apartments on the waterfront to a giant viewing tower from the people that brought us the London Eye. But it's not the only place on England's south coast enjoying a design revival. |
Monday, October 23, 2006
|
New York City Commentary Beginning in 2003, Projects for Public Spaces has released a series of commentaries covering London, Paris, Barcelona, and now, New York, which address the major problems facing the public spaces of each city and outline a path forward. With the release of the New York City Commentary, we have fine-tuned this format so that it may serve as a template for restructuring city agencies and professional disciplines around the idea of Placemaking. We envision future commentaries as documents that can jumpstart a Great Cities Initiative in cities and towns that want to develop around places. |
|
McDonald's does McDelivery on cycles in old Delhi
It has not just re-engineered the menu to cater to Indian tastes. To beat traffic blues in thickly populated Old Delhi, McDonald's has come up with its world's first - delivery by bicycles. |
|
Cities of the Future Won't Look Like Ours The era of cheap oil is over, and lost with it an energy-rich way of life that billions of city dwellers have come to take for granted. |
|
City's fear of tall buildings silly What can be said of a city that fears growing up? |
Saturday, October 21, 2006
|
Steven Holl Architects wins invited competition for ‘Floating Skyscraper’ Steven Holl Architects announces the winning design for the Vanke Center, a progressive new sustainable mixed-use complex in Shenzhen, China on the South China Sea. |
|
The Architecture of Security You've seen them: those large concrete blocks in front of skyscrapers, monuments and government buildings, designed to protect against car and truck bombs. They sprang up like weeds in the months after 9/11, but the idea is much older. The prettier ones doubled as planters; the uglier ones just stood there. |
|
We Want Walkability The market wants walkable urbanity. And walkable urbanity — which is simply that within 1,500 feet there's a lot of stuff to do — can show up in Royal Oak, Ann Arbor, Birmingham and downtown or Midtown Detroit. |
|
Honey, Our House Is Historic! Buildings from the mid-20th century are becoming eligible for landmark status. Local governments are trying to decide which are worth preserving. |
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
|
Surely not the last words on the Tenth Venice Architecture Biennale, 2006 It must be a strange thing to be the director of the greatest architectural exhibition in the world. For the build-up year, you are lionized. At the opening, the back-slapping is immense, the networking intense. But down little Venetian alleyways strung with washing, the knives are being prepared. The slightly alarming men with perfect silver hair and lightweight suit jackets slung across their shoulders - the Biennale top brass - are analysing your performance, checking the ticket sales. So: how highly do you score, Ricky Burdett? |
|
Whats wrong with Polish architecture? As Berlin has embraced a vibrant, adventurous architecture in its dash to modernize, the Polish capitals architects seem to be content in playing it safe and boring. |
|
The Happy New House - A Client Perspective In this first installment of "A Client Perspective" we speak to Eric, an LA-based creative director who has selected Neil Denari to design an addition to his family's home. This is not just a typical add-on, however; it is an extension of his "Family Brand". |
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
|
Canadian drivers' club urges less driving Canada's largest club for drivers, the Canadian Automobile Association, Monday urged its members to spend less time behind the wheel and said this would help fight climate change and boost air quality. |
|
Putting Cars Behind Transportation policy today means how to reduce car use. Transportation is not an end in itself. Very good transportation will not make us happy. It is a means to a kind of city. So what we really are talking about with transportation is what kind of city do we want. What is a good city? |
|
Its a cultural war: cars vs. pedestrians At first, Kevin McCarty sounds perfectly sane. His voice is neither agitated nor hysterical. He gives the impression of being completely in control of his faculties. And then, this: We feel, he says, that you should be able to walk safely in America. |
|
Venice Biennale: Cities by Numbers The Biennale grounds are divided into the Giardini, sprinkled with some 40 national pavilions, and the Corderie dell'Arsenale, a series of converted naval warehouses, with Burdett's "Cities: Architecture and Society" theme intended to operate pervasively. However, very few participating countries in the Giardini demonstrate that they are up to the challenge to quantify and qualify the city and society within their borders, instead preferring tongue-in-cheek installations, stage set interiors, or unfocused curation. |
|
2ABBeijing Every self-respecting country has an Architecture Biennale of its own nowadays. In Beijing (China) the 2ABBeijing (Architecture Biennale Beijing) took place from 26 September to 6 October. As is usually the case with architecture biennales, the themes may have been big, but most of the presentations paid no attention to them whatsoever. |
|
