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President-elect Barack Obama will create an Office of Urban Policy at the White House.

President-elect Barack Obama will create an Office of Urban Policy at the White House.

Marywood University, in Scranton, Pa.

Helsinki places a premium on good design—and on keeping its citizens informed.

Felix, a ring-tailed lemurJil

I've been taking a new look at home design software programs, trying to decide which ones would make the best gifts. Some are so easy, even a beginner can draw...

New York Times writer Nicolai Ouroussoff raves about the architectural heritage of Buffalo, NY. Just look at all the famous architects who built there: Henry Hobson Richardson Frederick Law Olmsted Louis Sullivan Frank...

Home construction has taken a tail spin, but some architecture enthusiasts see a glimmer of hope. US President-elect Barack Obama is proposing a new office of urban policy that would...

With the economy taking a nose dive, those cosy, cost-effective Katrina Cottages are really taking off. The 19 plans in the Lowe’s Cottage Series sell for only $700 each, and...

Philadelphia architect Frank Furness was born on November 12, 1839. Known for his bold and oversized Victorian buildings, Furness became one of the greats of the Gilded Age. However, his...

The crowd and speakers seemed sober and realistic, and expressed strongly that the combination of new political leadership, and an intertwining of market breakdown and energy crisis would give environmental design its best shot yet. Fast Company

Scranton, PA's Marywood University has announced its new architecture program will begin in the Fall of 2009, with initial enrollment set at 300. The program will be the first to require LEED certification upon graduation. More

Space 15 Twenty is a new retail experiment in Hollywood, organized by Urban Outfitters, in collaboration with rotating creative brands (such as first resident LA architecture bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls). Opening tonight, 7-10pm.

Professor George Curry of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) was named 2008 New York Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. SUNY

From acclaimed biographer and cultural historian, author of Balthus and Patron Saints—the first full-scale life of le Corbusier, one of the most influential, admired, and maligned architects of the twentieth century, heralded is a prophet in his lifetime, revered as a god after his death. He was a leader of the modernist movement that sought to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. He predicted the city of the future with its large, white apartment buildings in parklike settings—a move away from the turn-of-the-century industrial city, which he saw…

Seven practices, including AHMM and Studio 3, have been shortlisted for the competition to refurbish and update the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

Seven practices, including AHMM and Studio 3, have been shortlisted for the competition to refurbish and update the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool.

A bitter public row has broken out over Sheffield’s £67 million St Paul’s Tower designed by Conran & Partners, in a dispute between developer and council that could leave the residential building unfinished.

A bitter public row has broken out over Sheffield’s £67 million St Paul’s Tower designed by Conran & Partners, in a dispute between developer and council that could leave the residential building unfinished.

Gough asks students to boycott contest that ‘propogates paranoia’

PC WorldGetting to the Core of Intel's New Core i7 CPUsPC World - 3 hours agoIntel's new "Bloomfield" quad-core Core i7 processors are the company's first to be based on its long-previewed "Nehalem" architecture. Intel rolls out new Core i7 chip Bizjournals.comTests: Nehalem Xeons 2X faster ElectronistaIntel, AMD Square Off With Nehalem And Shanghai CRNTechtree.com - Softpediaall 194 news articles

The Oregonian - OregonLive.comArchitecture critic Paul Goldberger thinks about PortlandThe Oregonian - OregonLive.com, OR - 5 hours agoGoldberger has written the New Yorker's Sky Line column on architecture since 1997, and before that, was the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic of

Palladio's Influence Spans Centuries and More Than One Washington Post, United States - 8 hours agoHis influence on Western architecture in general, and on Washington architecture in particular, is so significant that more than two dozen members of the

Arts and Architecture enriches locally, prepares students globallyPenn State Live, PA - 12 hours agoPhoto: Greg Grieco The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, housed in the Stuckeman Family Building (above), is one of the higlights of the

Anita Moran AIA Joins WHR DallasMarketWatch - 13 hours agoMs. Moran, nationally recognized for her work in academic architecture, will strengthen the firm's Education, Science and Technology practice and broaden

Kings County residents still have a chance to someday be within footsteps of a bullet train, a transportation planner said during a speaking visit to town Wednesday.

"This is a special title in the series," says Dean Montford, president and CEO of FS Dreamscapes.

U.K. oil explorers Petrofac Ltd. and Valiant Petroleum Plc said they moored the semi-submersible Northern Producer platform at the Don Area oil fields in the North Sea after completing refurbishment work.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation announced Monday that the state will receive $20 million in a settlement with HNTB Corp., which initially designed the Wakota Bridge project.

Silver Towers/University Village, north of Houston Street between Mercer Street and La Guardia Place.

biolinia evolves the art of illustrating architecture.

