Head over to World-Architects Daily News for a Year in Architecture 2014 piece I just put together. The article also looks ahead to 2015 and includes ten buildings that will be completed by this time next year.
Tuesday 9 December 2014
Monday 8 December 2014
Today's archidose #801
Here are some photos of the Luchtsingel pedestrian bridge (2013), in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, by ZUS Zones Urbaines Sensibles, photographed by Ken Lee.
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Friday 5 December 2014
Today's archidose #800
Here are some photos of the GMT Institute of Property Management (2010), in Jakarta, Indonesia, by PHL Architects, photographed by Trevor Patt.
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Thursday 4 December 2014
Elsewhere
From Monday, December 8, to Sunday, December 14, the Van Alen Institute is hosting Elsewhere, a series of public programs that "investigate key questions of the contemporary urban experience: How and why do we escape from urban life? What prompts us to escape to the city? What forms of escape can we find within the urban environment? And how might the experience of going “elsewhere” contribute to our well-being?"
Some events take place at the "new Van Alen" at 30 West 22nd Street (the storefront space that Van Alen Books used to occupy), but some take place, um, elsewhere. Check the website for locations and more information on the ten events. Here are a few highlights:
Some events take place at the "new Van Alen" at 30 West 22nd Street (the storefront space that Van Alen Books used to occupy), but some take place, um, elsewhere. Check the website for locations and more information on the ten events. Here are a few highlights:
Ultimate Exit: the Architecture and Urbanism of Tech-Secessionism
Live Interview Series and Multimedia Installation
Thursday, December 11
7:30pm—10:00pm
Van Alen Institute
30 West 22nd Street
Door to Door: Neighborliness
Interactive Walks 11:00AM-12:30PM & 2:00PM-3:30PM
Saturday, December 13
11:00am—3:30pm
Carroll Gardens and Clinton Hill
Escape Routes: New Itineraries
Design Presentation and Conversation
Sunday, December 14
4:00pm—6:00pm
Van Alen Institute
30 West 22nd Street
Wednesday 3 December 2014
Book Review: The Landscape Imagination
The Landscape Imagination: The Collected Essays of James Corner 1990-2010 edited by James Corner and Alison Hirsch
Princeton Architectural Press, 2014
Hardcover, 320 pages
Recently I visited the office of James Corner Field Operations to do a studio visit for World-Architects. Like other studio visit features, I carried out a little bit of research beforehand to get in the right frame of mind and have the foundation for a better conversation, in this case with Mr. Corner himself. One part of my research consisted of reading some of his essays collected in this handsome book released earlier this year. Previous to this I had read Corner's Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (with photographer Alex S. MacLean) as well as essays in The Landscape Urbanism Reader and other collections. So I had some familiarity with Corner's writings, particularly when it came to aerial representation and landscape urbanism, but I soon discovered these areas are just a small part of his writing output.
[High Line at the Rail Yards | Photo: John Hill]
As I explained in the studio visit, "Corner came to professional practice in a deliberate way by combining teaching and writing with practice as a means of advancing a particular approach to landscape architecture and urban design." To put it another way, he did not dive into practice, churning out one residential landscape after another or, as he put it to me, "just planting beds around buildings." He used writing, hand-in-hand with teaching, to create an intellectual foundation for his practice and define a way forward for his practice and the larger profession. It's no wonder that he became one of landscape urbanism's strongest proponents, since it requires a particular way of thinking – a theory – about the city, industry, ecology, and landscape; this theory was developed through essays and books that came at a time when landscape architecture was lacking in them.
[High Line at the Rail Yards | Photo: John Hill]
The foundations of Corner's positions are found the in the first section of the book, Theory, which is followed by three more that take a roughly chronological path through his career so far: Representation and Creativity, Landscape Urbanism, and Practice. I found the second and fourth sections the most interesting, as the aerial and other representations are extremely interesting to me, and Corner's writings on practice are the most recent and therefore the most pertinent to projects like the High Line, Fresh Kills, and the many others just completed or underway. For those interested in his writings but not sure where to start, Alison Hirsch's lengthy but very clear introduction takes the reader step by step through these phases of Corner's writings. And it's clear from the book's subtitle (the essays end in 2010, four years before publication) that these writings may have reached some sort of resolution. For with Field Operations busy and growing, and more of Corner's time devoted to practice, writing essays has been sidelined. These essays then serve as a good example, among other things, of how writing can inform practice by being an important part of it.
Princeton Architectural Press, 2014
Hardcover, 320 pages
Recently I visited the office of James Corner Field Operations to do a studio visit for World-Architects. Like other studio visit features, I carried out a little bit of research beforehand to get in the right frame of mind and have the foundation for a better conversation, in this case with Mr. Corner himself. One part of my research consisted of reading some of his essays collected in this handsome book released earlier this year. Previous to this I had read Corner's Taking Measures Across the American Landscape (with photographer Alex S. MacLean) as well as essays in The Landscape Urbanism Reader and other collections. So I had some familiarity with Corner's writings, particularly when it came to aerial representation and landscape urbanism, but I soon discovered these areas are just a small part of his writing output.
[High Line at the Rail Yards | Photo: John Hill]
As I explained in the studio visit, "Corner came to professional practice in a deliberate way by combining teaching and writing with practice as a means of advancing a particular approach to landscape architecture and urban design." To put it another way, he did not dive into practice, churning out one residential landscape after another or, as he put it to me, "just planting beds around buildings." He used writing, hand-in-hand with teaching, to create an intellectual foundation for his practice and define a way forward for his practice and the larger profession. It's no wonder that he became one of landscape urbanism's strongest proponents, since it requires a particular way of thinking – a theory – about the city, industry, ecology, and landscape; this theory was developed through essays and books that came at a time when landscape architecture was lacking in them.
[High Line at the Rail Yards | Photo: John Hill]
The foundations of Corner's positions are found the in the first section of the book, Theory, which is followed by three more that take a roughly chronological path through his career so far: Representation and Creativity, Landscape Urbanism, and Practice. I found the second and fourth sections the most interesting, as the aerial and other representations are extremely interesting to me, and Corner's writings on practice are the most recent and therefore the most pertinent to projects like the High Line, Fresh Kills, and the many others just completed or underway. For those interested in his writings but not sure where to start, Alison Hirsch's lengthy but very clear introduction takes the reader step by step through these phases of Corner's writings. And it's clear from the book's subtitle (the essays end in 2010, four years before publication) that these writings may have reached some sort of resolution. For with Field Operations busy and growing, and more of Corner's time devoted to practice, writing essays has been sidelined. These essays then serve as a good example, among other things, of how writing can inform practice by being an important part of it.
Tuesday 2 December 2014
Guggenheim Helsinki Matching Game
Today the Guggenheim announced the six finalist designs culled from the 1,715 stage-one submissions in its two-stage open design competition for a branch museum in Helsinki, Finland. Following EU procurement rules, the architects in the competition remain anonymous (having used 8-10-digit numbers), even though the finalist teams have been announced:
A. GH-04380895:
B. GH-1128435973:
C. GH-121371443:
D. GH-5059206475:
E. GH-5631681770:
F. GH-76091181:
If you care to guess, please leave a comment below with a list matching the architects (numbers) with the proposals (letters), e.g. 1A, 2B, etc. To take a more educated guess, click the links of the architects and the proposals above to get more information than just a name and one rendering.
- AGPS Architecture Ltd. (Zurich, Switzerland and Los Angeles, United States of America)
- Asif Khan Ltd. (London, United Kingdom)
- Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (New York, United States of America; Barcelona, Spain; and Sydney, Australia)
- Haas Cook Zemmrich STUDIO2050 (Stuttgart, Germany)
- Moreau Kusunoki Architect (Paris, France)
- SMAR Architecture Studio (Madrid, Spain and Western Australia)
A. GH-04380895:
B. GH-1128435973:
C. GH-121371443:
D. GH-5059206475:
E. GH-5631681770:
F. GH-76091181:
If you care to guess, please leave a comment below with a list matching the architects (numbers) with the proposals (letters), e.g. 1A, 2B, etc. To take a more educated guess, click the links of the architects and the proposals above to get more information than just a name and one rendering.
Monday 1 December 2014
Today's archidose #799
Here are some of my photos of New York Light (2014), INABA's winning design in the Van Alen Institute's Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition.
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:
:: Join and add photos to the archidose poolTo contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just:
:: Tag your photos #archidose