Fear and Money in Dubai Is this a new Margaret Atwood novel, Philip K. Dicks unpublished sequel to Blade Runner or Donald Trump on acid? No. It is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai in 2010. After Shanghai (current population 15 million), Dubai (current population 1.5 million) is the planets biggest building site: an emerging dreamworld of conspicuous consumption and what the locals boast as supreme lifestyles. |
|
Feeling cranky? Blame the architect Alain de Botton admits architecture won't save the planet, but he does insist it can make the world a better place. Who would argue? Especially after the appearance of his most recent book, The Architecture of Happiness (M&S, $35), which presents an entertaining case for the mother of all the arts. |
|
Park Design Finalists Draw Cornfield With Bold Strokes If you were given a cleared plot of land to build a 32-acre park on the cusp of downtown Los Angeles, what would you do? Build a smaller version of New York City's Central Park? Design something radical involving the demolition of one of the city's most beloved landmarks, Dodger Stadium? |
|
Great Park to be 'A living laboratory' "We see the park as a living laboratory, a place where new ideas and opportunities are investigated," said Richard Ramsey, chief of staff on New York architect Ken Smith's design team. |
|
Controversial architect says only the Scots truly appreciate her fresh angle on design Zaha Hadid, a Baghdad-born architect who came to the UK in the early 1970s, remains largely unknown in her adopted home despite designing some of the most innovative structures in Europe. She has never had a design completed in Britain, but two of her designs are about to come to fruition in Scotland. In Kirkcaldy, her design for Scotland's latest Maggie's Centre for cancer sufferers is almost complete, while work is under way on her replacement for the Glasgow Transport Museum. |
|
Better out than in With its dramatic angles, Daniel Libeskind's new art gallery is lighting up Denver. There's just one problem: you can't hang much on those walls. |
|
Paris museum is no work of art Musee Branly makes you question the whole concept of starchitects. It's been designed in the manner of a World's Fair pavilion. By that I mean it's a hey-look-at-me-I'm-an-architect building, intended to grab your attention by upstaging everything around it. |
|
The truth about those iconic buildings: the roofs leak, they're dingy and too hot Winners of the prestigious Stirling prize for architecture, which will be announced tonight, have been lauded by architects but are often beset by faults and loathed by the people who use them, according to one of the government's design advisers. |
|
1962-2006: The life and death of America's largest public housing project The menacing row of concrete towers where four of Katie Sistrunk's children were shot is almost all gone now, replaced by weeds and fields, mud and memories. The cage-like balconies that looked like prison tiers to Beauty Turner have all but disappeared. The gangs that peddled crack to Krystal McCraney Moore have found new places to haunt. One hollow-eyed lookout still paces at the entrance of the last high-rise, watching for police so he can alert drug dealers who lurk in the graffiti-scarred, darkened stairwells. This is the end of the Robert Taylor Homes, the final days of what once was the nation's largest housing project. Four decades ago, its 28 towers overflowed with thousands of some of the poorest people in America. Now there's just one rotting building and a few dozen holdout tenants. |
Sunday, October 15, 2006
|
Our Ailing Communities Public-health advocate Richard Jackson argues that the way we build cities and neighborhoods is the source of many chronic diseases. |
Saturday, October 14, 2006
|
Disappearances can be deceptive It is a city of the forgotten. You can still disappear without trace in London. It calls to those whose one desire is to vanish. Here you can, in the old phrase, “go under”. Here you can “break”. The city is built upon lost things. It is constructed in a literal sense on the ruins and debris of the past; it towers above forgotten underground rivers and discarded tunnels. It is built upon old graveyards and burial pits. |
Friday, October 13, 2006
|
Slums separate Bombay from its future Many Indian authorities here proudly claim this seaside metropolis -- the nation's largest -- as an Asian financial hub on par with Shanghai and Tokyo. But critics quickly point out that India -- touted as an international powerhouse in the 21st century along with China -- will never become an economic success story until it eradicates its many urban slums. More than 40 million people, or 14 percent of the nonrural population, live in shantytowns, according to the 2001 Indian census. |
|
Archigram Weekend Plug-In City, Instant City, Suitaloon, Living Pod... These were just some of Archigram's projects, Britain's most radical architecture group, whose continued influence on architects and artists was rewarded by the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 2002. |
|
Do our cities make us fat? In the week when Britain was branded the fattest nation in Europe, CABE is arguing that the design of our cities can really improve our levels of physical activity. |
|