(Slide Show) Angular Forms of Wood, Steel and Glass Take Center Stage in the Architect’s Futuristic Studio in Westport

Open Audition: New York’s Finest

Period Elements Ground a New House Near Washington, D.C.

(Slide Show) Priscilla Presley Recalls the Residences She Shared with the Star of Viva Las Vegas

(Slide Show) A Couple’s Private Cottages at Their North Island Properties Offer a Unique Experience

Philharmonie, originally uploaded by my lala. La Philharmonie Luxembourg in Luxembourg by Atelier Christian de Portzamparc, 2005.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose

A week ago the New York Csty Council approved a $3 billion project to transform Willets Point from what is seen as a third-world cesspool to a mixed-use development with "exciting retail and entertainment offerings, a hotel and convention center, thousands of mixed-income residential units and new public open spaces and other community amenities" on the 60-acre site.[Willets Point now | image source]Eminent domain is the tool of choice for the transformation of the area near the new Mets Stadium that is home to auto shops, junkyards and other "undesirable" businesses. Pollution is rampant…

Richard Desmond Children's Eye Centre , originally uploaded by photourbanism. Richard Desmond Children's Eye Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital in Islington, London, England by Penoyre & Prasad LLP, 2007.To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just::: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or:: Tag your photos archidose

[Geodesic dome over Midtown Manhattan | image source]"I find Bucky [Fuller] more and more inspirational, especially for the freedom of his research. Two projects done with Shoji Sadao in 1960 make the point. The first of these is the much-ridiculed dome over Midtown Manhattan, criticized either as “impractical” (how to buff the glass, how to get the traffic through) or as simply a megalomaniacal expression of an environment overly controlled [as I did]. Such criticisms miss the project’s simple point: The membrane has a surface area approximately 1/64 that of the aggregated exteriors of…

My weekly page update:China Academy of Art Xiangshan Campus in Hangzhou, China by Amateur Architecture Studio.This week's book review is Positions: Portrait of a New Generation of Chinese Architects, edited by Frédéric Edelmann & Françoise Ged, and Olympic Architecture: Beijing 2008, by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design.Some unrelated links for your enjoyment: neuehausNews for designers with both e-mail and rss subscriptions. (added to sidebar under blogs::aggregate)on site"architecture, art, engineering, performance, landscape, culture, infrastructure, photography: we mix it…

EAT's Pepsi Pavilion (1970) (Source: greg.org)Architecture historian and critic Sylvia Lavin gave an impromptu lunchtime lecture today on EAT's Pepsi Pavilion. Built from a retrofitted geodesic dome for the 1970 Osaka Expo, and filled with a spherically-shaped reflective mylar interior, EAT's pavilion is normally understood as a media experiment. Its various interactive devices, displays, atmospheric effects made the pavilion as something to be considered by art and media historians, but not by architecture historians.This presented a problem for Lavin, who used the case of the Pepsi Pavilion…

Norman McLaren, Neighbours (1952)The films of Canadian director Norman McLaren (1914-1987) are short, brimming with color, and marked by the occasional use of a camera. The Scottish-born, Canadian-raised auteur is typically considered an animator. But like Stan Brakhage, McLaren uses film as a literal medium; that is to say, in lieu of portraying a photographic subject in motion (which he does resort to in some films), he often chooses to use the film emulsions as his own canvas. The result are often thrilling, as in films like Boogie Doodle (1940), where amoebic forms perform a sprightly…

Imagine a graph. This graph traces the historical trajectory of a particular art form. The y-axis could be a measure of something arbitrary, something like height, weight, volume, square footage, page length .... the list can go on for ever. The x-axis is time. And somewhere at the top right-hand corner of this matrix, the trajectory plateaus. It ceases to oscillate up and down. It just continues to move forward with no qualitative change.This is an overtly simplistic historical model, a thumbnail sketch of a thumbnail sketch. It does, however, begin to capture a controversial and provocative…

H.W. Plainview (Dillon Freasier) and Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) Scour the California Countryside for Oil, from Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007)You may have already noticed, but Hollywood has a pretty good idea of what the 19th and 20th centuries looked like. And this is especially true when studios begin to crank out films that have a distinct emphasis on landscape. I take this to mean that Hollywood films have developed a recognizable visual language used to depict the natural and built environments of the 19th and 20th century.This language has some recognizable…

More evidence of a well-timed restlessness brewing in the internets. Exhibit A: Kazys muses on the intense hyperreal renderings of Lebbeus Woods, asking whether anything remotely as interesting will ever come again. Kazys notes howThe boom has not only produced almost no good buildings, by distracting architects from the proper task of developing the discipline, it has set our task back by over two decades. There is almost no speculative work worth mentioning, almost no serious research going on in a field that begs to be rejuvenated. A few people, generally at the intersection of…

the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barcelo spent more than a year creating the 16,000-square-foot elliptical painting for the dome of 'Hall XX' that houses the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. It is... [more on anArchitecture]

images © Wolfgang Thaler The Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel is showing "Balkanology", an exhibition which is dedicated to exploring the urban transformations in South Eastern Europe. »Balkanology« opens a new field of architectural discourse in Switzerland - the little-known architecture of... [more on anArchitecture]

Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go, 1987 ) is an art film by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The film shows the continuing cycle of object moved by gravitation, centripetal forces, moment of inertia, Newton's laws third of motion (“to every action there is an equal and... [more on anArchitecture]

image copyright by Marc Räder, C-Print on alu. Uv-Film, 88 x 110 cm Edition 4/4 + 1ap "His photographs reflect the optional exclusion, standardization and non-historiography of life in Gated Communities for middle and upper class people." (see Räder's photography at Parrotta Contemporary... [more on anArchitecture]

Google has launched the new Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth. A model that "contains over 6,700 3D buildings and 250 Google Earth placemarks that allow Google Earth users to explore and learn about this fascinating period of history." (via LatLong Blog) content by anArchitecture [more on anArchitecture]

The crowd and speakers seemed sober and realistic, and expressed strongly that the combination of new political leadership, and an intertwining of market breakdown and energy crisis would give environmental design its best shot yet. Fast Company

Scranton, PA's Marywood University has announced its new architecture program will begin in the Fall of 2009, with initial enrollment set at 300. The program will be the first to require LEED certification upon graduation. More

Space 15 Twenty is a new retail experiment in Hollywood, organized by Urban Outfitters, in collaboration with rotating creative brands (such as first resident LA architecture bookstore Hennessey + Ingalls). Opening tonight, 7-10pm.

Professor George Curry of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) was named 2008 New York Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. SUNY

From acclaimed biographer and cultural historian, author of Balthus and Patron Saints—the first full-scale life of le Corbusier, one of the most influential, admired, and maligned architects of the twentieth century, heralded is a prophet in his lifetime, revered as a god after his death. He was a leader of the modernist movement that sought to create better living conditions and a better society through housing concepts. He predicted the city of the future with its large, white apartment buildings in parklike settings—a move away from the turn-of-the-century industrial city, which he saw…

[Image: From Code 46, courtesy of United Artists (via)].Next week's event at the Barbican just got even better, with the addition of Mark Tildesley, production designer for Code 46, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, The Constant Gardener, 24 Hour Party People, Millions, and many others, including Richard Curtis's forthcoming film The Boat That Rocked.I'll be interviewing director Michael Winterbottom and Mark Tildesley both after a screening of their film Code 46. The event has already sold-out, but if you've got your ticket I hope you're in for a great conversation! For those of you who can't make…

[Image: A screen-grab of the Live Piracy Map].With all the talk of piracy at sea, it was only a matter of time before the Live Piracy Map was developed. According to its creators, the map "shows all the piracy and armed robbery incidents reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre during 2008." It's the geography of aquatic crime, mapping realtime adventures in buoyant larceny. [Image: From the Live Piracy Map].This incident report corresponds to the map, above. The report describes the attempted hijacking of a chemical tanker:Two white hull boats with several persons onboard approached…

I've got two more events coming up in London, both on Wednesday, November 26. I'll post more info about the first event in a bit. The second one, in the evening, has been organized by the Complex Terrain Laboratory, and it will take place in the J.Z. Young Lecture Theatre at UCL, inside the Anatomy Building on Gower Street. Here is a map.I'll be teaming up with Antoine Bousquet, Lecturer in International Relations at Birkbeck College, and author of the forthcoming book The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity to discuss our work in relation to space,…

On Monday, November 24, I'll be hosting a live interview at the Barbican in London with director Michael Winterbottom, for a special screening of his film Code 46. You can read a bit more about the event – as well as buy tickets – here. This is part of an ongoing series called Architecture on Film, curated by the Architecture Foundation. [Image: From Michael Winterbottom's Code 46, courtesy of United Artists].The purpose of the event is to talk about film and architecture – or, in this case, cities, urban design, memory, science fiction, landscape, globalization, and the built…

[Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin makes images of unexpected buildings – that is, he "combines photographs of parts of buildings into new, fictional, architectonic structures," Mark Magazine explains.The resulting projects look like old factory sites in the American rust belt – Mark describes them as "informal and often dilapidated structures with unspecified functions" – or, in some cases, new projects by LOT-EK, Simon Ungers, or OMA. [Image: Photo by Filip Dujardin, courtesy of the artist].From Mark Magazine:Every montage,…

Sylvan housing reaches new heights with these wonderful dewdrop shaped Treetents by Dutch sculptor and designer Dré Wapenaar. Originally designed to ease the lives of tree-sitting activists, they also make excellent treetop retreats for campers, kids, and anyone soothed by an evening spent softly swaying among the branches. Each beautifully formed droplet attaches directly to a tree trunk and is roomy enough to sleep a family of four. (more…)

In 1988, Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino bought a run-down house in the Millstone borough of New Jersey. A house that was designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright. Turns out, that Wright had been thinking of the environment back then. The home, along with about 100 others, was designed in his “Usonian” style– a style that utilized admirable green building principles, including smaller footprints, lower cost, passive solar and radiant heating. The couple, principals of architecture and design firm, Tarantino Studio, renovated it, which won an award from the New Jersey…

Blu Homes is a relative newcomer to the prefab design world. That being said, they are in the midst of two projects that should be completed by Spring 2009. One is in Blue River, Colorado and the other is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Blu Homes focuses on more than good contemporary and energy efficient design. With a Blu Home, you’ll get a fun and beautiful design, but you’ll also get walked through the whole process from site evaluation, permitting, financing, design, site work all the way through construction and finishing the home. And you’ll know the price right from the…

The GreenWashBall is a device that you toss into the washing machine to clean your dirty laundry in place of detergent. An innovative concept, but not the first of its kind - “laundry balls” like the GreenWashBall are abundant, including the Miracle II Ball, the Laundry Solution ball, and the Mystic Wonder Laundry Ball. They are supposedly popular in Europe and the laundry ball industry is hoping to gain popularity in the U.S. Completely cutting the use of detergent is enticing from both ecological and economic standpoints, but how exactly does the GreenWashBall work, and can it…

Just in time for the overly packaged holiday season, we are thrilled to see that Amazon is debuting a new eco-friendly idea called ‘Frustration Free Packaging’. If you’ve ever tried to open a plastic package twice the size of the product inside and ended up with box cutters in one hand and carpal tunnel syndrome in the other you may know ‘wrap rage.’ Then once you finally got the plastic off, you still had 18 wires to unwind and a mountain of mostly unrecyclable trash. The folks at Amazon are working hard to remedy this problem with the introduction of…

Sylvan housing reaches new heights with these wonderful dewdrop shaped Treetents by Dutch sculptor and designer Dré Wapenaar. Originally designed to ease the lives of tree-sitting activists, they also make excellent treetop retreats for campers, kids, and anyone soothed by an evening spent softly swaying among the branches. Each beautifully formed droplet attaches directly to a tree trunk and is roomy enough to sleep a family of four. (more…)

In 1988, Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino bought a run-down house in the Millstone borough of New Jersey. A house that was designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright. Turns out, that Wright had been thinking of the environment back then. The home, along with about 100 others, was designed in his “Usonian” style– a style that utilized admirable green building principles, including smaller footprints, lower cost, passive solar and radiant heating. The couple, principals of architecture and design firm, Tarantino Studio, renovated it, which won an award from the New Jersey…

Blu Homes is a relative newcomer to the prefab design world. That being said, they are in the midst of two projects that should be completed by Spring 2009. One is in Blue River, Colorado and the other is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Blu Homes focuses on more than good contemporary and energy efficient design. With a Blu Home, you’ll get a fun and beautiful design, but you’ll also get walked through the whole process from site evaluation, permitting, financing, design, site work all the way through construction and finishing the home. And you’ll know the price right from the…

The GreenWashBall is a device that you toss into the washing machine to clean your dirty laundry in place of detergent. An innovative concept, but not the first of its kind - “laundry balls” like the GreenWashBall are abundant, including the Miracle II Ball, the Laundry Solution ball, and the Mystic Wonder Laundry Ball. They are supposedly popular in Europe and the laundry ball industry is hoping to gain popularity in the U.S. Completely cutting the use of detergent is enticing from both ecological and economic standpoints, but how exactly does the GreenWashBall work, and can it…

Just in time for the overly packaged holiday season, we are thrilled to see that Amazon is debuting a new eco-friendly idea called ‘Frustration Free Packaging’. If you’ve ever tried to open a plastic package twice the size of the product inside and ended up with box cutters in one hand and carpal tunnel syndrome in the other you may know ‘wrap rage.’ Then once you finally got the plastic off, you still had 18 wires to unwind and a mountain of mostly unrecyclable trash. The folks at Amazon are working hard to remedy this problem with the introduction of…

(Tactical maneuvers against territorial erasure along Italy's southern Tyrrhenian coast, discovered via Alex MacLean's aerial photographs taken while a Fellow of The American Academy in Rome. With coastal development and sea level continuing to rise unabated, expect more of these geo-efflorescences popping up everywhere like micro-tentacled warts, the sight of which will utterly gross people out or completely fascinate them. See also: Beached.)In the Archives:On the coast

Here's an educational video from Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. It's remarkable for making very complex, interconnected issues — i.e., food security, public health, global trade, energy and geography — more readily understandable. And in under 5 minutes! Quite an amazing feat.Meanwhile, it's rather reminiscent of the ephemeral films made by government agencies and corporations of 1950s America. The production quality here is more slick, but it's still propaganda, a brand of social engineering instilling institutional definitions of patriotism and good…

(The new Nicolai Kulturcenter, Kolding, Denmark. Photo courtesy of Arkitekt Krisine Jensens Tegnestue.)The recipient of the 5th Rosa Barba European Landscape Award, announced recently in Barcelona during the 5th European Biennale of Landscape Architecture, is the Nicolai Kulturcenter in Kolding, Denmark, designed by Kristine Jensen.(A Cor-Ten steel stage bathed in neon technicolor. Photo courtesy of Arkitekt Krisine Jensens Tegnestue.)The project, we read, involved transforming what was little more than an alleyway — or a “lousy backyard,” as the landscape architect describes it in…

Of all the phenomenal spaces concocted by Paisajes Emergentes for their entry in the Parque del Lago ideas competition, our favorite one has to be the open-air theater that doubles as a rainwater storage tank.(Image by Paisajes Emergentes.)Or is it a water tank that occasionally hosts cultural events, the itinerary being dependent on weather conditions beyond a day's forecasted precipitation? One can't imagine it functional during the wet season or even during the dry season if rain isn't particularly scarce.Of course, there's a simple solution: build a floating stage. The number of available…

To finish off this series of student projects from Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos's vertical studio at the AA is Taebeom Kim's Gastronomic Garden.(Taebeom Kim's Gastronomic Garden. Bigger version.)There's a lot of things happening here. First, there are the allotment gardens hovering over — perhaps are even propped up by — compost tanks used for recycling garden scraps as well organic waste of local residents.One particularly large bulbous structure, somewhat reminiscent of sludge digesters at some sewer treatment plants, is designated as a place for contemplation, though…

Ohio man with motto ‘shake my hand, not my work,’ captures commanders-in-chief in Etch A Sketch portraits. Via Dan.

A friday afternoon cruise through the newly public archive of Life magazine’s photographs, hosted by google: “Architect Le Corbusier sitting in chair with book in hands, glasses perched on his forehead.” 1946 Link “Parking sheds of the High Court Building, used as living quarters by permanant security guards, contrary to the wishes of designer, Le Corbusier.” 1958 Link “78-yr-old AT&T stockholder Mrs. Louise Bucker of Milwaukee WI looking at full-size model of co.’s Telstar experimental communications satellite, at…

El Pais interview with Sejima.  ¡Gracias Alberto, feliz cumpleaños!

“The Most Awesome Building in The Universe.” Quite possibly.

A glass-walled public television studio for WNET.org will open in the base of the Lincoln Centre, currently being renovated by Diller Scofidio & Renfro. NYT.

Common Current recently released a report ranking U.S. cities on their ability to deal with a peak oil crisis. San Francisco comes out on top, with Oklahoma City ranks last. read more

An economic study has been published showing that the costs of air pollution to the 20 million Californians living in the state’s (and nation’s) two most polluted regions, the LA basin and San Joaquin Valley, to be around $28 billion annually. read more

This article looks at some adaptive reuse projects that successfully preserve the beauty of Boston's late-nineteenth century infrastructure. read more

On Tuesday, San Francisco's MUNI approved a pilot program to price 6,000 of the city's parking spots according to popularity. read more

According to the Federal Highway Administration, the number of miles driven in the U.S. declined by 4.4% since last year. read more

Oppenheim Architecture + Design have unveiled plans to build an art storage facility in Miami, USA. (more…)

Saudi Arabia-based telecommunications company STC have designed a wireless internet router that can also be used to hold flowers. (more…)

Architects Future Systems have completed the facade of a building on Oxford Street in London. (more…)

Oslo-based designers Norway Says have designed a range of salt and pepper grinders called Plus for Danish manufacturer Muuto. (more…)

French fashion house Hermès have teamed up with car distributor Como to design the interior of ten Smart cars. (more…)

Or: An Exit Strategy for Architecture; Or: Another Kind of Archigram This essay was first published in the excellent catalogue titled "L.A.W.U.N Project 19: The Disreputable Projects of David Greene" produced for David Greenes exhibition at the Architectural Association, (April - May 2008). Get it, if you can. Its a lovely thing! The history of architecture is a history of stuff. Or rather of stuff assembled - of trees cut down and joined together, of stone cut from the ground and piled up, of muds and clays dug up and baked, of ore mined from the earth, refined and formed. Stuff piled up,…

I've been spending an inordinate amount of time in Lancashire allotments on a research trip sponsored by Livesey/Wilson associates - the regeneration consultants set up by the late Tony Wilson and his partner Yvette. Yes, that Tony Wilson: Factory records, the Hacienda, Joy Division et al. This boggy, scrubby, almost abandoned allotment overlooking Accrington seems a long way from the cool, sparse, post-industrial sound of the North West wrapped up in Peter Saville graphics. Factory Records borrowed Andy Warhol's art affectation - the appropriation of an industrial term to describe art…

Architectural culture has less to do with buildings, and a whole lot more to do with the reproduction of its own image. It significance is communicated through media - from super-fast blogs, news driven magazines, to books and the journals of academia. Each of these media sites allows a particular view of architecture - but in each case we see a representation of buildings that is skewed to serve a particular agenda inherent to the media itself. The difference between architecture and building might be described by its mediation, rather than its inherent quality: representation bestows the…

As Geoff has already posted over at BldgBlog, I'll be participating in a discussion at the Chicago Humanities Festival on Saturday, November 8th. Geoff and I will be joined by Joseph Grima and Jeffrey Inaba. More info: Look abroad: Whole cities are planned, built, and inhabited in less than a generation. Artificial islands, indoor ski slopes, and the world's tallest this-and-that are being constructed, not in the West, but in the Middle East, China, and beyond. The result: a sense that the West's cities are falling behind and, increasingly, watching from the sidelines. A dynamic panel will…

6.00pm, Monday November 3rd, Architectural Association, London Vernacular Spectaculars: On Pop, the Everyday, and Escapology Through a series of examples - a close reading of penny chews; a history of half timbering; the chemistry of Starbucks foam - the talk will tour some sites of everyday pop-vernaculars in an attempt to unravel their codes, meanings and politics. We'll also look at the legacy of a variety of Pop-isms, argue about the relevance of architecture's abandoned post-modern project, the construction of meanings against the abstraction of modernism, and how Pop-esque strategies…

2008 Grassroots Leadership and Legislative Conference

CTBUH (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats) 8th World Congress, Dubai

AIA Response to Architect of the Capitol Article

Petition to Congress: The Architect of the Capitol Should Be an Architect

CurrentTV video, "Green by Design", spotlights AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects

Material Beliefs is a group of designers based in London. They might create pieces of furniture and accessories but they are not your usual tables and cups. The result of a close collaboration with scientists and engineers, social scientists but also members of the public, their projects take emerging biomedical and cybernetic technology out of labs and into public space. The members of Material Beliefs use design as a tool for public engagement, a mean to stimulate discussion about the value and impact of new technologies which blur the boundaries between our bodies and materials. Each of…

I am going to be offline during the 20+ hours of a trip to Brazil for the arte.mov festival (btw any tips on exhibition to do see in Belo Horizonte and Sao Paulo are more than welcome), i'm going to miss the broadband and wonder why no one has fine tuned teletransportation yet. In the meantime, please, do me a favour and broadsurf for me: Art Fag City reported the cancellation of the Chelsea Art Museum's exhibition, Dialectics of Terror, and uploaded online the PDF of the catalog of a show that would have been fascinating. Remember i mentioned the gorgeous catalog of the exhibition…

No proper building. Not even an architecture project that would give a hint of what its future headquarters would be like. That didn't prevent El Bòlit, a brand new Contemporary Art Center, from opening its borrowed doors a few weeks ago in Girona. For many Europeans used to fly on the cheap, Girona equals Barcelona or the Costa Brava. Ever since one of the most famous 'no frills' airlines chose the airport as one of their hubs, hordes of travelers land there, grab their luggage on the rotating belt and hop on an hour bus ride that brings them directly to Barcelona centre. They never get to…



 UHER.C. Photo Guido Costa Projects Robert Kusmirowski does copies, simulacra, forgeries, mock-ups. Meticulously and masterfully. The result of his craft is an illusion. You believe you're in front of a relic from the past, complete with patina: a sepia photography, old newspapers, cigarette packs, but also a graveyard, the wagon of a '40s train or an entire train station. I never used to be fascinated by sculptures but the young artist put such a eerie, retro-innovative' spin to the genre that he won me over. Robert Kuśmirowski, Ungut, 2006 Information about the artist state that he…

Sarajevo, 2008. ©Wolfgang Thaler Last week, just a few hours after having landed in Switzerland for the IETM Autumn Plenary Meeting (which focused on the very sexy theme of 'misunderstanding'), i was sitting in a train to Basel. Like an automaton, i had been drawn to the city to visit Balkanology, New Architecture and Urban Phenomena in South Eastern Europe, the ongoing exhibition at the Swiss Architecture Museum. SA M explores contemporary architecture and urban design from a trans-disciplinary perspective, not just at national level as its title might suggest, it also puts architecture…

The end of the world is nigh, perhaps. The temples of doom, a recent Guardian piece by Rory Carroll draws parallels between the 'population explosion, ecological disaster and weak leadership' that did for Mayan civilisation and the apparent limits being approached by today's global culture, six centuries after the Renaissance. The piece isn't especially alarmist; there's plenty of hand-wringing online and elsewhere. It wasn't so long ago that merchants of doomsday saw the enemies of progress as those most likely to send global culture backwards. Unsurprisingly, the writings of Ayn Rand,…

Random links today / all about the Prandtl Glauert Singularity / books written and illustrated by Barbara Jones (1912-1978) / extracts from the archive of Manuel Raeder / objects by Amplifier / other objects on show at The Estrangement Gallery, all collated, curated from who knows where / amazing photography by Brendan Austin.Anthropomorphic automobiles, a photo series by Vladimir Nikolic, at booooooom! / take a virtual tour of the recent Hayward Gallery installation by Los Carpentineros / Big Box re-use: What happens to the store when Wal-Mart leaves town?, a Slate feature.Research…

The recent news that the design of the forthcoming American Embassy in London is to be limited to American firms only ('British firms barred from US Embassy competition') isn't enormously surprising; the modern American embassy structure don't exactly extend the open hand of cultural freedom. In Beijing, Berlin and elsewhere, recent buildings are effectively fortresses in the post post-modern idiom, insular compounds that are as aesthetically dated as their websites, the architecture wrapped up in protective layers that are now overtly physical as well as electronic. Back in the heat of the…

Friday round-up. Nadav Kander's new series, Yangtze from East to West, featured at Don't Panic magazine / Is Science Fiction Dying? / Boring Magazine, a publication by Scotch and Penicillin (which also has a good links page; fly through snowy mountains, courtesy of Electric Oyster.'FaceResearch. allows you to participate in short online psychology experiments looking at the traits people find attractive in faces and voices.' / Graham Rawle's Emerald City, created for his book The Wizard of Oz / backstage at a fashion show, 1954, at susi.a / the Paris Exposition of 1900, an image collection…

Jalou Galerie, 'les archives de L'Officiel de la Mode' (via On Shadow, mildly nsfw), a treasure trove of archive imagery from France's L'Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode, dating back all the way to the first issue in 1921. The above image shows a selection of covers from 1933, when Leger was clearly all the rage.A fine exposition on several contemporary topics, Who Stole My Volcano? Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dematerialisation of Supervillain Architecture / we missed this: Life Without Buildings interviews Charlie Kaufman, on the occasion of the release of Synecdoche,…

Sketchup Pro 7 with updated features and revised layout 2 is ready for your downloading. to find out more...

"The proposal imagines a modulated skin; made up of 9 modules, that performs as a series of balconies, storage spaces, sun-shades and window-cabins all moulded into one. " to find out more...Passage & Image from http://www.serie.co.uk/HTML%20Files/Project/V%20Office03.html

Good Architecture work are meant to be shared. This is some of the rendering style I like. to find out more...Image from http://blog.hanrahanmeyers.com/

An interesting site you cannot affort to miss~ the studioformwork. to find out more...

A powerful engineering 3d modeling software worth a look for architects~!! Take a look at the tutorials and videos they provided with enhanced features similar to sketchup pushpull. I am hoping for architectural work to be established soon with this new powerful tool~! There is a 30days free trial version for your free downloads. Hope you would enjoy the fun of learning new things."Founded in September 2005, SpaceClaim has a world-class team of prominent executives, product developers, board members, and advisors with unrivaled experience in bringing new computer-aided design software to…

Intriguing Earth Architecture 59: Diamond Ranch High School, Pomona, California - Morphosisvia flickr: brandon shigeta

badminton: ‘the sequence’ by arne quinze for the flemish parliament

szymon: double up

handa: BLDGBLOG (via miwster)

“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. - Le Corbusier”

Dutch architects MVRDV and Danish co-architects ADEPT have won a competition to design the Rødovre Skyscraper in Copenhagen, Denmark."The constellation of the pixels allows flexibility in function; the building can be transformed by market forces... ...Flexibility for adaptation is one of the best sustainable characteristics of a building."MVRDV (co-architect ADEPT )Rødovre SkyscraperCopenhagen, Denmark

Alex Popov: Buildings and Projects" Architecture is taking possession of the earth. It can be perceived in many ways. It can be touched, walked in, walked around, lived in, sensed in and worked in."Alex Popov - Australian ArchitectAlex Popov & Associates

"Capital Gate will be one of a kind. Its graceful, asymmetric diagonal structure, known as a ‘diagrid’, supports the tilting external load of the building and we believe that this is the first building in the world to use a pre-cambered core."David Pringle, CEO, RMJM Asia and the Middle EastRMJM architectsCapital Gate Dhabi, United Arab Emiratesimages © ADNEC / RMJMmore info @+ MOOD - Inclined Capital Gate Tower | RMJM architectsWAN - Capital Gate to become Guinness Book of Records' most inclined tower?Capital Gate official site - Great cities need great buildings

"The impression we want is that buildings are formed by the same forces that shaped the land, building has real integrity and a richness of stone and texture... wanted earth to be earth, wood to be wood and stone to be stone."Patterson Michael Hills ClubhousePatterson AssociatesArrowtown, New Zealandmore info @+ MOOD - Michael Hills Clubhouse | Patterson Associatese-architect: Contemporary Golf Building, New ZealandArchitect's site project description in pdf format

" let the design unfold as a result of the project’s needs: optimal natural light and air distribution, maximum views, minimal structure, user comfort and an unrivaled water experience." Tobias WallisserMichael Schumacher Tower Abu Dhabi, UAEDesign Architects: LAVA Local architects: Wenzel+Wenzel, Abu Dhabimore info @arcspace - LAVA Michael Schumacher Towerdezeen - Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower by LAVADeviceDaily - LAVA Designs The Michael Schumacher Tower In Collaboration With The Formula 1 Legend

Six Months of Xbox 360 Avatar Updates Planned By Earnest Cavalli ovember 19, 2008 Enjoying the customization of the avatars found in the Xbox 360's just-released New Xbox Experience? Good news! Additional customization options are planned to roll out for the next half a year. "We’re going to be continually releasing and unlocking clothes for the next six months," Xbox Live product unit manager Jerry Johnson told Videogaming247. "They’ll be coming out in theme packs." If I have one gripe about the NXE -- aside from the usual launch day hiccups -- it's that the range of pants one has to…

"A big screen lets you multitask without pulling out your hair. You can put your IM and e-mail off to one side and work on your main window at the same time without too much overlap.A recent study even says that people who use larger monitors are more productive. The research found that people using a 24-inch screen completed tasks 52% faster than those who used an 18-inch monitor, and people who used two 20-inch monitors were 44% faster than those who used 18-inch screens. The reason cited is because moving data between files is more ideally suited to bigger or multiple monitors.Big monitors…

When will Linden Lab improve their Prim Editor?Bookmark this:

From The Official Google Blog:Lively no more 11/19/2008 05:55:00 PM In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it's the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people's lives. But we've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.That's why, despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the…

"SL COPYBOT version 2.2.3.1Hello and welcome to your future in Second Life. You've all heard about it, some of you might have seen it, and now is your chance to get it. Copybot version 2.2.3.1, going for ONLY L$2,000.¹ Compare this to the prices of other programs and you'll see why getting Copybot is the right choice!"What will I get with the program?"You will receive the bot itself and a detailed command list. I have also included a basic "Getting Started" guide which will help you through the set up and will give you valuable tips and advice!"I will not give an attribution for the above…

Photo via Dave Hogg Being a Girl Scout has come a long way from making jewelry out of tree bark and safety pins and selling cookies. And it’s a good thing, too. Tomorrow, 25 Girl Scout Juniors and Cadettes will participate in a day-long camp focused on improving energy efficiency in buildings. They’ll learn the bulk of the lessons by performing an energy audit of the Math and Science Center and the Program Center at Camp Dellwood in Indianapolis, IN. How...

Image source: California Paints Now that the temperatures are chilling down, its time to do indoor, rather than outdoor, home repair. Why not give those walls a touch up of paint? Or, for new homeowners, done with apartment living and its bare, white walls, its time to finally get to PAINT YOUR OWN WALLS! Yay! Why not try Elements No-VOC paint now available by California Paints. ...

Casa Decor, the international interior design show, chose “Pathway to a Sustainable Environment” (or Rumbo Sostenible in Spanish) as this year’s theme for their exhibition in Barcelona. We already wrote about the elegant recycled restaurant by designer Nancy Robbins in a previous article, and we would now like to present you the project Barcelona Forever, by designer Mette Bak Andersen. It ...

GreenBuild is just huge, 800 booths, 30,000 people, there probably are more green vendors and green architects in this room than there are green clients in America. One doesn't even want to think about the carbon footprint of bringing everyone to town for this thing, but they just had to change the name of Architecture 2030 to 2035. The start was inauspicious....

A great way to start one's visit to Greenbuild in Boston is at Project Frog, a prefabricated building system that is as far from the standard school portable as a Prius is from an Edsel. (Seen previously in TreeHugger at Project Frog: Too Cool for School There are certain basics everyone wants in a green building, starting with energy efficiency and non-toxic materials. Construction processes that limit the building's impact on the environment. A building that simply makes us feel better when we're inside, with its abundant daylighting, good acoustics and superior air quality. Sounds simple…