A sprawling documentary of our times Among the many documentaries at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival is an 86 minute feature that takes on one of the most important issues before our cities: suburban sprawl. This suburban show-and-tell is stolen by two grade school kids, sardonic yet wise commentators on the phenomenon that shape their lives -- the big box houses, new schools under construction, parental overprogramming of their lives, not to mention the finer points of paint ball etiquette. |
|
Will Toronto rise to the skyscraper challenge? Developers like putting them up. Many young professionals and empty-nesters are prepared to line up around the block to get homes in them. And though citizens regularly take to the barricades to protest them, and Toronto city planners are inclined to lop off their too-high tops, tall residential buildings are steadfastly here to stay. But is there a common meeting ground for the various combatants in Hogtown's ongoing, fitful skyscraper wars? Is there a tower style that best suits our city, and our idea of the city we want? |
|
Around D.C., a Cheaper House May Cost You One of the lures of the outer suburbs is more house -- maybe even one with a big yard -- for less money. But a new study shows that the savings are illusory: The costs of longer commutes are so high that they can outweigh the cheaper mortgage payments. |
Thursday, October 12, 2006
|
Virtual Preservation Possible salvation of historic sites in the San Francisco Bay area is just a click away. |
|
A Quarter-Century of Discovery The Young Architects Forum, a competition for emerging designers, celebrates its 25th anniversary. |
|
Feeding Ourselves: Organic Urban Gardens in Caracas, Venezuela In the middle of the modern, concrete city of Caracas, Venezuela, Noral Verenzuela is standing in a garden dressed in jeans and work boots. She is the director of the Organopnico Bolivar I, the first urban, organic garden to show its green face in the heart of the city of Caracas, Venezuela. |
|
To Cross the Seine A new pedestrian bridge, "Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir," now undulates across the Seine in Paris. It is the creation of Feichtinger Architectes with consulting engineers RFR, and Sepia. |
|
Bicycles to fit the family Cycling may be better for the planet but what if you've got children or shopping in tow? |
|
Interview: New York City Planning Director Amanda Burden Planetizen talks with city planning officials to get an insider's perspective on the planning issues facing cities. The first subject of this question-and-answer series is New York City Department of City Planning Director Amanda M. Burden. |
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
|
MVRDVs 3D Urban Design What is the capacity of planet earth? How can we deal with climate change whilst retaining our quality of life? And what answers can we offer for increasingly pressing spatial problems? Containing an impressive amount of data, the recently published thick volume KM3 by MVRDV presents a number of projects that pave the way for a solution in the form of an imaginary three-dimensional city called KM3. |
|
IDEOs Urban Pre-Planning Can its Smart Space practice shake up the lumbering world of infrastructure, zoning, and public process? |
|
Visionary architect fuses imagination, common sense Architecture lectures can be a slog: very smart people use very long words to describe very meticulous projects that often won't ever be built. And even when the images are seductive, the real world seems far, far away. That's why Jeanne Gang's talk in San Francisco last week was such a treat. Not only could a layperson like me make sense of her words, her most provocative visions are coming to life -- including an 82-story residential tower that breaks ground in Chicago this month. |
|
Exercises in isolationism I don't typically take aim at houses. But I have no problem going after the mega-mansions that have invaded Burling, Orchard and Howe Streets south of Armitage Avenue. They're not purely personal matters, like most houses. They're turning what was a vibrant urban neighborhood into a collection of bloated, physically isolated, suburban-style manses. |
|
Chicago's Orchard Street - Urban Menace? Chicago's wealthy elite are taking the mega-mansion to Orchard Street in the city's Lincoln Park area. "There goes the neighborhood," is the Trib's Blair Kamin's take. Why? |
|
Wal-Mart's aesthetic evolution You don't typically head to a Wal-Mart store because of the soothing architecture. But that might change. |
|
Protecting Londoners as the capital warms up More trees, 'green roofs' and 'cool pavements' are all on the agenda for the capital as a new report draws attention to the higher temperatures in London compared to the surrounding counties. Plans to tackle the 'urban heat island' phenomenon - which sees London's temperatures soaring compared to neighbouring areas are explored in the study launched by the Mayor of London today (Tuesday 10th October). |
|
The Cumulus Effect Oh, for a lazy day. We could go lie on a hillside, stare up at the sky and watch the clouds roll by. What do they remind you of? A team of white horses. Rows of cotton. The beards of wise men. The new Congress Center in Rome ... The what? A BMW facility in Munich. An art museum in Boston ... Are we looking at the same sky? |
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
|
Planet enters 'ecological debt' Rising consumption of natural resources means that humans began "eating the planet" on 9 October, a study suggests. |
Saturday, October 7, 2006
|
What we must learn from Copenhagen Copenhagen has its share of yobs, drugs and drinking culture but is blessed with being a gentler and more tolerant city than many of its European counterparts — and much more so than some of our own metropolitan centres and “uburbs”. |
|
Naked Cities – Struggle in the Global Slums According to UN research data, by 2030 half of the world's population will be living in slums. Meanwhile, in Durban's Kennedy Road settlement residents risk arrest and police violence in their struggle for toilets and drinking water. The statistics are not supposed to talk back. |
|
Security Barriers of New York Are Removed They started appearing on Manhattan streets immediately after September 11: concrete and metal barriers in front of skyscrapers, offices and museums. Some were clunky planters; others were shaped artfully into globes. They were meant to be security barriers against possible car or truck bombers in a jittery city intent on safeguarding itself. But now, five years later, their numbers have begun to dwindle. |
|
Public relations or public participation? "Good grief, even city planners are branding themselves!" I muttered to myself, while ingesting the foul swamp-water that passes for coffee served at public meetings. There were lots of free pencils that night, plus requests for vision statements, alternate development scenarios, and all the other consultative markers of city planning in action, Vancouver style. |
|
T.O.'s vital signs great, but ... Toronto is dragging around a big but. No, not butt. BUT. Y'know, everything is great here, but ... On the one hand ... on the other. That's the distinct feeling left from the findings of this year's Vital Signs, the annual report card on Toronto's economic, social, environmental, cultural and everyday performance. |
|
Making the grade: A critical look at our city The Vancouver Foundation today releases Vital Signs 2006, a report card that rates the Greater Vancouver's performance in 12 key indicators of livability, and it finds us wanting in our treatment of our poor, our new immigrants, and the affordability of our housing. |
|
Customs discover vodka pipeline Russian customs officers say they have discovered a mile long pipeline that was pumping vodka to Latvia. |
|
Realising one man's capital idea London, Paris, Rome - and now Plymouth. It is the dream of one architect that Plymouth should be ranked among Europe's top cities. |
Friday, October 6, 2006
|
Bright Orange It began with a sign: a bright orange traffic detour sign standing next to one of Detroit's thousands of abandoned houses. Four local artists, a group who call themselves Object Orange, realized they could use the shocking color of the sign to draw attention to the city's pervasive urban decay. |
Thursday, October 5, 2006
|
High rise supermalls: the wave of big cities' futures? A new high-rise mall that may serve as a rejuvenation model for big city centers opened here last week as the largest urban shopping center west of the Mississippi River. |
|
Forget Golf Courses, Beaches & Mountains When it comes to finding a new place to live, today's retirees are looking for something completely different. |
|
Communist Relic When is a relic from a dark past a treasured historical artifact? In Poland, the question is coming to a head in a very public dispute over a rusting large supermarket. This is no Polish joke, but a preservation battle with a post-totalitarian twist. Surrounded by unremarkable glass towers, Supersam is a dowdy hulk left over from communist days. Inside the 34,400 square foot self-contained space is a food store, as well as a McDonald's with a drive-through and a toy store that came later. This spring, the building's private owners hatched a plan to replace Supersam with a $65 million shopping center and high-rise office tower. What they didn't reckon with is the power of nostalgia and the Internet. |
|
Venezuela's oil wealth funds gusher of anti-poverty projects It was the first meeting of San Juan's communal council, an example of a new grassroots governing structure that is spreading across Venezuela. Like thousands of other such newly elected councils, the San Juan group will soon be given previously unheard of sums of money by the central government in what Chavez calls "a revolution within the revolution." |
|
Eden in the City Garden Apartments Are Losing Ground to Development. |
|
Brad Pitt has another passionarchitecture Celebrities have worked for decades for such causes as global poverty and AIDS staging concerts, speaking at hearings, generating donations. But there's no script for swaying public opinion in the elite domain of architecture. Brad Pitt, though, has passionate interest in his favour. "I'm an architectural junkie,'' the actor explains, "like the screaming girl in the crowd.'' |
|
A Towns Architectural Shift, Chronicled Online On Sept. 22, the Web site started a new feature to chart the towns changing architectural landscape an interactive map that shows teardowns, homes with historic designations and recent construction. Maybe something like this will give people pause, said Ms. George, 39, in her office at her gracious 100-year-old home. Knowing youre having your house on the teardown map, knowing it will be part of this trend, I dont think it has a positive implication. |
[Archives]
Search entries: