What's All This Then?
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What's All This Then?
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Friday Edition
In Jewelboxing Case Study 16, we talk about SetBuild,
a project in the UK that helps students recreate sets from famous films.
Coudal Partners
fresh signals categorical archives
Architecture
Pinc House's Black Barn.
Grab our blended RSS feed here.
Nice summer house.
Indefinite in number, but of certain fixed shapes, another great find from Geoff Manaugh
The 9 Hours Capsule Hotel in Kyoto, Japan. Sleek and 2001-ish. Via Daily Icon.
The City That Never Was, an exhibition of unrealized architecture plans for Berlin. Via Archinect.
Herman takes a trip to photograph Rochester, NY's abandoned trolley tunnels. More info here.
Dumpster diving on Park Avenue in New York City. Literally.
The Treehotel in Sweden. Four rooms/mini-houses are finished so far, with more coming. Thanks Claire.
Roger Ebert on Chicago architecture. Homesick, it makes me.
Frank Gehry's house, at Arch Daily.
Fascinating audio and visual tour of the abandoned Ducor Hotel in Liberia.
Secret stations and boyhood love on the Paris Metro.
"During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish." When Less Was More.
Local note: the Chicago Architecture Foundation has started Mies & Modernism: The IIT Campus Tour, a guided walking tour around the campus, "with a special emphasis on the years 1938-1958, the time of Mies' tenure as the head of the School of Architecture."
Vanity Fair takes a look at Architecture in the Age of Gehry.
Love the look of this macaroon shop in Mexico.
Just looking at the pictures made me break out into a cold sweat. The new Marina Bay Sands development in Singapore features an infinity pool 55 stories up.
"...it's been a discovery... late in a career—of the luxury of nondesign as a method for dealing with issues rather than the always serious effort of intelligent invention or insertion." A fascinating interview about museums with architect Rem Koolhaas in Artfourm.
The Karel Appel House in Amsterdam. Could also function well under the name "The Mondrian House."
Video tour of projects made with Suicidator City Generator, software that allows you to create whole cities just by setting a few variables. Via Things Mag.
"Even an idiot can carve a statue of Lenin...but for building a stable and strong base, the knowledge of the old school was indispensable." Looking at the bases underneath Soviet statues.
Kevin van Braak's staircase was made in one piece and placed over a tree.
House on Lake Okoboji in Iowa. Min/Day architects.
A look at a stunning abandoned palace on Beekman Street.
A Daily Dose on Andy Warhol's "Silver Clouds" installed at Crown Hall. Edward Lifson has a few more photos.
Spending the night tonight at the Juvet Landscape Hotel which is almost uncomfortably scenic and modern, that's how cool it is.
Soccer City Stadium 2010.
Photos showing the dramatic changes in the skyline of Shanghai from 1996 to 2010.
3-D tours of all of South AFrica's 2010 FIFA World Cup football stadiums.
"The world's first hotel made from rubbish has opened its doors in the Italian capital Rome."
Gorgeous photos of the Museum of Islamic Art.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released their list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
Get your fish a condo.
"These men who stare at IKEA furniture have been tasked to design a store that can snare cool hunters into a continuous delirium of consumption."
Love this concrete house in Madrid.
Take a tour of the UK's World Expo pavilion, the amazing Seed Cathedral.
Living Architecture, vacation in one-of-a-kind, modern buildings, designed by leading architects. A sweet idea, but watch out for the first step out the door of "The Balancing Barn." Via @bobulate.
The Danish Pavilion at EXPO 2010.
It's Not a Crack House, It's a Crack Home but in real life.
James A. Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks 1948 Chicago the Beautiful. Sweet. Thanks Pop!
"Planes are shifted off the orthogonal to accommodate function; as a side effect it relieves inhabitants from a harsh Euclidian geometry." Couch Cushion Fort Architecture; A Critical Analysis. Via C-Monster.
Shanghai's World Expo is nearly ready. Wow.
Gary's 344 square foot apartment in Hong Kong has 24 rooms.
House Beo is sleek, modern and sort of an aquarium, especially at night. Via Daily Icon.
I wouldn't mind parking my car here every day for work, would you?
Wooden Churches, Travelling in the Russian North, a photo series by Richard Davies. Via Conscientious.
Gah! A huge and utterly fabulous collection of work from the famed 1960's futurist architectural group Archigram. Find out more about the group here.
Local note: "The Society of Architectural Historians has created an innovative walking tour that enables Chicagoans to download building histories on their web-enabled cell phones." Point, Click, Learn . Very cool.
For my Dad, because he needs to move his wine collection out of the closet he has it in and into something like this. Sorry Mom.
"The simple truth is that successful city-building is less about big moves and more about perseverance and day-to-day management." Interesting piece by Witold Rybczynski on the future of urban planning. Via Archinect.
"For the first 40 years no one seemed to notice the man collecting bricks. Almost invisibly, the scrap material mounted on a patch of land outside Madrid- a pile of crooked bricks, a tangle of steel wire -until, eventually, something remarkable began to take form." Don Justo is building a cathedral.
Just a tad taller than the Statue of Liberty, Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittal Orbit in London.
BldgBlog on The Klip House. a futuristic, imaginative, quick construction system.
"Through the process of decay, ruins offer an aesthetic experience that bypasses the normal designs of the city, often over-regulated, boring and too smooth. In ruins, we can come across unexpected sights, weird vestiges of the past, unfathomable artifacts, cryptic signs, unfamiliar textures and large, impressive objects." British industrial ruins.
Transforming The Tate. Watch as this is built. Via Things Magazine.
For SD, Hobbit houses of the real world: Welcome to the Shire.
Related to the last, Restoring Modernism, a video interview with Ron Krueck, lead architect on the project.
Mies van der Rohe's 860-880 Lake Shore Drive refurbishment by Krueck & Sexton, a spectacular job, nicely photographed and presented by Dezeen. Via a guy who has lives there, Edward Lifson.
RIP Bruce Graham, architect of The Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center.
Am amazing house in the trees.
The secret cities of Yemen.
"The general view that every square inch of land is worth a bazillion dollars is just not true. There are gaps in the façade that whole towns have fallen into, along with bizarre abandoned theme parks, ruined U.S. Air Force bases, and the tawdry remnants of pay-by-the-hour love hotels." 10 Japanese ghost towns.
Book Patrol on the beautiful new modernist library in Lausanne, Switzerland by SANAA.
The structures of the house and every piece of furniture inside are constructed entirely from used plastic. La Casa de Botellas.
So beautiful, Arkinet on the wooden churches of the Russian North.
For BB: a tour of Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne's house. Looks sort of exactly how you'd expect it would.
Take a look at some Vancouver's Olympic venues.
The 9 Hours, a brand new take on the capsule hotel concept, designed by Fumie Shibata of Design Studio S.
"Ice House Detroit is an Architectural installation and social change project currently taking place in Detroit. Photographer Gregory Helm and Architect Matthew Radune will use one of 20,000 abandoned houses and freeze it into solid ice, referencing the contemporary urban conditions in the city and beyond." .
Marks Barfield Architects' Villa Hush Hush residence, a whole quarter of which can be raised and lowered at a "gentle and steady" 10cm per second.
"I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies."
Related to the last.
The house of a football star or a Teletubby? Manchester United's Gary Neville blurs that line. Via Archinect.
Atago House.
Mammoth makes their case for the best architecture of the past decade.
Concrete House in Mar Azul Forest.
London's Olympic stadium to be made out of recycled guns and knives
"Searching for sites within architecture with a possibility for confusion or misuse, Snarkitecture aims to reconfigure these existing elements to make architecture do things that it is not supposed to do." Snarkitecture.
So you know: All about The Candela Structures, inconspicuous architecture in Queens.
Geoff Manaugh explains how a Bruce Willis action flick "cinematically depicts what it means to bend space to your own particular navigational needs."
Never mind, James May's Lego house was demolished months ago. I'm woefully out-of-date on James May Lego house news.
James May of Top Gear fame is trying to get rid of his Lego house.
Nice survey of worldwide subway architecture.
O House.
"Several of the best known names in architecture have created gas stations, around the world, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van der Rohe, Willem Dudok, Jean Prouve, Arne Jacobsen and Norman Foster, but nobody created a design package that was as enduring and comprehensive as Elliot Noyes for Mobil." 15 mid-century modern gas stations.
"A vast biological folly in the shadow of desert over-development, the project of Biosphere 2 seems particularly poignant in this unkempt state." Remnants of the Biosphere. Great post by Geoff Manaugh with photos by Noah Sheldon.
Edward Lifson went driving in Las Vegas and found this. Lucky for us.
"Now that it's gone, of course, we want it back." The Gobbler, the Grooviest Motel in Wisconsin, by James Lileks. Via PCL.
Architects Carlo Santambrogio and Ennio Arosio's concept building: Glass Home (insert stone throwing adage here).
Lovely, the Bridge House.
Former Sun Times' critic Lee Bey on Chicago Architecture 2000-2009.
A variety of ski jumps and info on the architects who built them.
Clicking around on a 2.3 gigapixel photo of the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, which opens next week. Thanks Edward.
"Praised by the poet William Wordsworth in 1820 as 'this immense and glorious work of fine intelligence.' King's College Chapel in Cambridge, England, is the product of an extraordinary combination of royal commitment, turbulent religious politics, violent civil wars, vicious labor disputes, superb medieval craftsmanship, and engineering that has never been replicated and is still not fully understood today." What The Late Middle Ages Wrought.
More than twice the size of the Mall of America with only ten tenants. The South China Mall.
Photos of the construction of the Eiffel Tower.
Alissa Walker on John Seabrook's profile of architect Zaha Hadid: "The New Yorker has done a fine job of examining Hadid as the lone Arab woman at the top of her field. We examine her work as it relates to a greasy, sour cream and onion-scented heap of Frito-Lays."
The Tote Mumbai by Serie Architects. A beautiful space at the Mumbai Racecourse.
A Mathematician's House, designed by Tetsuya Nakazono.
A kitchen island made entirely from Legos.
Abu Dhabi's Yas Hotel, "covered in a grid of 5,300+ diamond-shaped steel panels that contain nearly 5,000 LED fixtures."
Subway architecture from around the world. Hey Chicago, you looking at this?? Thanks Michael.
Nice birdhouse.
"Something we see too often, and then forget to see." Tokyo Blues, a photo essay by Do Projects. Also available as free download. Via Mefi.
I had a playhouse when I was little, a black and white gingerbread-style house that my twin sister and I would play in for hours. It was awesome but these playhouses are insane.
Geoff on Support Structures (dig that cover type) and "a social philosophy of buttresses."
This Ain't No Disco. Ad and design firm spaces around the world.
"Just about every inch of those walls is covered with delicate ornate decorations, looking much like applied frosting." The Sugar House in El Paso, TX. Would makes a nice companion to Mr. Lee's house in Phoenix, don't you think, MS? Via I Like.
For KG, a Simpsons fan built his very own real-life Simpsons home.
The Cloud, "an entirely new form of observation deck" for London 2012. Just wow. Lots more from Dan Hill at City of Sound who is working on this amazing and ambitious project.
In Spanish, but even if aren't bilingual, that shouldn't stop you: Living in Famous Architecture, what it's like to live in "housing by architects like FOA and MVRDV, and also older classics, like Casa Mila." Via Archinect.
Grand Teton National Park Discovery and Visitor Center by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Perfect.
"A century-old shed with a wall of rusting steel panels sits in a back alley –this is not, to most people, a recipe for a dream home." Elena and Jorge thought differently.
If I was going to live on a houseboat, this would be the one.
The Death of The Drexel Shaft, sad but beautiful footage of a steam plant's demise in Philadelphia. Via Cynical-C.
The Langley Academy by Foster + Partners.
Local note. Chicago tears down a Mies, a letter from Edward Lifson.
Start them young with Minimii's dollhouse. Via Inhabitots.
Edward takes a drive. I call shotgun!
Have a few thousand dollars you've been looking to put to something interesting? Donate to The Fallingwater Window Legacy Fund and you'll receive "a commemorative piece of the old Fallingwater glass." Via Archinect.
Zlín - Model Town of Modernism.
Saving the South Pole Dome.
Do you enjoy clean modern spaces? Are you a bear living in Finland? If you answered 'Yes' to both, then we have the house for you. Via bblinks.
"While big and wealthy cities in many parts of the world challenge the limits of possibility by building gigantic hotels with fancy shapes, erecting sky-high office towers or constructing hovering philharmonic temples, Berlin sets up a decent mountain. Its peak exceeds 1000 metres and is covered with snow from September to March..." The Berg.
Jonathan Glancey's picks for most architecturally-focused movies. Need to see those last two on the list.
Fab Sports Center outside of Paris, designed by KOZ.
Waterpleinen, innovative stormwater management for Rotterdam makes for cool parks.
"Mom, can I be the Guggenheim this year?" Architecture Costumes. Via Archinect.
Love all the angles of House Bierings in Utrecht.
Yeah, pretty sure that I will not be traversing the Hoover Dam Bypass bridge when it's complete. An amazing feat of engineering that someone else can have the joy of testing out.
Local note, related to the last, Edward Lifson moderates an architecture critics summit on Thursday at 6.
Edward was at the opening of the new Cambridge, Massachusetts Public Library by William Rawn Associates and Ann Beha, and lucky for us he brought his camera.
An old Catholic church in Utrecht transformed into a minimalist home.
For JC, the Wilco loft.
Dubai's Technosphere.
The Tigers Nest monastery at 10,200 feet.
An amazing renovation of a a water pumping plant in Berlin. Fab.
"Architectural Fantasies: 101 Compositions --101 compositions in color and 101 in black-and-white-is the last and, probably, the best book published during Chernikhov's life and summarizing his search for the forms and images of new architecture."
Just got back from a couple of weeks spent in Iowa and while most of what I saw was endless miles of crops, the series of gigantic yurt-like barns Dick Schwab has been building just outside of Solon are just amazing. Sadly, there aren't many photos online, other than these couple. Well worth visiting if you're ever in the neighborhood.
3D rendering of the Farnsworth House by Peter Guthrie. Beyond belief. Via Edward.
One more reason to love Chipotle.
Mark Bennett's blueprints for fake places. Via MeFi.
"After the construction is done, it'll be the biggest airport in Moscow with the ability to serve about 20 million passengers per year."
A photo tour of the new Facebook headquarters.
Edward Lifson had some remodeling done at his house. Now normally that's not the sort of thing we'd link up here, until you consider where he lives.
Travel and Leisure picks their choices for the world's ugliest buildings.
The World of Lifeguard Towers. Via Mental Floss.
If was going to live in a barn, this would be the one. *Sigh* Via Materialicious.
Chicago 2018, a proposal for the first wholly urban Winter Olympics.
At home with Charles and Ray Eames in their Pacific Palisades home. From the Life mag archives, via Daily Icon.
Volume B Store in Sao Paulo, Brazil, by Marcio Kogan.
Neat birdhouse by Emilie Cazin.
As attendees from the third Seed Conference at Crown Hall know, when Edward gets going on Mies, it's time to pay attention.
An audio slide show of the United Nations.
Wow. The Conrad Maldives Hotel.
Wishing that my piggy bank was a little bit bigger. Well, actually a whole lot bigger. *Sigh*
Dust to dust, as observed by Edward Lifson in Tadao Ando's Church of the Light.
Japan's love hotels.
Trevor Patt's photos of the new academic building at Cooper Union in New York. It's all kinds of futuristic. Via Archinect.
Sarah Balmond visits the AP Moller School in northern Germany for Monocle. Beautiful transparent and practical architecture.
Love the Pachacmac House in Lima.
Two faves. Edward Lifson visits with Tadao Ando.
A house by Karim Rashid.
Wondering if this will fit on the back deck, Suburban Tipi.
Perhaps the spastic birds that have been terrorizing me could move here?
James built himself a house. Out of Legos.
Related to the last. Tons of interesting features at the Architech Gallery.
Architect Bertrand Goldberg's office materials for the design of Marina City. Fab. Thanks Whet.
Here's what the future looks like: Raquel Welch as Space-Girl dancing in front of sculptures built for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Via Archinect.
"It tends to look unreal, like an architect's rendering or a scale model, unless it is framed by something else." Just because it's the world's third largest mosque doesn't make it any less incredibly gigantic or impressive. Quite the contrary.
The LALALA hotel in Sopot, Poland. Via Dezeen.
Now available, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Lego.
KCMODERN, "your one stop shop for all things Modern in Kansas City," is helping to put together the terrific-looking REEL Design Film Series.
For Spencer, ask your dad to make you one of these.
For MS, Brick Habitats, bricks with built-in gardens and minihomes for animals.
Thomas Heatherwick's series of brass newspaper kiosks in London. Fab. Also see his Rolling Bridge. Via City of Sound.
The New No. 2's shots of the Burnham pavillions here in Chicago. Via Daily Dose.
The Scout's sneak peek of Saipua's new digs including a nice shot of Field Notes.
Stunning, the Opposite House in Beijing. Via Materialicious.
A striking triplex penthouse apartment in a clock tower overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor has gone on the market for $25 million.
"A postcard series documenting the New York city break of some indescribably horrible tourists."
The root bridges of Cherrapungee.
The Bodegas Ysios Winery by Santiago Calatrava in Laguardia, Spain. Lovely annotated photos.
Remodelista's Fire Pit Roundup.
The Remota Hotel in Patagonia, Torres del Paine, Puerto Natales-Chile.
The roof of the Vancouver Convention Center is now made up of six acres of living, native grassland.
The WISA Wooden Design Hotel.
Gorgeous, the Universe Beach House.
The feral houses of Detroit.
For DW: the Blu Apple Yoghurt Cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Reconstructing entire cities from images harvested from the web. Rome built in a day.
Wow, the Palabritas Beach House in Peru.
The gorgeous oak-clad Skybox House.
Dinner with amazing views of Paris: the temporary Art Home structure on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo gallery.
So you know, what NASA's return to the moon may look like.
A vision of the Berlin Wall as a giant garden.
Cruise down the Danube on a floating beach.
Phoenix-based photographer Michael Lundgren's series Mid-Century Marvels. Growing up, I used to see this one (a bowling alley) and this one (a carpet store, I think) almost every day. Lots more from the mid-century over at the wonderful Modern Phoenix.
Second Home, a fab new restaurant space in Denver by Andre Kikoski.
Lovely illustrations of NYC storefronts and signage by Bryan Christie. Via the Ministry.
A collection of futuristic mobile homes
"My grandfather told my dad, 'You'll never get your money out.' The whole family thought my parents were crazy." The Stahl childrens' memories of growing up in Pierre Koenig's Case Study House No. 22 and about who exactly deserves credit for its design.
"It is believed to be built in 1845 by Henry Horner, the son of the Late Illinois Gov. The Building maybe the only surviving South Loop property of the Fire of 1871. Throughout the years it has been many things: Red Path Inn, Pickwick Cafe and during Prohibition a secret speakeasy. It's also the smallest Building in the Loop." 22 East Jackson is for sale. Via Neil Arsenty.
Get your very own Mid-century modern ranch dollhouse.
Stunning modern cabin in the woods.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House (the Blade Runner house) is for sale.
So you know, 11 beautiful train stations that fell to the wrecking ball (and the crappy stuff built in their place).
A look inside The Michelberger, a new budget hotel in Berlin designed by Werner Aisslinger. Via Byrdhouse.
Across the Great Divide.
Beautiful restoration of an 11 x 11 foot cabin in Sugar Creek, Wisconsin.
The Architects Journal picks the top 10 Star Wars buildings.
Monoscope on the "submerged" offices of Selgas Cano in Madrid.
A look inside Slade Architecture's new Barbie flagship store in Shanghai. That's a lot of pink. Via Denver Egotist.
A look inside Chinese artists' studios. Cool to see Wang Qingsong's space, where he likely shot Follow Me, which now hangs proudly in my house. Looks like he also has Competition leaning against that back wall.
Built in an old concrete silo in Amsterdam, take a gander at the gorgeous offices of Ruigrok/NetPanel.
Local note: this Thursday the 11th from 9pm to midnight, IIT and the School of the Art Institute will be hosting Jan Tichy and Bauhaus Lab's multimedia installation Lighting Crown Hall, using "the structure as a massive light box." A CP field trip for sure.
Remodelista's roundup of wood panelling done right.
My fave new Chicago building isn't actually in Chicago. Andrew Metter's Serta International Center in Hoffman Estates. Kamin's take.
Gorgeous mid-century modern home, 26 Oak Mountain Court. Via Design Milk.
Posted in response to a totally unnecessary threat from an bloke named Michael. Check this amazing use of the iconic Opera House as a screen for The Sydney Smart Light project. Wow.
Made quick a trip to see Rem Koolhaas' CCTV Tower in Beijing on Sunday, but wound up spending more time looking at the fire-destroyed Mandarin Oriental Hotel next door. Had never seen anything that large and that decimated before. Really tragic.
Alissa interviews filmmaker Eric Bricker on his new doc on iconic architectural photographer Julius Shulman.
Awesome, Lego Architecture.
Across the street from the Chrysler Building. Via Your Monkey Called.
Local note. Renzo Piano's Modern Wing opens Saturday but you can make a quick visit today with Mr. Lifson.
Vauban, Germany. A suburb without cars.
Without Bounds or Limits: An online exhibition of the Plan of Chicago. Via GB.
If I win the lottery this week, I am buying this house immediately .
Architecture's endangered species: National Trust for Historic Preservation just released its list of America's 11 most endangered historic places. Via World Architecture News.
Beautifully minimal: House of Inclusion by FORM/Kouichi Kimura Architects.
The Ghost Buildings of 1929, planned architecture projects that were never or only partially built after the last big financial crash.
"The punishment for being caught visiting Hashima Island is 30 days in prison followed by immediate deportation. But the other week, after getting up before sunrise and cutting a secret deal with a local fisherman, some friends and I went there." Via Archinect.
Lovely sample pages from Ben Murphy's book on The U.N. Building at Daily Icon.
A dollhouse for adults? The Shed/Shelf from Studio Gorm brings new meaning to compact storage.
Serene, light filled, interconnected Cabins on Hooper's Island by architect David Jameson.
Gorgeous, the Archipelago House.
Currently on the market in the Bay Area: two houses by iconic arts and crafts architect Bernard Maybeck. In Berkeley, the 1925 Cubby House was Maybeck's garage (where he housed his Packard); later it was converted into a 724-square-foot cottage featuring redwood paneling, a cast-concrete fireplace, and Douglas fir floors. In San Francisco, a much grander Maybeck-designed four-bedroom house in Forest Hills features beamed cathedral ceilings, lead-paned windows, and forested views from every room.
This week's announcement of Peter Zumther as the winner of the 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize is reason enough to re-visit the Zumther-designed Therme Vals Spa in Switzerland.
Sexy Italian meets Birkenstocks: Valcucine, maker of sleek, high-end kitchen systems, has been getting attention for pushing the envelope on eco-sustainability in its product design. Next week in Milan, Valcucine will present gReenaisance - the first 100% recyclable kitchen.
Selected spreads from Architectural Review 1967-72, art directed by Bill Slack, including these three beauties on the then new John Hancock Center.
Design Tavern on Fro Yo and retail interiors. Yowza.
Cute and environmentally friendly to boot, Ecopods. Via the newly redesigned Materialicious.
Distrito Capital, a sleek new Mexico City hotel, interior design by Joseph Dirand.
Lovely, the Putney house in Vermont.
Admired recently at the Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs; wall murals of Montparnasse glazed brick tiles from Design and Direct Source, a new venture from Ann Sacks (founded after she sold Ann Sacks Tile & Stone).
The White Hotel in Brussels offers White and Super White rooms and a shop where you can buy objets and furniture by Belgian artists (Mocus Vivendi Bowls by Pieter Stockmans, the Pile-Poile clock by Thierry Bataille).
Some nice night shots of Aqua in Chicago.
Spectacular stained glass window designed by Czech artist Alfons Mucha in 1931 for St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
An entirely different but no less spectacular one by Gerhart Richter for the Cologne Cathedral. Make sure to look at the large sizes.
Envelope Architecture and Design recently completed the interior of Contigo Restaurant in San Francisco; the furnishings, fixtures, and surface materials are not only aesthetically appealing but also environmentally friendly.
The Modern House Estate Agents lists architect-designed property for sale or rent in London and the UK; including the sensational Dairy House by Charlotte Skene-Catling.
Wow, not your average hut.
For minimalists everywhere: the bare-bones Yawn House by Koizumi Studio in Japan is a great mix of contemporary and traditional Japanese style.
A little bit more trivia/detail about the Ref's coin flip above. The street it was shot on is called Alta Vista Terrace or "A Street of 40 Doors" and was created by developer Samuel Gross and architect J.C. Brompton in 1904 to replicate the look and feel of the London district of Mayfair. Lots of photos here.
Demolition Art: Seattle architecture firm Hutchison & Maul devised the Hole Houses Project as a temporary exploration of the qualities of light. The architects drilled holes into the facades of two houses slated for demolition and slotted in colored acrylic rods; at night, the houses glowed like a starlit sky. "We had a big party and demolished the building the next day," the architects said.
Where there's smoke: Admired recently, the Smoked Oak Dining Table with Oil Finish from German designer Rainer Spehl (creator of the wooden MacBook case) and Smoked Oak Engineered Flooring from German flooring company Parador.
Another excuse to travel to Europe this summer: the Bauhaus Bed & Breakfast allows you to stay in the same rooms students lived in in the '20s.
Wooden Forest Apartment, gorgeous.
Daily Icon on The Metla Timber Building on the campus of the University of Joensuu, by SARC.
The restored Thunderbird Hotel in Marfa, TX is the place I'll stay when I finally check it off my list of places to visit. Via Remodelista.
Every inch of this place is beautiful and perfect. The 6x11 Alpine Hut in Slovenia by OFIS Architects.
Container Cinema.
Architect David Mastalka and sculptor Vojtech Bilisic designed a gorgeous tea house for Prague.
"Strip away all of the excess and you may just end up living in a box." The Box House Named Paco, ultra-minimal pre-fab living by Jo Nagasaka & Sschemata Architecture Office Ltd.
Five architecture firms design buildings using Legos for the Scottish Design Awards. Via Archinect.
A big collection of Flickr collections for architecture buffs.
"Using authentic blueprints, young builders create foundations and make representations of actual skyscraper--or they can design their own buildings!" Wow, the UberArc set. Via PrairieMod.
Designed by architect Gunnar Asplund, the gorgeous Stockholm Public Library. Via Grow a Brain.
So you know: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fawcett House in inland northern California is up for sale. Via Materialicious.
Noted, Sears Tower to become Willis Tower.
"We have found the architectural equivalent of the middle finger." In search of "spite houses."
Architectural Digest's 100 Great Spaces.
I sure hope Dan Meth keeps this series of charts going. #2 is Sit-Com House Floor-Plans which is a sweet follow up to his Trilogy Meter.
Absolutely stunning home in Kuala Lumpur. *Sigh*
A full scale replica of Le Corbusier's vacation home in Cap-Martin on the Cote D'Azure.
Townhouses for bikers.
Blocked by a zoning issue, "he built the tallest, most modern home he could design for the space." The 12 Foot Wide Residential Tower.
The abandoned Kawaminami shipyard in Japan.
For those in the market: the LuxPod has been put up for sale (all 140 sq. feet of it). Via Materialicious.
"All over town, there are interesting but unused premises that are being converted into hotel rooms in conjunction with this urban development and architectural project." Brilliant idea, the Pixel Hotel. Via Cool Hunting
"A fantastic example of architectural speculation: genuinely massive --and impossibly cantilevered." BldgBlog on Viktor Ramos' final student project at Rice,
The Continuous Enclave: Strategies in Bypass Urbanism. Yowza.
The Guardian on restoring the Midland Hotel and I Like's recent visit to check it out. Reminds me a little of the great work in restoring The Varden Hotel in Long Beach, which comes highly recommended if you're ever in the area (some additional photos here).
A 15,000 sf. cave home in Missouri is for sale on eBay. Via Archinect.
"Could nearly 4000 oil rigs soon to be decommissioned in the Gulf of Mexico be retrofitted into an American Dubai of offshore luxury hotels?"
One of the finalists in the Evolo Skyscraper Competition is Eric Vergne's spiraling skyscraper farm for a future Manhattan.
FLW's Fallingwater "more or less complete" out of Lego. Via Edward Lifson.
I'm doing a little work on an idea for Field Notes. This collection never fails to get me in the proper frame of mind,
Wheat Kings.
7,300 square foot Prairie style school for a $1. Got an another buck? Buy this one, too.
I want one, the weeHouse. Via Materialicious.
Nice barn remodel.
Edward asks, "Do art museums make you climb the walls?"
Daily Icon on Arne Jacobsen's Danmarks Nationalbank.
Photos of Akkerwinde Bridge in the Netherlands. Via Contemporist.
The Frightening Beauty of Bunkers will be of particular interest to aficionados of the doomsday architectural style.
"At 755 feet from the ground, it's the highest clock in the world. Its face is 40 feet tall and 100 feet wide. My neighbors can read it from their windows, a mile and a half away, through the fog." The odd, somewhat kitschy clock tower in Moskva-City.
So you know, 30 phenomenal and funky modern fireplace designs.
Great photos of Hyllie water tower in Sweden.
The complete archives of The Concrete Quarterly. As Spencer might say, "awesomeness has arrived." Via Things.
Photos from inside the abandoned Uptown Theatre here in Chicago. Drive past it all the time and had no idea how incredible it still looks inside. Let's hope the effort to save it is successful.
A durable $5000 house made out of recycled paper.
Slade Architecture's magnetic steel wall inside their super modern Kenig House. The wall of shoes is also impressive (though less for the architecture and more for the sheer number of shoes these people own).
Intrepid architecture critic Andrew Blum on writing slow.
Blair Kamin on how Daniel Burnham's work in Chicago remade the National Mall in Washington D.C..
Sliding house? How about a moving church? The opening sequence is absolutely sublime. Stay with it til the end, when the chorus returns.
Dezeen on a brilliant residential design from dRMM in London, The Sliding House.
On an inauguration episode of public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture, Edward Lifson talks about Obama and Chicago architecture, and Todd Boyd, the "Notorious Ph.D," traces the Obamas' fashion sense back to jazz.
JSA Architects' Juvet Landscape Hotel. Where's my room key?
"New construction from 1953."
Our occasional co-conspirator Edward Lifson has posted a nice preview of Renzo Piano's new Art Institute of Chicago wing that's due to open in May.
Images from Simon Henley's book The Architecture of Car Parks.
Gorgeous modern home in Brooklyn.
"A colony of bats had taken up residence on the third floor so they had to be relocated. That was the easy part." Architect Tracey Overbeck Stead renovates a building in absurdly bad shape.
The best houses of all time in L.A.
Allison Arieff on abandoned McMansions and outgrown box stores.
Who needs marble when you can put Snickers ad on it?
"A door in the woods." A short film about a Long Island writing studio designed by Andrew Berman.
For BB: a tour of Zooey Deschanel's home studio. Though he'll probably want to just skip to the photo shoot outtakes.
Getting quickly married in style on the cheap no longer requires a flight to Las Vegas: the newly renovated Manhattan Marriage Bureau.
Chicago and its Architecture Through the Eyes of Google Books, a collection of great old architecture book scans.
Expanding Architecture: Conversations on Design as Activism, a multi-city salon organized by Metropolis.
A tour of architecture firm Fantastic Norway's rural Trondheim Cabin. Via Remodelista.
The Ultimate House, clips and photos of some of the world's most impressive examples of modern residential architecture.
Cindy LaFerle's short personal story of restoring Frank Lloyd Wright's Carl Schultz house in western Michigan.
Top 10 awe-inspiring treehouse designs.
A new hostel in Stockholm in a converted jumbo jet.
Photos, drawings and technical details on Lovegrove Studio 2's Alpine Capsule project.
Inspiring illustrated post by Peacay on Art Deco California and the sketches of S. Charles Lee.
Underground, automated bike parking in Tokyo. Sweet!
An architectural firm believes backyard swimming pools should be emptied and transformed into subterranean granny flats. Via Worldchanging.
Nice redesign of Waingels College using only timber construction.
Great photos of old Siberian houses. Via Materialicious.
On a day like this, with the wind chill down to just two degrees, a trip to the world's largest swimming pool in Chile's southern coast sounds just about right.
James Langenheim's "Theme Building" at LAX scaffolded. More on the iconic building here.
Plans for the redesign of Slussen, Stockholm's city center.
Stunning, the Sensamare bathroom. *Sigh*
Two panoramas from inside the newly remodeled National Museum of American History.
A photo essay on what happens when big box retailers close and their gigantic buildings get re-purposed: For Sale: 200,000 Square Foot Box.
Related to MS's last. Video scenes from Holl's Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins in KC. Cool in pictures. Sublime in person.
"For three decades Steven Holl has used watercolor--drawn each morning, before the deadlines kick in--as a springboard toward the creation of architecture." Really great inspirational peek at a creative mind at work, The Painted Building. Be sure to view the slideshow of the drawings. Lovely.
Inhotim, a gorgeous Brazilian museum complex surrounded by tropical gardens.
Jason Fried points us to a set of Mies Van Der Rohe photos in the new LIFE Magazine archives. Very nice, especially this one of the man.
From planning to sketches to building to completion, everything you need to know about the Yellow Treehouse Cafe. Via Inhabitat.
The renovated Tel Aviv Port.
The Daily Icon on "Wheat Kings," spectacular images selected and annotated from the I Love Grain Elevators Flickr pool.
Oobject picks their favorite moving building facades, complete with video of said movements in action.
"We went to see it that first night, and I thought, This is the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life." The story of restoring Astor Courts, the 40,000 square foot house designed by Stanford White in 1902.
Wow. Some really strange buildings.
Totally creepy, a collection of abandoned hotels, hospitals, and churches.
Got 35 million dollars laying around? This could be yours.
Winners of AIA Chicago's Awards for Excellence in Interior Architecture.
The Jested Telecommunications Tower and Hotel. A short film from the V&A's Cold War Modern exhibition about an iconic Eastern Bloc structure, built in 1963.
"Based on our data, it would appear that the typical architect dies from heart failure at the age of 73." Death Does Come, of This We Are Sure. An interesting look at the deaths of famous architects. Via Archinect.
The sleek Garden and Sea House.
Fab, a temple made with over a million recycled bottles.
The black and white Hotel Habita Monterrey, designed by Joseph Dirand. That hallway is amazing.
Sarah Vowell on Louis Sullivan and Chicago architecture. Via The New Modernist.
Digging JetBlue's T5 at JFK, especially the screens. Via Airbag.
Michelle Kaufmann modernizes the farmhouse, mkHearth.
The Walking House in action.
I'm sure the view is breathtaking but I'd just pass out.
Holy cow, inside Terminal 3 in Dubai's International Airport.
The winning design for the Sherwood Forest visitors center.
Contemporary movie theaters are by and large, sterile, boring places. DTA Architects is having none of that. Check their spectacular Light House Cinema in Dublin, listed under "Public Projects." More at CubeMe.
"Five new towers have been proposed for the Middle East recently with each claiming the mantle 'world's tallest building,' but which is likely to be built?"
A series of tunnels that run underneath central London and were used for communications during the Cold War have gone on sale for an estimated £5m.
Elite Laundry, then and now.
The Monte Rosa alpine hut.
Stunning, the Johanna house. Via Design Milk.
Architect Francois de Menil's gorgeous OneTwo Townhouse. Make sure to check out the photos.
Nakheel aims for the sky, announcing a new Dubai building over 1km tall. Yowza.
House on the beach. *Sigh*
"In the centre of Copenhagen, on the sixth floor of the Royal Hotel, a single room preserves a microcosm of the definitive masterwork of Danish architect and furniture designer Arne Jacobsen." Room 606.
There's still time to book your stay at Jan Konings' Hotel Experimenta. Check out the flyer for more details (pdf).
The Casa de Cobre house in Talca, Chile. Via Materialicious.
Short video tour of the Reversible Destiny Lofts in Tokyo. More info on them here.
Enter the World of Eichler Design.
Collection of photos of the winners of The Chicago Anthenaeum's International Architecture Awards.
Fab, we need more stores like this.
A pyramid for Paris. Via Archinect.
Gorgeous, created for the new Crawley library in the UK, typographic tree columns. Via Pan Dan.
House N in Oyta, Japan by Sou Fujimoto Architects.
The 72-Room Bohemian Dream House. Amazing. Don't miss the photos.
Los Angeles under construction.
A fabulous place to swim, Les Bains des Docks.
FLW on "What's My Line?"
Everything you ever wanted to know about Sears mail-order homes. Via Tiny House Design.
Seven rotating houses and towers.
Modernist gas stations.
Simply stunning conversion of a church to a home.
After reading JC's post yesterday on the moiré façade, I was reminded of the fascinating Café Wall Illusion (check out the applet), first noticed on a café wall in Bristol.
City of Sound on a fascinating moire facade on a school for girls in Brisbane which changes as you move past it. Here it is demonstrated with a model created by the architects.
Designboom on the Herzog and de Mueron design for 56 Leonard Street, their first residential tower in NYC. Fab.
"The old China Town renders all of our cities boring and alike. It is nothing more than restaurant streets and fake traditional buildings representing a kitsch image of contemporary China, with no real life inside." The solution? Superstar, a mobile Chinatown.
So you know, 70 amazing houses from around the world.
Nice roundup of some natural swimming pools.
Related to below: the place Calexico is playing at in that video is The Hotel Congress. Spent more than a few hours in their Tap Room way back when. If you're in the area, don't skip a visit. Lots more photos here.
Nice water tower house.
So you know, 10 homes that defy gravity.
Modernism in Australia.
Stair porn, totally SFW.
The House Vote, "a daily ballot on furnishings, architecture, and residential design." Via Remodelista.
Moving the Richard Neutra Maxwell house. Via Things Magazine.
Nice vacation home. Via WorldChanging.
Vegas Dream Projects and Failed Renderings, the buildings you'll never see on the strip, like the Beverly Hillbillies Resort and The Moon.
X House. Gorgeous.
Controversy over counters and cash registers in Calatrava's Milwaukee Art Museum entry hall.
The beautiful Kielder Observatory and a visit to check it out.
Interiors from MUFG, a Japanese Bank. How can I open an account?
The Shipping Container Hotel opened this weekend in London. More info here. Via Arbroath.
Manhattan in miniature using balsa wood, Xacto blades and nail files.
The Extra Small (XS) House. A shotgun-style 500 square foot home constructed on a budget of just $25,000.
"How Alfred Hitchcock and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put a Frank Lloyd Wright house on top of Mount Rushmore in spite of common sense, Frank Lloyd Wright and the United States Government. Sort of." Via Daily Icon.
The Dome House. Cute, sign me up. Via Materialicious.
Vintage color photos of US cities, a thread at SkyscraperCity.
The Allied Health Care building, "2001 meets late 19th century Victorian."
Beautiful photographic essays on specific buildings by Kim Høltermand.
224 Buildings from 43 countries have made it on to the first ever World Architecture Festival Awards shortlist.
Villa Peet.
Gorgeous 24-hour time-lapse of the Uspenskiy Cathedral in Ryazan, Russia. Via Rashomon.
The new pavilion at the Kivik Art Centre in Sweden.
Great read, VF looks at the incredible changes in Beijing in preparation for the Olympics, Mao to Wow.
Some very cool office spaces.
Wallpaper Q&A with hero architect Tadao Ando.
Nina Tolstrup's Beach Hut and how she built it.
The NYT takes a look at how China's unabashed embrace of new architecture is changing the face of Beijing. A must view accompaniment is the interactive map with commentary.
Pentagram Architects' James Biber's new Harley-Davidson Museum opens Saturday in Milwaukee.
Estes/Twombly Architects' "Quiet Modernism," as they call it. Via Remodelista.
Relink by request.. Hotel Everland, Paris. A one-room, super-mod hotel, temporarily situated on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Check the visite virtuelle and background information in English.
This floating swimming pool in Berlin, by AMP, looks even cooler in the winter. Via Daily Dose.
Arch Daily's roundup of their favorite architecture blogs.
A Richard Britt home in Scottsdale is up for sale. Sweet.
Passed by the renovations all the time in my old neighborhood, but was too shy to poke my head in to take a look. Luckily, the internet has provided: Inside the Krause Music Store, Louis Sullivan's last building and now a design studio.
Seven color tile mosaic artwork in the restrooms of the restaurant Tranan, in Stockholm.
Remodelista visits some gorgeous barns.
"The interior and exterior of the structure are covered with translucent, orange fabric so the building appears solid in daylight but reveals its internal structure when illuminated at night." The Zenith music hall in Strasbourg, France.
Geoff on RoboVault.
So you know, some superb examples of architectural adaptive reuse. Seriously, a plane?
Not your average cabin. Via Materialicious
There's still time to plan a summer road trip to Spring Green, Wisconsin and The House on the Rock. More of this one-of-a-kind location from Mark at WFMU.
Taipei 101's 728-ton stabilizing ball in action.
360 of Tadao Ando's new Shibuya Station.
Four ancient colorful cities.
Kuro by Takuya Hosokai and Hiromasa Mori.
Right in my parent's hood, the gorgeous Planar house. Via Materialicious
A subtle way to countdown to an impending deadline? Realities:united's installation at ArtistsSpace. Check the video.
Gorgeous, the Ring house. Via Coolboom.
Explore forgotten Detroit. Via BoN.
A house on the road to Farellones in Chili, by Nunez & Valdes. Via Notcot.
Great article profiling the Dutch architecture firm MDRV, Crowded House. Slideshow of some of the buildings discussed in the article here.
The electric home of the future from 1939.
The most awesome tree houses in Germany.
Sweet, love this amazing vacation home in Greece.
Sweet, the bungalow in a box. Via Materialicious.
Yes, sheep in the Netherlands have a cooler house than you.
The estates and villas of Nurai located off the coast of Abu Dhabi.
The Kew Gardens Treetop Walkway is now open.
Pentagram Paper 38: "The story of the design, construction and renovation of Richard Neutra's 1934 Sten-Frenke House... complete with original estimates, change orders and punchlists." Fab.
London's Tower Bridge on Twitter. Via Waxy.
Flip Flop Flying loves architect Oscar Niemeyer, and what's not to love about the Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Niteroi?
A house made out of pallets.
Neat four story home that's just eight feet wide.
Um, yeah for me? Not ever.
Pictures of the world's first billion dollar home. Yes, I said billion.
Centerpiece of the 1958 World's Fair, The Atomium in Brussels is fifty. Via The Cartoonist.
Now you can pretend you're part of the rat pack.
The five winners of the Great Indoors Award 2007. Make sure to scroll down to the R Lopez de Heredia Winery visitor centre, tasting room and cellar by Zaha Hadid.
Geoff on space as a symphony of turning off sounds.
So cool, a camera obscura that you stand in. Via Materialicious.
Hotels in the Afterlife, half-finished resorts abandoned on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Mini Moscow. Gorgeous.
Interior renderings of the 100K House.
Nice read on lessons learned from 1960s-70s counterculture architecture.
Creatively converted sea forts of Great Britain. Via C-Monster.
Abandoned mid-century Taiwanese vacation homes.
Mile-high skyscrapers and floating cities that never were.
A "a collection of promised skylines we never got to see." Frankly, that mile-high skyscraper in Chicago scares the beejeezus out of me. Via PrairieMod.
Sweet, the mod-prebuilt house. Via Materialicious.
C-1 Office in Tokyo by Curiosity.
Remodelista's Stairway Roundup. And dozens more over at Pushpullbar.
So you know, 10 annoyingly brilliant office interiors.
This is what I love about design in The Netherlands. Via swissmiss.
If I lived here I'd never leave the house. Stunning.
The plans for the new Guggenheim museum in Lithuania are out of this world. Via PrairieMod.
Plans for the frighteningly pointy Universitas Leadership Sanctuary, a "private getaway for stressed-out presidents and prime ministers who want to 'reconnect with their unique purpose in life.'" Something feels a little hoax-like about this.
Apropos of nothing. Parking garage, looking south along 3rd Ave. between Stewart and Pine Streets at night, Seattle, Undated. Thanks Geoff.
The stunning Strata Hotel in the Italian Dolomites.
"Oh yeah, did I tell you our new offices were in a Tube carriage?" Set of offices built inside old subway cars. Via I Like.
Homes that Defy Gravity.
Wallace: You feel nothing when you go into St. Patrick's? FLW: Regret.
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Mike Wallace Interview. Required viewing. Via Mr. Lifson.
Related to the last, seen at Steven Holl's sublime Bloch Building at N-A in sunny Kansas City. Going later to see it at night.
"I don't want to encourage more cars onto the roads, but if topology and beauty mean anything to you, get out there and enjoy I-95/695 now. It may soon be too late."
The Art Institute of Chicago's Chicago Architects Oral History Project.
Lovely, the Travella House.
While chatting about how excited we are to be holding our Third Seed Conference in Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall, we got to wondering if we could do future Seeds only in his buildings. Maybe the next one could be at the Seagram Building, Neue Nationalgalerie or Toronto Dominion Center?
"Q: Would you like to design in Chicago? A: Sure, sure. It's territory chosen by the gods of architecture." Blair Kamin interviews Jean Nouvel.
"Each entry will be judged on innovation, aesthetics and "wobble factor". Sounds fab, get your entry in for the Architectural Jelly Design Competition.
zeroHouse.
The Pritzker Prize for Architecture has been awarded to Frenchman Jean Nouvel. When something big happens in architecture it's usually a good idea to check with Edward Lifson.
Back from a few days in New Mexico, and I'm still thinking about this amazing adobe church, San Francisco de Asis in Rancho de Taos. I failed to get a decent shot of the famous back of the church, but how could I possibly go up against Ansel Adams, or Paul Strand, or Laura Gilpin? What an amazing building, amazing images.
"This is our story about building a vacation house - not the traditional wooden 'swiss chalet'- style weekend cabin - but a modern almost all glass and steel house.." Constructing a steel and glass cottage.
Link of the month. A movie about a Rem Koolhaas designed "transforming" house in France. Houselife. Kubrickian, and not just because of the waltz on the track. Thanks Marshall.
Business Week on the transformation of Chicago's Merchandise Mart into the largest green building in the world.
Serero is extending the Eiffel Tower observation deck for the 120th anniversary.
Architecture in Tokyo, Omotesando Steet II.
The Chanel Contemporary Art Container by Zaha Hadid has made its debut in Hong Kong.
The Gateshead Get Carter Car Park Demolition Project, attempting to collect the history of the famous film location before it's destroyed. Via I Like.
100 villas, 100 days, 100 architects.
Following JC's post yesterday, here's more about the Rem Koolhaas Death Star in Dubai.
Slide show of the soon-to-be-opened Terminal 5 at JFK, which wraps around Eero Saarinen's iconic TWA Flight Center.
"Take the fused nomadic home designs of the yurt, tipi, and igloo and slip the straitjacket of suburban values, materials, and methods of construction over them." The Suburban Tipi.
With a total of 300 square feet, it's more like a play house than a real house. An itty bitty tiny house in Toronto.
"In the green landscape, the library rises up eight stories, clad in black natural stone." Giancarlo Mazzanti's Biblioteca Parque Espana.
Sweet, the pre-fab Nomad Home.
"The spread of tuberculosis in Finland between the wars led to the construction of a number of sanatoria throughout the country. One of these was the Varsinais-Suomi tuberculosis sanatorium which had broad-based financial support from 48 municipalities and four towns. Paimio was chosen as the location for the sanatorium and there was a competition for its design, which was resolved at the end of January 1929." The history and design of the Paimio Sanatorium designed by Alvar Aalto.
Totally need one of these for the deck this summer.
Redesigning the Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo. "At night, a focused beam of white light will project from a viewing platform at the jump's apex to suggest that Holmenkollen stretches infinitely to the sky."
Neat-o: Forgotten Chicago. The highlights are too numerous to list, just dig in.
Eero Saarinen's spectacular IMB Research Lab in Yorktown Heights NJ is empty and for sale.
NYT Mag feature on the architectural office of David Yocum and Brian Bell, created in a former automobile electrical-parts business in a transitional part of Atlanta. So cool. Here's the firm's site.
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León by Mansilla-Tuñón.
"Nearly all of the buildings are low rise, most of houses are detached and have a small garden." Iceland Architecture. Via 2 or 3 Things.
The folks over at Dezeen have some photos of the recently renovated Rossio railway station in Lisbon.
Fab home for sale.
Nikolai Sutyagin's homemade wooden skyscraper.
Living in a fairy-tale of a shell.
Great photos of the National Centre for the Performing Arts.
Sublime, JaG's House. Via Materialicious.
I'd vote for the "apple turnover" moniker over "taco" or "clamshell": Living in a Sculpture, the Sculptured House by Charles Deaton. Here are some more photos.
63.02°
Buy your very own Richard Meier designed bathroom. Via Remodelista.
Gorgeous pre-fab homes from Brio54. Via Inhabitat.
Gregory's got a swinging pad.
Serpents, whales, sharks and sea shells. The bioarchitecture of Javier Senosiain.
Disney's bringing back the House of the Future concept. Here's what the first one looked like.
Pruned on the subterranean farms of Tokyo.
The Architecture of Polygamy. Found after a conversation last night about driving through the very strange polygamist town of Colorado City, AZ as a kid. Every house there looks like this.
Not only stunning in it's design, it is a house after my own heart. Click through the photos until you get to the one that shows you the outdoor movie theater.
The Guardian takes a look at Beijing's Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium.
Coolest bird feeder ever.
Walk the Bloch with Steven Holl, architect of the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in KC. Via Edward Lifson.
Who wouldn't want to live in a tree?
The perfect little prefab home from Swedish firm Grasshopper.
Lovely, I think the K3 actually might fit on my deck, the KitHaus.
Container House overlooking San Francisco. Via Inhabitat.
Custom prefab homes by Marmol Radziner. Check out the Utah House 1.
Sami Rintala's gorgeous Boxhome.
Fab, if I checked in, I'd never leave. The Ace Hotel.
Beijing's National Aquatics Centre, aka The Water Cube, debuts.
"As they approach the bottom of the staircase, spotlights light up underneath their car, which begins to rotate on a platform." Slideshow on the BMW Delivery Center in Munich.
The 84 Square Foot Dream Home. Via 2 or 3 Things.
Seoul's $31B Yongsan international business district. Simply gorgeous.
Troika's 'Cloud', a digital sculpture at Heathrow for British Airways. So cool. Lots more on how it works here and in this illustrated post at Pixelsumo.
A builder, an architect and a developer attempt to build a house that is both modern and green for just 100K.
Falconcity of Wonders.
The Filberg House designed by Arthur Erickson is for sale. Stunning.
Is it a house? Is it a tent? Looks to be a bit of both. .
A proposal for urban renewal in Atlanta as told by an eleven year old girl, presented in comic book form, enter Willa's Wonderland.
Michelle Kaufmann's mkSolaire is being constructed at the Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago.
Simple, clean, modern, gorgeous, The Ranch, Refined. Thanks Marshall.
Most people have a tv and a couch. Some people like a little more for their movie viewing experience, 10 Stunning Ultra-Geeky Home Cinemas.
Local note: Hubbard Street Dance company at Crown Hall this Sunday. "A collaborative presentation of movement and design in one of Chicago's landmark buildings." More info here.
A compilation of ambitious ocean arcology concepts.
The world's largest swimming pool. Dubai? No, Chile.
Swatch Group's new Ginza, Japan HQ has seven shops on seven floors served by seven elevators. A bit on the building from Time Mag by Jean Snow.
Remains of the abandoned Amtrak Station on 17th Street in Oakland. Via gmt+9 (-15).
National Geographic explores the ghost towns of North Dakota, The Emptied Prairie. Check out the photo gallery here.
"The utopian ideal of the cultural building as playground." Things Magazine on Cedric Price's 1964 Fun Palace.
Check out FAR's Wall House in Santiago de Chile. (Select specific project).
So cute. The Wee House.
Fab prefab from 1971 by Matti Suuronen. Via ffff.
Port-A-Bach, a portable cabin by Atelier Workshop. Via The Style Files.
Lovely, the official school of languages in Spain. Via Coolboom.
Not your average treehouses.
Wow, modern home designed by architect Jorn Utzon is up for sale.
Wow. 5 Unbelievably Cool Research Facilities.
If you're looking for JC this morning, he's over here.
7 Abandoned Wonders of America.
A large collection of photos of some of the most beautiful libraries in the world.
Finding (and buying) a 16-room mansion in the Bronx, untouched for decades. Via 2 or 3 Things.
Panoramic QTVR of the Sainte Chapelle de Paris. Magnificent. Via Edward Lifson, who will be giving a "working lunch" talk about Mies van der Rohe and Rem Koolhaas at our Seed Conference, a week from tomorrow. 4 seats are left.
Neat little animation showing the construction of Gyre, a retail center in Tokyo.
Wired's got some great options for modular, pre-fab housing, Small and Fabulous; Modular Living as It Should Be.
Check out the latest images of the innovative Antarctic Halley research station.
Simply fabulous, The Alan Family house. Via MoCo Loco.
"Where others saw a big old barn, they saw a home."
Simply spectacular, and I'm not sure that even does it justice. The Baltazar Residence. Thanks Marshall.
140 square feet of simplicity, The Shack at Hinkle Farm.
In the words of Eliza Doolittle, "All I want is a room somewhere..." Loverly.
Stunning, Chapel of Porciuncula de la Milagrosa in La Calera, Columbia.
"The World of Tomorrow." Visions of New York City in 2108.
The fantastic (as in fantasy) architectural drawings of Hugh Ferris who never designed a noteworthy building but influenced a generation of architects. And sci-fi film art directors too. More here.
The Solar Wind Pavilion.
Crystal Island, the world's largest single building. More photos at Inhabitat.
A Clinic for the Exhausted by Michael Spooner is the winner of the 2007 Architecture Australia prize for unbuilt work.
The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas by Kyu Sung Woo.
Now this is my kind of cabin in the woods. Wow.
Yes Santa, what I really want is a tipi.
The Brains Behind Billionaire Homes. Via Archinect.
I bike past this innovative trailer home all the time and have been wondering about it, then suddenly came across the recent GOOD magazine article. Good to know.
Tangentially related to the last. Space houses on Earth. Sweet.
Boing Boing on Disneyland's Monsanto Plastic House of the Future video.
From DF: America's 20 Ugliest College Campuses. While Gruber agrees with #1 (His alma mater, Drexel), we have to take serious issue with #9, The Illinois Institute of Technology. Even if amazing works by Helmut Jahn, Rem Koolhaus, and Mies van der Rohe don't rate with Campussqueeze, they sure do with us.
The Vanishing Point, "...worlds that are embedded in our urban environment yet are decidedly removed from the collective experience of civilized life." Found among other things.
This amazing book store in Maastricht, Netherlands was retrofitted into an 800 year old church. If that's your sort of thing, you might want to revisit The Nonist's Red Hot Library Smut.
1960 BBC film on the construction of Television Center at Sheperds Bush. Of particular note, the most excellent soundtrack by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Via Cheeseford.
Just opened in Innsbruck, the Nordpark Cable Railway stations by Zaha Hadid Architects.
Creative Review on Dexia Tower in Brussels, "38 floors and 150,000 LEDs equals one hell of a light show."
Looking for a new home? Why not live in a dome?
The 2007 winners of The Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition for architectural drawing & illustration.
Skiing in Texas. Via TH.
Definitely one of the more interesting teahouses I've seen.
Local note. Mies' Social Services Administration Building at the University of Chicago is scheduled to be restored and renovated. The building is a beautiful cousin to our favorite structure anywhere.
Metal Shutter Houses by Shigeru Ban Architects.
Sweet, something nice to pick up, if you have forty million in change.
The world's tallest structure of playing cards.
The Light of Mies van der Rohe, an animated computer modeling of 24 hours of light on Mies' unbuilt "Courtyard House with Curved Elements." Via Edward.
São Paulo ad agency Loducca's new digs.
Walking around Culver City with Geoff Manaugh, proprietor of BldgBlog.
"An old, half flooded and fire damaged derelict mansion built on a small island in the Hudson River." Exploring Bannerman's Island with photographer Shaun O'Boyle.
123 photos of the prewar work of Mies van der Rohe were auctioned in Berlin yesterday. Fab. More information at Kosmograd. Via Edward, of course.
"A laboratory for daylight, and an exploration of how a different awareness of time informs place and experience." Carrie Burke's Timepiece House.
London's Olympic Stadium.
Le Corbusier-The Art of Architecture is currently showing at the Vitra Design Museum. You can view three sections of the show via video here. Fantastic.
The architecture of car parks.
Hotel Everland has migrated to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and will be perched on top through December 2008.
A 1965 film on Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City. Via Chicago Carless.
Willy Wonka step aside. The Michel Rojkind designed Nestle Chocolate Factory Museum in Mexico.
Slideshow of the new building at The Prado by architect Rafael Moneo. Thanks Mom.
Architectural Record takes a look at the new MCA Denver.
One of the highlights for me at yesterday's Seed Conference was Edward Lifson's "working lunch" presentation on Mies, IIT and especially Crown Hall. Thanks a million Edward. Here's how we feel about that building.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast." The Guardian gives us recommended places to view Parisian achitecture.
A model of Scrooge McDuck's money bin. Via Fun Forever.
"Where Gods Yearn for Long-Lost Treasures." Interesting article on the New Acropolis Museum in Athens.
Cabinet Magazine's Minor History of Giant Spheres. But one is conspicuous by its absence.
Inhabitat visits the Solar Decathalon 2007.
$50,000 a day? To sleep in a toliet?
Casa de Pedra, a homemade house made from things thrown away, including cell phones and old printers. Kinda looks like that house in Paradise Valley, doesn't it MS?
For Flight of the Conchords fans: the history of bandshells in NY. Via I Like.
Hotel Q on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Found among a slew of other cool projects featured in the Convertible City exhibition.
Take a gander at the process of building Ed's Shed Via Archinect.
Skinny Houses.
For Stephane, a short film on van der Rohe's Crown Hall at IIT, the spiritual home of The MoOM and just across the street from the venue for our Seed Conference, later in the month.
"An egg-shaped recording studio suspended from the top of a 600ft luxury apartment block was unveiled as part of the rock band U2's plans for a skyscraper that will dominate Dublin." Lord Foster and U2 team up to build the U2 Tower.
The Stanley Tigerman designed Pacific Garden Mission is open for business. More info here.
In Search of Lost Vanguards, Excavation and Space Exploration in Constructivist Architecture. Great essay. Via Mr Gibson.
Wow. The Aatrial House in Poland. More about it here.
Simply gorgeous. Rocio Romero's pre-fab LV Home Series.
Sweet, not your average playhouse.
Representing a wide variety of creative vertical transportation, these interesting elevators would be a blast to try. Via Chris Glass.
Cognitive Dwelling, Paul Maich's terrific project for architecture school in the form of a murder mystery.
Before you gag at the extraordinary price tag, bear in mind that it includes Porsche Cayenne Turbo plus driver, personal manager and housekeeper, New Zealand wines and French champagnes and meals prepared by resident chef. Twenty six thousand dollars a night. Nice vacation if you can get it.
Stunning. Photos of the new National Grand Theater in Beijing.
A short history of Alison and Peter.
Will Pearson's London Photography is a must-see. His panoramic series for a new development on the South Bank of the Thames, opposite the Tower of London, basically depicts the future I've been waiting for, More London.
Beautiful photosets of The McCormick Tribune Campus Center at IIT by Rem Koolhaas. This is the venue for our Seed Conference on October 29th where this guy will be keeping an eye on things. Only slightly related, here's my kids there, the day before the building opened in 2005.
For my bro-in-law Matt, down in Phoenix, Notes On Becoming A Famous Architect.
A 26 day event in NYC celebrating art and architecture kicked off with an opening party in the awesome Ring Dome.
Okay, how do I meet these people and get invited to watch the movie here?
Protecting Edward's view.
Reconsidering the Role of Photography in the Survey of Modern Architecture.
"But smart design is part of the overall message: This store has good taste, and by extension so do you."
From houses to sports centers, Building Underground in London.
La Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimone is open again in Paris after a huge renovation. Find out more here.
The NYT on Arcosanti.
"It's about applying architectural thinking to nonarchitectural fields," Rem Koolhaas' AMO does more than just architecture. Via Archinect.
New over at the TMN galleries, Architecture of Authority.
Wow, take a look at the first photos of Lord Norman Foster's Beijing airport terminal. Much improved over the original, I can say having been there. More information here.
Reminder: Airing locally tonight, check your local PBS listings for Saved From The Wrecking Ball. A documentary on Mies Van Der Rohe's Farnsworth house.
Next time I'm in SF, will check out 1234 Howard Street. Some background on the house here. Wish I could be there this weekend so I could take the AIA Living Homes tour.
Related to the last, Jason's visit to the Farnsworth House and SD's to Crown Hall on the IIT Campus.
Check your local PBS listings for Saved From The Wrecking Ball. A documentary on Mies Van Der Rohe's Farnsworth house, looks to be a must see, click the video to catch a glimpse.
Edward Lifson on the restoration of Louis Sullivan's last building, The Krause Music Store on North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. Spectacular.
Unveiled August 25th, Gerhard Richter's design for the mammoth stained-glass window of the Cologne Cathedral. Via La Petite Claudine.
Twin Drive-In, Independence, Missouri.
Shibam, Yemen. Home to the world's oldest, surviving skyscrapers?
"At the most banal level, this is a box on the rocks, a seemingly simple pavilion of glass and concrete panel-board perched on a headland pointing toward Nanaimo. What makes the house truly modernist in creative spirit, rather than neo-modernist in style, is its space-making and details." Lovely.
Bldgblog's Interview with Michael Cook, urban explorer. Via Transbuddha.
The Single Hauz from Front Architects. Perfect for the CP field offices. I call dibs on the one with the boat.
Nice interview with Rem Koolhaas
Photos of the new Nestlé Chocolate Museum in Mexico City.
The Best House in Paris. Gorgeous.
"In 2006 Tempohousing, under the local brand name of Keetwonen, finished a 1000 unit student housing project." The catch? It's made of modified shipping containers.
I'll have a Royale with cheese.
Neat home inside an old water tower. Via TH.
Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture, photographs by David Stephenson.
Fun browse, location options for film and photo at Shootspaces. Via ToRC.
Kitsune Noir on the cool Mykita eyewear shop in Berlin.
All roads lead to Mies. Two recent things, a soon to be announced project with Jason and Carlos and also a contribution for Computer Arts Magazine, have led me back to Crown Hall on the campus of IIT. Last summer Steve was led there too. He brought a video camera.
Are You Done in There? We need more public toilets.
The impressive Bay Bridge repair process, replacing a football field sized portion all in just three days.
Headline of the day, Balloon ban wipes smile off clown's face. Which brings me to post a rehearsal video of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, Dear Madame Barnum by XTC.
Home Sweet Earthship. Spencer, doesn't this look a bit like Luke Skywalker's house? Via Popgadget.
"From the roof deck of Sherman Ochs's Mexican-style villa atop a breezy bluff, the entire island of Jalisco, population about 20, spreads out below. It is a picturesque place of palm trees, lush lawns and near-cloudless skies. And, of course, there are the perfect sands around the lagoon, where residents grind their perfect bodies together in an N.C.L., or Naked Conga Line."
Renderings of Transbay Terminal. Wow.
A bit of musing about Futurist-inspired petrol stations.
Architect Shigeru Ban's creative use of cardboard to build a bridge. Via Archinect.
Esquire's The Seven Wonders of the Totalitarian World. Via Cynical C.
David Byrne visited the Phillip Johnson Glass House recently and shares his thoughts. Via Archinect.
If you lived down the street from Todd Oldham, maybe he'd invite you over to check out his treehouse.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a reincarnation of the famed ancient library of Alexandria.
Dr. Strangelove Finds Home In Cold War Relic, from Architectural Record. Thanks Dave, prize on the way.
The refurbishment of 860-880 Lake Shore Drive by Mies van der Rohe continues. Edward Lifson keeps an eye (and camera) on the paint choices.
"I pick up my pen. A building appears." Guardian interview with architect Oscar Niemeyer. Required reading.
You might not recognize the name, but you'll recognize some of the buildings of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.
A growing travel guide for building geeks like me. The Archi-Tourist, created by Chicago's own Daily Dose of Architecture.
Web troubles for a few days - time to finish July with a flurry of links. Rocky coastal home by McKay Lyons Sweetapple. Forest getaway by Cutler Anderson. And the Nowhaus by Locus Architecture.
"The official PR handout is a prime example of how America is blowing green smoke up its own ass." Welcome to the Eyesore of the Month.
As part of artist Jan-Erik Andersson's quest for a doctorate degree in visual arts, he's building a house. In the shape of a leaf. Here's Life on a Leaf.
Interesting design for a new 50 story tower in Melbourne.
Why not spend a moment to take the taste test at Jones, Partners: Architecture?
Film on Expo 70: Colour Diary 36, Osaka 1970. Sweet. Via City of Sound.
Frohn & Rojas, "The project breaks down the 'traditional' walls of a house into a series of four delaminated layers (concrete cave, stacked shelving, milky shell, soft skin) in between which the different spaces of the house slip." Via Createmake.
Edward Lifson asks, "Wanna buy a Breuer?"
Bathing Beauties: Re-imagine the Beach Hut for the 21st Century. Via TH.
Cincinnati's Abandoned Subway, 7 full miles of never used tunnels under the city. Via Dark Roasted.
Long ago and far away, CP sent out a request for travel photos. I sent in a couple pix of the massive Nicholson Viaduct. But nothing like this view during construction in 1912. More views here.
Framing Modernism: Selected photographs by Frank Lotz Miller, from the Southeastern Architectural Archive.
"The ecstasy of having more space in Manhattan." Bldgblog's Extra Room Fantasies will be coming to WFMU and on the web, soon.
Interbau: The Modernization of Germany "opened on July 6, 1957 in Berlin's Hansa neighborhood, and came to be seen as a tangible example of Germany's modernization and a side effect of the Cold War." Thanks Sigmundur.
Auburn University's Rural Studio architectural projects. Link from Todd Wescott, an architect and subscriber to our Infrequent Mailings who, as part of a contest, submitted the winning application to be our Guest Editor for Fresh Signals for the balance of the month.
Photos of cephalopodic playscapes in Japan.
Shanghai may see a floating city on the Huangpu River during the 2010 World Expo.
"I have no idea how to make such a slide show open at one particular slide or another, but I'll suggest that if you get past the first interior image without falling in love with their work, then you don't have a pulse." Thanks Todd.
Monocle plans an interesting urban village in Perfect High Street.
One the reasons I really disliked living in Phoenix was the need to bulldoze anything interesting that had the audacity to be more than twenty years old. For shame.
China's preparations for the 2008 Olympics continue, check out the Aquatics Center.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Duncan House available for weekend rentals.
Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House in Second Life. Via Arch. Record.
Ostel, the DDR hotel. "Travel with us back to the former East Germany... starting with the original furniture, to a city tour in a Trabant vehicle." More at Dezeen.
The SF Chronicle has a nice article on how great design is incorporated by nonprofit urban developers.
"You see how straight and perfect are the reflections today." Edward Lifson on Crown Hall in the Summer Solstice. Crown Hall, not in the Summer Solstice, but looking great all the same.
Dan Havel and Dean Ruck's Tunnel House.
Monocle video feature on James Sanders' Celluloid Skyline exhibition. It's the story of how NYC was constructed, in the movies.
Local note. Just this month the Mies van der Rohe Society have started up their daily guided tours of the Illinois Institute of Technology. If you aren't able to make it, the next best thing is to check out our feature on the reconstruction of van der Rohe's Crown Hall.
Seth Ashley's documentary on Steven Holl's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in KC.
Summertime. Why not spend it in a Fireworks House or perhaps a Book House? Interesting structures by Nendo.
Buildings of New York, photographs by Ezra Stoller.
BB, will you buy me one of these?
Rome Reborn 1.0 showcases the ancient city at its peak in 320 AD.
The top ten green skyscrapers.
This Ain't No Disco, it's where we work. Interior spaces of creative firms. Via Createmake.
"One reason you could feel like a god --a classical hero-- in the old Penn Station was that, going under the river, you were traversing an underworld. The experience of moving through that tunnel and emerging up into that station became an archetypal democratic rite of passage." Notes From the Underground, by Marshal Berman. Va DDoA.
DDoI goes inside the new addition to the Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind. Here are Sam's shots of the outside, during the public opening, Thanks Marsh.
Kitsune Noir posts (with tons of photos) on The Best Supermarkets in the World, certainly the best looking. The Mpreis brand from Austria.
The Camouflage House. Thanks Carlos.
"...part of Manhattan is actually constructed from British war ruins." The Manhattan Landfill.
Working directly onto the exterior of the Lyttelton flytower, Ackroyd, Harvey and a team of twenty assistants will plant the north and west face with seedling grass, transforming this landmark on the London skyline into a living installation.
Yakov Chernikhov's architectural fantasies, Palaces of Communism.
Every issue of Ume, the "international architecture magazine," now available as free pdfs. Via Gravestmor.
Zaha Hadid talks with Paul Goldberger about how technology, globalization, and population growth affect architects. From 2012: Stories From the Near Future, the NYer Conference.
Edward Lifson on Chicago's Monadnock Building.
What better way to see a building than to have the architect himself give you a tour. Lord Foster, architect for the new Wembley Stadium, shows you around.
Desert Deathstar and the Little Japanese Radio That Could. Gravestmor on the OMA plan for the Ras al Khaimah Convention & Exhibition Centre in Dubai.
A short video that tries to define the difference between Architecture and Urbanism, mainly by saying that Urbanism is creating potential and Architecture as exploiting it.
Bldgblog on the bright light at the end of the tunnel and architecture.
"If you're confused by this blog, maybe that's ok because it's true intent is to store home ideas digitally while we move about." DO Research by Eric Olson, on prefab house design. Via Happy Accidents.
Built in 1970, the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Ginza Tokyo was a innovative masterpiece by architect Kisho Kurokawa... Complete with appliances and furniture, from audio system to telephone, the capsule interior was pre-assembled in a factory off-site and then hoisted by crane and fastened to the concrete core shaft. Via City of Sound.
Another incredible architectural project by Todd Saunders: the Aurland Lookout. Via Byrdhouse.
"The city of Tel Aviv is literally an open museum of the International Bauhaus Style in architecture." Via City Comforts.
Magnificent decompositions of the city skyline by Mark Napier. A new exhibition, Permutations of a Monument.
Construction shots of SOM's Burj Dubai, which, when it opens in 2009, will be the tallest building in the world. Plus a bit of perspective from Daily Dose of Architecture.
Nokia in Wonderland is a multi-screen video wallpaper that was made for the Nokia flagship store to provide an enjoyable calming experience for visitors. The idea is less about selling product and more about brand-as-lifestyle and getting into the concept of environmental therapy. Via The Supernature.
National Geographic illustration of New York's subterranean landscape. Via Pruned.
Related to the last post, our Crown Hall video, set to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, and The New National Gallery in Berlin, set to Zeppelin's Kashmir.
When Edward Lifson says this is the best Mies Van Der Rohe video ever, you should listen.
Now I know why my spirit soars when ever I'm inside a Gothic Cathedral. New research into consumer behavior has found a link between the height of a room's ceiling and the kind of thoughts a person will have in that room. Via Thinkingpictures.
A smart, beautiful post on architecture at Eikongraphia, The Endgame of Minimalism.
James Wines, a founding member in 1970 of the SITE (Sculpture In The Environment) architectural group, described the Highrise of Homes project as a "vertical community" to "accommodate people's conflicting desires to enjoy the cultural advantages of an urban center, without sacrificing the private home identity and garden space associated with suburbia."
Phillip Johnson's famous Glass House is now open to the public. May need to plan a little trip up to New Canaan.
Explore this collection of some of the most famous and some of the not so famous urban squares all over the world.
Images from the Stockholm subway, which is cut into solid rock and looks like a sc-fi movie set. Via Table of Malcontents.
From May 29 to June 2 at the Storefront for Art and Architecture gallery in NYC, there's a big, cool thing happening involving some very interesting people. Now if they'd only decide what it is.
Finally, a way to keep my daughter from climbing on the coffee table.
"The design is a retrofitting replacement of the horizontal steel tube that currently holds freeway signage. The replacement will house two horizontal axis wind turbines that will be powered by the turbulence created from the passing cars." Brilliant.
Oh for bigger scans. Michael Moran's photographs of Philip Johnson's Glass House taken over several years. Moran's notes on the privately printed book that came out of the project.
"The Palace of the Soviets" was proposed but never built. What if it had been? Via Rise.
Lovely illustrated post at Eikongraphia about the Beijing Airport by Foster + Partners that is currently under construction .
Casey took some pictures and that was all for the River Roads Mall.
Amanda Levete's bridge design for the Dublin Docklands.
Edward Lifson's NPR story on architectural photographer Richard Nickel is mandatory listening, A Lost City's Lost Champion. Beautiful.
Inspiring workplaces. Dig the Red Bull HQ in London, designed by Jump Studios. Via the Miss who is Swiss.
The next best thing to being there. Dan Hill visits "Alvar Aalto through the eyes of Shigeru Ban," at the Barbican Art Gallery in London
"It was deemed that Los Angeles would become the anti-city. Angelenos would live not in cramped apartments close to their industrial jobs, but in airy bungalows with tidy yards." The 1970 Los Angeles 'Centers' Concept Plan. Via Things.
Briliant architectural and other projetcs from Heatherwick Studio in London, Via FormFiftyFive.
Owen Hatherley on Constructivist architecture in the Ukraine, more specifically, "the complex known variously as Gosprom, Derzhprom, N47 and (gasp!) the Palace of Industry."
A wonderful post by Peacay on the design proposal for the 1962 Seattle Century 21 Exposition including site plans and orginal concept work for the Space Needle.
Investors in a central China city are building a giant $300 million sculpture of a dragon that they say will be the largest in the world.
Nicely designed and built website on nicely designed and built Esplanade Apartments by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
About the same size as my first apartment in Chicago, only a lot more interesting to look at. The Micro Compact Home. Via Reluct.
Tom Lundin's Modeling Mid-Century Modern. "...to show off my love of tech illustration, along with my obsession with mid-century modern architecture." Yowza. Via Scrubbles.
Singapore's floating towers.
"Almost two years late and way over budget, the new Wembley stadium is finally open. And it was well worth the wait."
Spy's Spice on Flughafen Tegel 1967, the Berlin airport terminal as designed by structuralist architect Schulze-Fielitz.
Ruairi Glynn on Gary Chang's experiment with reconfigurable living spaces, The Suitcase House Hotel.
Victorian train station - redone - puts the glamour back into rail travel. Slideshow with audio. Via.
The World's Tallest Wooden House. Looks a lot like the Broken Angel House in Brooklyn. And sounds just as dangerous to be in. Via PSFK.
"My Dad is an architect. He studied in Belfast and later in Leeds 1969-72 around the time most of these photos were taken."
Gregor Graf's Hidden Town photo series. Enigmatic images of Linz architecture, purged of signs. Via vvork.
"...almost like a Disneylandish Gehry gone wrong?" The BP Helios House. Via PSFK.
Living Box is a preefab housing design competition.
Can't believe this passed the local council, but this is a great solution for rebuilding a home while meeting local heritage protection requirements.
Geoff calls for entries for an architectural film festival to be held in LA as a part of Silverlake this May. We're submitting SD's short homage to Crown Hall.
Have you always driven past the Elks National Veterans Memorial in in Lincoln Park in Chicago and never gone in? This amazing photographer did, and here's what it looks like in 360 degree VR. Make sure you move your cursor to see the ceiling. Also on Robert Harshman's site, a 360 VR of the Gasoline Museum south of Taos in New Mexico. Now who would drive past that without going in?
You wouldn't know it by today's howling and icy wind, but spring is heading this way. As evidence I present the snow melting away from our favorite building, in this shot by our current Guest Editor, Edward Lifson. More on Mies' Crown Hall from a field-trip SD took in August.
Good to be here. I love steel and glass, as JC said. But do you think when the homeless dream of a comfy house to live in they dream of exposed concrete? Check out this Modernist "stigma-smashing" "flophouse" by starchitect Helmut Jahn. The brand spankin' new glass steel and concrete SRO devotes half its units to people who are homeless or disabled. Images here.
Not sure I'd ever use it but I like the idea of this image-as-type set, called "Architekt" from Kapitza.
Photoset of architect Louis Kahn's Yale Center for British Art. Via Daily Dose.
Green towers in the park: Seoul Commune 2026.
Habitat '67, Montreal's ultra-modern development built as a "case for city living" turns 40 this year. Via Nag on the Lake.
"If I could live in any high-rise anywhere, I'd like to live in 860-880 North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Oh, wait a minute, I do live there." Edward Lifson's five favorite buildings in America, that are publicly accessible.
"...a kind of sci-fi skid row has sprung up on the temporarily frozen surface of Medicine Lake, in the western suburbs of Minneapolis." BldgBlog on Art Shanty Projects.
The six finalists for the design of the new Stockholm Public Library. We're pulling for The Book Hill. Via Dezain.
Plans for the doomsday vault opening in 2008.
Things to do: 1) have children, 2) move to Denmark, and 3) enroll said children in the Ordrup School, designed by Bosch & Fjord. Via PSFK.
Architecture Portal's Top 15 Fountains of the World. Though, you know, we've got a pretty decent foutain too.
Michael writes, "A slideshow of 19th century temporary buildings, some amazingly elaborate, made of corregated iron and still standing today."
Photoset of the Toryglen Highrise Demolition in Scotland yesterday. It blow'd up real good. Via I Like.
Not scheduled to open until the summer, the Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in KC is deservedly garnering a lot of attention. The architect is Steven Holl, profiled in this recent Telegraph article. Via Lifson.
"Set in a spectacular water filled
quarry in Songjiang, China, the 400 bed resort hotel is uniquely constructed within the natural elements of the quarry."
Archinect has an interesting feature on Architecture in Second Life.
UNStudio's converted WWII Bunker. Via Reluct.
"Can technology enhance public use and enjoyment? Can it make space more productive, or meaningful?" Not sure, but it certainly can make it cooler. Ruairi Glynn on William J. Mitchell's presentation entitled, the Zaragoza Digital Mile.
Voting is open for The City of the Future. NYC vs CHI vs LAX.
The Grand Canyon Skywalk will be opening March 28th.
"The greatest cantilever ever told," over the Grand Canyon. Via the always observant Edward Lifson.
"A collection of student work from Unit 20 of the increasingly exciting Bartlett School of Architecture in London... I can't find any links to it online, however, so I'll just give you a random walk-through of the book's contents." We love when Geoff does that.
The Art Of Living with Art. Cool exploration of a Soho loft design. Via DDoA.
A luminous interactive installation has transformed London's V&A John Madejski Garden this winter.
Mental note, when in Berlin stay at Arte Luise Kunsthotel. Via Vagablond.
Rotating apartment tower planned in Dubai. Via Lifson.
There are still a few days remaining to invent and submit your home-made sovereignty to BldgBlog for a chance to win a copy of Lonely Planet Guide to Micronations.
Strange Soviet Buildings. Via Byrdhouse.
Jean Paul Ganem, "My agricultural designs are found where art is least expected... are made with plants, therefore, they are constantly changing with time." Via Aeiou.
"Look at it very closely: the details disappear in a funny way." Metropolis Magazine on the reopening of Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canan, CT which is scheduled for April. Plus, a great interview with Vincent Scully about the the house. Via Lifson.
For Finn, here's our film about Crown Hall that you're looking for.
"It's gorgeous, stone simple. But what do you do when it rains? 'You get wet.'" Mies in Miami. Via Archinect.
A Daily Dose of Architecture Ecuador. Uno, Dos, Tres, Cuatro.
A capital idea. Ironic Sans on a building shaped like Godzilla.
"There was no good reason churches had to cast off a thousand years of tradition and start dressing up like bank branches, but that's exactly what they did." Lileks' annotated photoset of postwar church architecture.
Beijing's 2008 Olympic Stadium under construction.
City of Sound on Typotecture, typography as architectural imagery.
"We enter the master bedroom through the sliding glass door. Here, dominating the room, is without question the Town House's single most dramatic piece of furniture." Via an afternoon update to The Morning News.
Who dreamt it, who designed it, how they built it. Great weblog telling personal stories of houses. including this one which was influenced by the great one by the great one. Found among other things.
Tiberio points us to Figure/Ground, a site about architecture, photography and travel. So cool. For example, this set of pix of Richard Meier's sublime Jubilee Church in Rome and this one of Kenzo Tange's St. Mary's Cathedral in Tokyo.
If your rooms are filled with their lamps, their couches, and everything in between, you might as well just get it over with and buy one of their houses too. Ikea plans 500 homes a year in UK (reg. req'd). Via Archinect.
Studio 804 is a design/build program at the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Design. Their 2006 project is a well-documented twenty-week program to create and construct modular relief housing. Via Netdiver.
House Ray 1 in Vienna by
Delugan Meissl. Spectacular. Via Paul Wagner's sweet new Tenmetal.
Holiday House on the Rigi, Scheidegg, Switzerland by Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler.
Eikongraphia on a proposed building for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai by the Danish firm Plot. The building is named and designed after the Chinese sign "ren," which means "people." Beautiful.
Ken Shuttleworth's Crescent House. Spectacularly simple and beautiful residence, especially for someone who lives with lots of books. Check the brief, as well as the photos, etc.
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. A fomer coal and steel plant is transformed into a park and with some amazing lighting, really comes alive at night. More here at the official site of "The Mega Multi Maxi Park."
Montreal's Habitat '67. "The building was realized as the main pavilion and thematic emblem for the International World Exposition." Much like the structure to which it is dedicated, this site is clunky and more than a bit impractical but noble all the same. Via DDoA.
Anyone want to loan me $750,000?
A visual history of Paper Tube Structures. Via bblinks.
Electroland makes urban spectacles. "Enteractive consists of a luminous field of LED lights embedded into the entry walkway that respond to the presence of visitors; a massive display of lights on the building face that mirror the patterns of the entry." Also, check the RGB project.
Zingmagazine on 101 Spring Street, "At first, I thought the building large, but now I think it small; it didn't hold much work after all." Via City of Sound.
Charles Phoenix's Disneyland Tour of Downtown Los Angeles. Via Daily Guilt.
What better than an explosion to get the morning started? The Demolition of the Wachovia Building in downtown Atlanta, by Kevin Byrd.
Prêt à Manger, a workshop on restaurant design, produced some interesting concepts. Via Psfk.
Obsessional on Mies' 860-880 Lake Shore Drive. We love those towers and the soon-to-be-dwarfed IBM building too. But most of all we love Crown Hall at IIT, and its contemporary and cousin
The School of Social Service Administration at U of C. Note to self, arrange photo pilgramage to Hyde Park.
Frank Lloyd Wright buildings recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey at the LoC. Many with hi-res scans of drawings and plans. Great resource.
Inhabitat on Lovetann's two new prefab homes.
The Delft library is by Mecanoo Architecten.
Rutger Spoelstra's photo of the TU Delft Library, plus some QTVRs of same. Beautiful. First found at Daily Dose but probably belongs in Jaime's red-hot and filthy library smut post as well.
Live like a hobbit in The Shire of Bend, Oregon. Via Brand Avenue.
Two new homes from Løvetann. Via Inhabitat.
Local note. If you can make it over the next couple weekends it's running, try and hit up the Graceland Cemetery Architecture Tour. Sullivan, van der Rohe, and more. It's likely the best Chicago history lesson you'll ever have.
You are an architecture geek. You are particularly fond on individualistic takes on the clean, modern aesthetic from the middle of the last century. Preferably lesser-known ones like Harris Armstrong. You are reading Andrew L W Raimist's Architectural Ruminations. Aren't you? Scanned Dwell article on Armstrong. Page 2. Page 3.
Molo Design's Textile Softwalls look like a nice, clean solution to dividing up an open office space. Click through the pix.
Don Justo has been building his own cathedral near Madrid. He has been working in the Romanesque style, as Gothic is "too complicated" and Baroque "does not please me". Some additional images here. Now, after working without a permit for 45 years, it seems as though he may gain official permission from the planning authority. Amazing.
Roger Dean, the fantasy artist you know from his series of Yes album covers has designed a house and planned a community "for the new millenium." Trippy.
Jump Studios' new headquarters for Red Bull. So cool. Find it under 'projects.' Via Designboom.
Kane on the Braniff International Airways terminal at Lovefield in Dallas. Sweet. George Cserna photos from Wallpaper Magazine.
I wonder how difficult it is to find a building to place a Loftcube on top of.
Kane on futurist-artist Jacque Fresco and his many initiatives including The Venus Project, "a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture." Check this trailer for a new doc on Fresco, Future By Design. Fascinating.
Todd Saunders' Summer House.
Relink, but worth it. "Hey friend, say friend, come on over, if you're looking for happiness, this is the place!" The National Archives of Canada site dedicated to Expo 67 in Montreal. Great collection of collateral material. Add to that, this fab set of snaps from the Expo. I. II. III.
Twists and Turns, a video of the dynamic lit skin of Uniqa Tower in Vienna. Beautiful. Just beautiful.
DC Residence including living spaces of the Swiss Ambassador, representational spaces and staff quarters, by architect Steven Holl.
Some interesting speculative projects using Google's SketchUp. Via Things.
Frank Lloyd Wright in Half Life 2. Via grubbykid.
Vintage photos of lost shopping malls of the '50s, '60s & '70s.
Real Estate, one-hundred aerial drawings by Heman Chong. So simple. So cool. Via Designboom.
Laminata, an innovative glass house by Kruunenberg Van der Erve Architects. Also, check this Daily Dose of Architecture post on the project.
The Quik House is a prefabricated kit house designed by Adam Kalkin from recycled shipping containers.
To follow that last post, and because we were talking about it at lunch, here's some great info on Sullivan's Merchants' National Bank in Grinnel, Iowa. Definitely worth the trip, if you're ever in the area.
Heard this weekend: Hello Beautiful's "The Sound of Architecture". Includes a great piece on the Louis Sullivan building in my neighborhood, the Krause Music Store, which would be his last before his death in 1924.
Sunset Cabin, Lake Simcoe, Ontario. Taylor Smyth Architects. Via WDIK.
Bohemian Modern is a beautiful, new book by architect Barbara Bestor, about Silver Lake CA and the influential style of homes and design there. It was designed and illustrated by Geoff McFetridge, who was profiled in Western State 3. Cha-ching. Thanks to Chuck Anderson for the heads up.
Geoff writes, "This project is so bizarre that I thought your readers might get a kick out of it: it's a 10-mile spiral of interconnected highway ramps located outside Las Vegas, so that families can gamble at 55mph, get their car washed, etc., all while spiraling around and around - and around - inside this weird concrete system of roads in the sky."
Niagara Credit Union building by Philip Beesley.
The Hotel Puerta America Madrid about which Things said, "Perhaps it helps to have design hotels kicking around so that architects can get ultimately doomed ideas out of their system."
Electro Plankton on an abandoned city outside of Taipai.
Louis Sullivan at 150. Via AC PLUS.
Interesting story and photo essay from the Seattle Times about the six years my buddy Rob and his girlfriend Jenny spent living in and doing an eco-friendly rehab on a historic house in Seattle's Ballard district.
Freitag Individual Recycled Freeway Shop. "The store is built with 17 rusty, recycled freight containers."
For MS and BB, the Brady house rendered in CAD. Via Boing Boing.
Wayfinding versus wayshowing. Dan Hill on an interesting looking new book on environmental signage by Per Mollerup.
Proposals for a new extension to The Tate Modern. Check this rendering. Design by Herzog & de Meuron.
Pingmag interview with Joe Nishizawa, whose underground Japan photography depicts a hidden fantastic world missing only mole-people and an evil, stylish despot. More pix here, unfortunately the book, Deep Inside doesn't seem to be available outside of Japan as of yet.
He obviously prefers big, but sometimes you just need to build a small deli: Frank Gehry's Delicious.
This month's Architectural Record Magazine has big photo feature on Tadao Ando's sublime building for the Langen Foundation, on a defunct NATO base outside of Düsseldorf. More pictures here, plus an interview with Ando at Designboom and another from Brutus.
"The various three-dimensional blocks of the different floor plans -or "typologies," as Ingels calls them- put one in mind of an insane megascale Tetris game, in which apartments rain down into big empty volumes and must be rotated to the correct orientation." Via BldgBlog.
"The tube of the tunnel forms its own room and turns slowly along the longitudinal axis around the visitor. The scent pours from the flower pots attached to the tube." The Dufttunnel. Via Ramage.
Inflating the sphere atop Serpentine Pavillion by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, in London. Via Dezain.
Photos from a Zaha Hadid exhibit in New York. And here's an animation of her Aquatics Centre for the 2010 Olympics in London.
The Metro stations in Stockholm are beautiful. Via land-o-links.
Marmol Radziner + Associates fab prefab desert house. Via aWLN.
Cassandra Complex, the controversial and imaginative Melbourne architecture firm of Cassandra Fahey. Check the Goss House and the Newman House, and yes, that is Pamela Anderson.
Hong Kong: The Densecity, a large collection from the skyscraper capitol of the world.
Sweet interface for viewing details from projects large and small from architect Jonathan Schloss. Via Netdiver.
The Inscribing of Paris Street Names. Via Plep.
Japanese flood tunnels in Tokyo. Via Bunch of Nerds.
From the Weekly Dose of Architecture."The project Seewurfel ('Lake Cubes') is based on a concept of piazzas that were created by the careful positioning of the eight buildings." Nice.
Pingmag interview about the Micro Compact Home with Claudia Hertrich of Horden Cherry Lee Architects.
By 2012, engineers will have constructed a new high tech dam that will once again make Mont Saint-Michel an island.
UNStudio's VilLA NM single family house in upstate New York.
Best Buildings of the Year - As selected by The American Institute of Architects.
"You dock the ship for so long it becomes architecture, an extension of the earth's surface into the sea."
House from winery in Brejos de Azeitão in Portugal by architects Aires Mateus. "The introduction of volumes in this interior becomes related with the light and intends 'to modulate' the main space of the room." Via DDoA.
A bit clunky but worth the effort. A virtual tour of the Weissenhofsiedlung Stuttgart, "With the art director, Mies van der Rohe, 17 architects from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland created a model housing programme for the modern urbanite."
Local note. the bridge-tender towers on the Chicago River are opening for tours. Finally an answer to "what's in there?" every time we pass by.
Studio804 completes Modular3 in Kansas City's Strawberry Hill neighborhood.
FOVICKS, Friends Of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures. Via GaB.
The new host of Extreme Engineering is a stand-up comedian - and a graduate student in architecture at Harvard University. He now flies around the world cracking jokes in front of the world's largest architectural structures, while studying to get his degree. Dream job? Read this interview and howl with envy.
An entire Swiss valley has won the 2006 International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens. Described as a "real utopia," it is full of "jagged ravines" and many of the houses don't have electricity: more info at Pruned.
What will NYC look like in 2016? New York Magazine gives us a glimpse. Here, for instance, is Harlem. (Via Archinect)
"It was a beautiful enchanted island in the middle of the city... And if it's a quiet night and you listen really closely, you can almost hear the big bands playing there." CRCC reminisces about the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Via Palla.
Can one of London's Tube stations be transformed into a kind of cylindrical power plant, generating electricity from the vibrations of trains and stair-climbing commuters? One architect thinks so: BBC. Via Archinect.
"Innovative lofts with a garden and garage on each floor..." Car Loft in Berlin.
The skyscrapers of Shanghai have become inadvertant climatological devices, generating often-dangerous windstorms at ground level. Via things.
"24 Sony digital projectors, an eight-channel audio system and ultrasonic motion tracking technology": it's the future of the border, the future of war, and the future of simulation. It's The War Room.
Co-conspirator Ken Meier's photosets from the 2006 Yale GDMFA Show and from The School of Architecture End of Year Show, an exhibition he helped design.
"The Toronto Waterfront is an archipelago waiting to be discovered. Once sandbars, the Toronto Islands surfaced over the last century to become the largest car-free community in North America." Find out how they're being architecturally transformed. Via Archinect.
Weird valves and other large-scale hydrological mechanisms. Renaissance waterworks. Water wheels and windmills. Even more here.
Interactive Architecture on 12m4s, a super cool "architectural intervention" created by Lab(au) for the Artefact Festival in Belgium.
Jean Snow's photo set of a new, as yet unoccupied, mysterious and beautiful building in Harajuku Japan.
An old warship has been sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to form the backbone of an artificial reef - even while "a broken chain of tankers, tugs, barges, and patrol boats" now pollutes the territorial waters of Iraq. It's undersea architecture, or the residues of war.
On some kind of architecture streak today: a gigantic collection of photos from construction on the new Zollverein School of Design in Germany.
The New Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart. Gorgeous. Opens this Friday.
If we come in tomorrow to find that the CP studio has been sold and JC is nowhere to be found, I'm going to take a guess that he's bought Mies van der Rohe's Morris Greenwald House.
In case someone wants/needs a 100 year old George Maher home in northern Michigan. CP summer retreat?
A photographic study of small huts for security guards, all found throughout Mexico City.
Glyph Jockey's scans from History of Architecture & Ornament. Via Bibliodyssey.
Drains of Canada.
"If this year's Big Brother house doesn't drive its inhabitants up the wall, the designers will have failed. Even the urinals aren't safe from prying eyes." Tour the architecture of popular surveillance.
Sustainable condos arrive in Chicago? Using "high-performance glass and other new technologies," they're planned for the Gold Coast.
3D buildings printed from Google Earth.
If it looks like a Gehry and talks like a Gehry, it's probaby a Gehry. Gehry's Latest, Revealed, complete with soundbite.
Using an "indestructible mix of ice and wood pulp," could the British military have made "a massive floating island" suitable for going to war? Kircher Society
Are architects hand-maidens to power? Rem Koolhaas has designed structures for the government of China, for instance - as has Herzog & de Meuron. Do architects simply glorify totalitarian egos? Via Archinect
The Mars Citizenship Program is now underway: "robots could set up the first Martian habitats - including a nuclear reactor - in about 10 years, for an initial $2 billion investment. That amount could be raised if 90,000 Earthlings parted with $10,000 each; 10,000 handed over $100,000 apiece and 100 tycoons each donated $1 million." New Scientist.
Little slivers of unused urban space - medians, gaps - are now the focus of a design campaign looking to "beautify" these orphan spaces. (Via Archinect)
Pierre Koenig architecure image archive at USC. Great, mostly glass and steel, residential work. I. II. III. Via gmt+9 (-15).
Construction of Beijing's Olympic shooting range has been suspended due to ancient tombs for imperial eunuchs being discovered on-site.
BOB. "Somewhere between a tent, a house and a Winnebago." Via Inhabitat.
Craneporn. More at DDoA.
Leo Fabrizio, the "bunker hunter," has tracked down and photographed over 3000 bunkers hidden throughout the Swiss landscape. WMMNA. Photo gallery.
Take a tour of the weird, Dr. Seussian world of interconnected belts and machines otherwise known as the basement of the British Library. While you're there, check out the Camden Catacombs.
The most insane intersection I've ever seen: it's Swindon's five-roundabouts-within-a-roundabout, spinning both anti- and clock-wise simultaneously: story (you can even buy a t-shirt!) and diagram. Good luck. (Via Sean F.)
A "vast, moving, wooden elephant, 42 tons in weight" is set to walk around the streets of London for four days in May. Watch out: Interactive Architecture dot Org.
"Deep beneath Moscow a crew of urban spelunkers frolics, hunting Stalin's secret hideaway, Ivan the Terrible's torture chamber, bootleg nuclear weapons, and a little fame and fortune" - it's from 1997... but still fun: Outside Online.
A "cluster of mock Iraqi villages" has been designed "deep in the Mojave Desert." Training there, US soldiers "face insurgent uprisings, suicide bombings and even staged beheadings in underground tunnels." It's DisneyWar, at the New York Times.
Today is the birtHDay of the American skyscraper, with construction starting in 1884 right here in Chicago on The Home Insurance Building. And here's some info on the engineer, William LeBaron Jenny, as well as photos of some of his other Chicago landmarks.
Best-looking City Halls thread, with lots of photos. Vancouver's is sweet.
The construction workers "in Hamburg placed a monumental message in the front of this building - invisible for the supervision of building and architects." Via City of Sound.
Nearest Thing to Heaven.
Steven Clark writes regarding Beijing Olympic stadium construction. "Ross Langdon has some more images - how they're meant to look when they are finished and who designed them."
Beijing 2008 Olympic stadium construction pix. Via Archinect.
The sublime Madrid Barajas Airport by Richard Rogers. Here's a profile from The Guardian and a thread full of big beautiful photos.
A new library in Guadalajara to be created from more than
two hundred discarded fuselages from Boeing 727 and 737
airplanes. Listed under "New Jalisco Library" with tons of other smart ideas and projects at the site of our new fave firm, Lot-Ek. Via Designboom.
"For four years from 1965 until the founding of his architectural firm, Ando Tadao worked a part-time in jobs related to architecture to earn money to travel throughout Europe and the United States. Ando refers to this time in his life as his 'Grand Tour.'"
The New Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth by architect Tadao Ando. Found while looking for photos of his amazing Picture Book Museum.
A great interview with artist/architect, Luke Chandresinghe over at the always fantastic, PingMag.
"...by 1930 three dairy companies dominated the dairy scene. They were the United States Dairy Products Corp., Borden's and Sheffield Farms. Most of those facilities are gone now, but a few buildings have survived..." Via Brownstoner.
Pruned: Landscape challenge #3. "A multiple choice question this time. What is the function of this concrete protrusion on the plains of the Negev Desert in southern Israel?"
"When proposing his West Berlin hotel in 1955, he proclaimed: 'We have hit upon a new weapon with which to fight Communism, a new team made up of owner, manager and labor with which to confront the class-conscious Mr. Marx.'" Molly W. Berger's review of Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture. Via Things.
Concrete Island.
The Future Was So Cool in 1961. Interview with Eddie Sotto, head of design on the Encounter restaurant project. "We wanted the inside to feel like an 'intergalactic in flight' lounge." Via EotG.
Albano Daminato, interior architect, Singapore. I. II. III.
While in Toronto over the weekend I walked by the construction site for the new galleries being added to the Royal Ontario Museum. The final rendering looks amazing.
Interesting, even if you don't live there: a timeline of Greenpoint. Via Brownstoner.
Diserio's Top 15 Skylines in the World v3.0. Via The Presurfer.
"The Trojan Goat has been a show pony for the UVA architecture program, and now maybe a cash cow for the Piedmont Housing Alliance." The self-sufficient house project. Via Daily Dose.
The Therme Vals Baths in Zurich, by architect Peter Zumthor. Sublime. Click the links in the left hand rail for photos. Via Freegorifero.
Fab H-Haus Cube 5. Via AWLN.
Don't date an architect. Via DO.
Designed for Leisure Living, from Design Magazine, 1969. So nice.
Bryan Varney's Jenga Tower Projects.
An architect and a builder responded to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina by designing HELP living modules. Next time disaster strikes, we can only hope there might be a solution like this. These 8 x 12 foot modules are easily assembled and incredibly compact.
Creative Home Engineering adds value to homes by planning and constructing secret hidden passageways. You know, like behind the bookcase.
A stroll through Santiago Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain. Via Paperholic.
Centre Pompidou Metz.
The Hotel Puerta America in Madrid. Start with John's A Daily Dose of Architecture posts, with lots of pix. Parts one and two. Totally fab, especially the Gluckman and Isozaki rooms and Ron Arad's corridors. Then find more photos here.
WMMNA interview with UnitedVisualArtists, interactive installation artists, for lack of a better term. Check the pix and video of their interior for London club Kabaret's Prophecy .
The Detroit slums get a fresh coat of paint. Via we-make-money-not-art.
Following up yesterday's post on the AGO Frank Gehry show, check today's pic at the daily dose.
Video from the current Frank Gehry exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Art In Ruins examines how artists and architecture in Providence, RI are affected as the city expands and evolves.
Continuing on a different previous theme from today, Stephane writes simply, "wicked disco stadium."
Archinect photoset of the Allianz Arena. An image search of the same delivers some spectacular results as well.
"Inspired by the colors and textures of nature, Livinglass is a laminated architectural glass, which captures organic materials within luminous sheets of clear glass." Via Heavy Petal.
"...convey something of the discrete character of elements in the Australian landscape, to offer my interpretation in built form." Architectural sketches by Glenn Murcutt.
Whitehouse and Company are working with really big pixels for an ingenious Children's Museum sponsorship project.
As part of the last MoOM update, sd made this short film about the newly refurbished Crown Hall at IIT, the spritual home of our Museum. I spent some valuable time there yesterday on my way further south to gape at his equally impressive School of Social Science building at the U of C.
Sweet prefab floorplan by Michelle Kaufmann. The Side Breeze. Via, as most of the good prefab links seem to be, aWLN.
"Singing Bridges is a sonic sculpture, playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments." Via bldg.
Technology takes over the Sassi, an Italian cave city abandoned in the 50s. Via Archinect.
Artist Dhaj Sumner constructed her amazing New Zealand home out of adobe in-situ, a mixture of clay, sand, paper pulp and cement. Now she hosts freeform earthbuilding workshops.
Only been to Detroit once, but would like to go back to explore all the empty buildings: DetroitYES: Home of the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit. Make sure to take the tour. Via Things.
It would be great to see all of these concepts in one go. Walker Art Center's Some Assembly Required showcases the best of contemporary prefabricated homes. I'd like Pinc House's Black Barn, please.
Stunning kitchens from Lineaquattro. Check out Legno, just beautiful. Via Archinect.
Tacoma is losing one of its local architectural anomalies.
We need some of these in the studio. Nice.
"Micro Dwellings is a moveable, modular system which can be configured in an infinite number of ways due to its geometry. They can be built onto existing construction, submerged, or mounted on wheels to create the basis for personalized social settings.". Via Inhabitat.
"Collingwood's Vessel: a Retirement Home for Elderly Fisherman,".
City of Sound on architecture, the big ape, fauna, flora, pixels and paper.
Great, narrated photo tour of VW's Transparent Factory in Dresden. Via Paperholic.
Zulkey's great interview with architectural historian and social critic, David Garrard. Particularly interesting if you're a fan of Chicago architecture.
Seasick video clip of an escalator making its way through one of the aquaria at the Hekkeijimi Sea Paradise.
Using rotating mirrors to bring light to Rattenberg, Austria.
Haiko's The Last Days of Disco, a visit to a disappearing plant.
Quonset: metal living for a modern age.
All the big ones, togther at last. Lots more fantastic models here.
Some good news for New Orleans, free wireless internet.
Winners from the Oklahoma City Bus Stop Competition.
AWL on Luigi Nervi who "liberated architecture from the tree" and built lots of big things and some smaller beautiful things too, like the structural elements under Rome's Olympic Highway.
The new database from the Royal Institute of British Architects: RIBApix. Fantastic. Via Things.
"The highway, called Atlanterhavsveien, runs south of Kristiansund as the coast curves towards Molde. It runs right along the North Sea, known for its dramatic storms and varying light throughout the year." Norway's "Structure of the Century." Via Things.
Masamichi Katayama is Wonderwall Inc. The design projects and store interiors he has produced are truly inspirational. Faves include The Tokyo Towers Sea Sky Lounge, Bapy Aoyama shop and the new Bape Cafe!?. Via Shoepal.
Nice, Japanese modern architecture photo blog. Via Daily Does.
E. Stewart Williams defined the desert modern school of architecture. From the LA Times. Via Archinect.
The Maunsell Army Sea Forts at Red Sands and Shivering Sands. Very cool in a kind of sci-fi-WWII sort of way. Thanks to our man in Toronto.
Tonight, The Chicago Prize Awards 2005, Water Tanks, from the Chicago Architectural Club, "This competition challenges entrants to salvage a part of Chicago's urban fabric, the industrial water tank."
An Anatomy of Megachurches: an interesting essay/slide-show about these huge structures.
This is what dominated the lunch conversation today.
"The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent; and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy."
Our Man from Toronto declares that today is Shed Day. I. II. III. Who are we to argue with that?
BlueSkyMod's Prefab Cabin. Via aWLN.
Vito Acconci's The Island in the Mur project from 03. "What makes the island so exciting is not only its combination of interior/exterior but also the new perspectives it provides of the city. Familiar objects in Graz can be seen from a new point of view." Via wmmna.
Henk van Rensbergen's Abandoned Places.
"The problems of older cities in America are many and grave." A fascinating scan of Alfred de Grazia's Metropolis 1976 utopia. Via Things.
You are a geek for architecture. You are particularly fond on individualistic takes on the clean, modern aesthetic from the middle of the last century. Preferably lesser-known ones. You are reading Andrew L W Raimist's Architectural Ruminations. Aren't you?
Renzo Piano's new Peek und Cloppenburg Department Store, Cologne, Germany.
"Tatlin's tower has come to symbolize an impossible project, the Unicorn or Atlantis of the cultural world... Our project is to build the Tower, full size and to the intended specifications from girders and steel guy wires."
Ironworkers Local 580 Training Facility. Long Island City, New York. Building profile from A Weekly Dose of Architecture.
Klein Dytham Architecture's Tokyo 'Billboard Building', an unlovely name for a lovely idea.
An interesting interview with the architecture collective, Studio Sputnik, creators of the beautifully illustrated book, "Snooze."
Metro Arts and Architecture transit station appreciation.
Sauerbruch Hutton Architects' New Building for the Berlin Police and Fire Departments. Via Daily Dose.
LED's as Architectural Lighting. Beautiful examples from Seoul and Tokyo.
Inside Battersea Power Station, courtesy of The Beeb.
Parasitic Architecture. In German, but you'll get the idea with or without translating. Via 1+1=1.
I should post this every day. Tadao Ando. Tadao Ando.
Ruminations on Harris Armstrong's Magic Chef Building and three beuatiful pix, all from Andrew Raimist. Beautiful, unapologetic modernism.
A shade of pink: The Lawn Road Flats are brought back to life. Found among other things.
Nathan Sawaya, Takeda Headquarters Groundbreaking Ceremonies. Via Bezembinder's.
Get yourself to Milan anytime between September 19th and October 16th to check out this exhbit of the work of architect Cassi Ramelli. Some favorites, here.
The Sale House, designed by Johnston MarkLee. Hey Jason, that's the vibe we should be looking for in a new global HQ.
Sure, it's all well and good to preserve historic architecture, but what about buildings of more recent vintage?
The Wall Street Journal continues to crush on our pals at 37 Signals like Joanie on Chachi. Today they actually find a way to feature SvN prominently in a story on old home renovation. The same story also points us to an awesome site detailing the long, slow DIY makeover of an 18th century home in Lancaster County, VA.
Royal Institute of British Architects Awards 2005: Residential Schemes.
OK, you struck a nerve. Check out the pictures from the Herzog & de Meuron gallery. Especially the Ricola building, the Railroad Signal Tower, and of course Tate Modern. Then read Power Into Art.
City of Sound post on Herzog and De Meuron's Allianz Arena in Munich. "...the stadium should glow different colours to indicate which team is playing at home - red for the shirts of Bayern Munich, blue for those of Munich 1860, and white for the German national team."
The Grand Tour, a survey of Renzo Piano buildings in Europe, via Google Maps, at Daily Does of Architecture. Found among other things.
The architecture of Toyo Ito. Not so nicely displayed here but the genius shines through anyway. Inspirational. Here's a Designboom interview, another at The Take.
Keith Milford's Malls of America is a small but beautiful series of photosets of '60s and '70s interiors and ephemera.
Mister Aitch on Jean-Jacques Lequeu, visionary, cantankerous architect with a flair for the dramatic. Great story, beautifully illustrated, as per the usual.
Special Models. The 387 Houses of Peter Fritz, insurance clerk from Vienna. Via Bezembinder's.
London's greatest Twentieth Century vintage Formica caffs. Via Londonist.
Cool construction pix
of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion at Kensington Garderns, London. Via Archinect.
Welcome to our building! We're glad to have you! Now, please, whatever you do, don't even think about sitting here. Via Unbeige.
Ultramodern single-wide trailer by architect Christopher Deam.
The Filling Station is a loft development in Miami notable for the way it presents itself online. I don't necessarily agree that the "building is f---ing cool" but I do believe that's the first time I've seen that headline in real estate advertising.
Zaha Hadid's BMW AG Plant in Leipzig. Via Archinect. More here and here.
"Visionary architects who imagined and planned grandiose buildings that would never be constructed." Mister Aitch on tienne-Louis Boulle and Jean-Jacques Lequeu.
Bauhaus Architecture in Tel Aviv, "During the 1930s, while the modernist movement in art reached its apogee in Europe, the city of Tel Aviv was in a stage of intensive development. Most of the architecs working in the new city at that time were of European background and brought with them the ideas of the modernist movement." Via City Comforts.
"Hmm, perhaps I'll try the fish."
Production and Work. Olivetti and factory design. Found among other things.
Fab pre-fab homes. 'O Sole Mio' is a beauty.
Hhstyle Store Design by Nacása & Partners.
Searchscapes Manhattan. Yowza.
"This strangely graceful, bold and creative building..." The dream of the future brought to reality by Monsanto. Via Scrubbles.
Architect Egon Eiermann, the Continuity of Modernism.
Next time you're thinking of painting a room, consider Anna Sova's paint. It's made with 99% food grade ingredients, so you can snack on some while you're coating that blank wall with some color. Via Treehugger.
Record Brother presents Conversations Regarding The Future Of Architecture, an LP record released by Reynolds Metals in 1956. Saarinen, Johnson, Van Der Rohe, Gropius and Neutra. Awesome.
The Architecture of Moscow from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Spectacular drawings of unrealised projects. Via NT.
Googie Architecture Online. "Googie has also been known as Populuxe, Doo-Wop, Coffee Shop Modern, Jet Age, Space Age and Chinese Modern... Googie often seems like a joint design by the Jetsons and the Flintstones." Via I Like.
Not Fooling Anybody, a Chronicle of Bad Conversions and Storefronts Past. Most excellent. I. II. III. Via Paperholic.
Opening Day for the Red Sox today, and as exciting as the ring ceremony may be, I'm looking forward to seeing the yearly renovations to the age-old park. Fenway had the reputation of being a great place to see a game -- if you wanted to know what it was like during 1908. Check out some of the proposals and documents, or take a video tour of this years changes. Janet Marie-Smith and the team at Fenway have done an amazing job of keeping the old-time feel of Fenway in tact while making amazing improvements to the park and its infrastructure.
The hauntingly beautiful opening to a series exploring the long abandoned Officer's Row houses in Brooklyn's Navy Yard: Written and Photographed. Via Brownstoner.
Someday, buildings will be constructed entirely by machines... maybe.
If you can't keep 'em out, at least make 'em environmentally friendly: Vancouver Vs. Wal Mart. Via Byrdhouse.
A thorough review of airport expansion projects throughout the world. In honor of Boston's new Terminal A. On time and on budget... just like all construction projects in Boston.
La Petite Maison du Weekend is a prototype self-sufficient minimal dwelling.
Renovation of a Paris apartment building by Francoise Coulet architects and tons of other great stuff, like this chapel at Archicool. Via Archinect.
Jack Blanchard's Sun-Times Sunset, very nice time-lapse of the demolition of the ST building.
In lieu of Mass tomorrow, visit Sant' Andrea al Quirinale in Rome today.
The next logical step, The Muji House. More, at World Changing. Via Antipixel.
Not only is Brownstoner a terrific place to visit (even if you don't live in New York, nor really care much about real estate), following the ongoing renovations of their dilapidated-yet-gorgeous five-story house made it all the better.
I want to stay in this place.
Cool. Build Your Own Chicago Postcard Models from the Wurlington Brothers Press. What, no Monadnock Building?
The lighthouses that line the River Thames. Via Things.
Armin writes, "Cool Vegas neon site with facts about each sign. A decent gallery. And, how cool is this?"
An excellent database of the world's longest tunnels. Via Things.
Normally when I stumble upon something like this film, The City Part I and The City Part II, created in 1939 by Lewis Mumford, Aaron Copland and Ralph Steiner, I would write a long enthusiastic post about it, but Dan Hill of City of Sound has done the job already. Brilliant.
Maybe if we redo our studio space we could use the Corydon M. Johnson Co. Advertising Agency of Bethpage NY as a model. The Composing Room. The Consumer Art Dept. The Technical Illustration Dept. And of course, The Conference Room.
"This is not an art project. No vision, no interpretations, no artistic contributions or ambiguities. This is simply a faithful rendering of the decorations of the Moscow metro."
Like something out of a dark and eerie science fiction film, these photos from the Tokyo G-Cans Project, "an underground water draining system to help prevent the overflow of major waterways during the wet typhoon season," are just stunning. Via Josh Rubin.
North Central Freeway: The Initial Study with revised I-95 Northeast Freeway 1963-64. The study evaluated "local impacts upon residential displacement and division as well as parkland." Very important issues to be sure but we're more interested in the the beautiful maps and information design. Via the unstoppable Bezembinder's.
BV Doshi's School of Architecture, Ahmedabad, India as a popup card. Tokyo's City Hall is nice too. Found among other things.
"There are not that many buildings by Tadao Ando in Europe and given the fact that it (The Langen Foundation) is situated in a densely populated area and easy to reach by car, it is bound to become a site of pilgrimage for architecture enthusiasts." More pictures here and an interview with Ando at Designboom.
Modular Dwellings.
Bridging the Drive Pedestrian Bridge Design for Lake Shore Drive. Finalists posted.
More on Millau from the Guardian, via our man in Toronto
Amazing. Foster and Partners' Millau Viaduct. Here's the official site. Via Archinect.
Bijzondere historische tankstations. 'Particular historical filling stations.' Great survey, only Dutch, but the pix will help you choose which to translate. Via Bezembinder's.
Archi.ru hosts a spectacular photo series from 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale. Check this and this and especially this. Via the newly deployed Weblog Paperholic.
"The thing that worries me the most is that everyone wears the same things, eats the same things, lives in the same environments, this is what worries me the most." From a nicely illustrated DesignBoom Interview with Toyo Ito. Also, see the book Toyo Ito: Blurring Architecture 1971-2005 at YWFT.
Classic midcentury residential architecture at Modern Phoenix includes this nice remodel of a Haver home by Michael P. Johnson and lots of links and background material too. Via Scrubbles.
Berlin, 1945-1985. Found among other things.
Scroll down to the entry titled The Sound of One Book at Freegorifero. Yes Fabio, we feel it too.
"Railway stations seem to be open, but are actually closed. They seem to be closed, but are actually open. They are special spaces, unlike the closed package of normal architecture. This work attempts to clarify the special character of railway station space." The Shin-Minamata High Speed Rail Station. Via Free Gorifero.
The Scottish Parliament and The Dubai Autodrome. Just two pix from a great resource for browsing, The Archinect Image Gallery.
Dan Hill of City of Sound calls this "a quick uninformed 'review' in images and words" of Frank Gehry's new Ray and Maria Stata Center. We can only hope to be so uninformed.
A team of filmmakers is in pre-pro for a documentary called Leisurama about Raymond Loewy, vacation homes and "affordable methods of escapism" like this beauty. Via Boing Boing.
"I am a visual man, working with eyes and hands." From a 1959 audio interview with Le Corbusier, answering a question about what makes true architecture?
Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelonia, 75th Anniversary. The 'virtual visit' pix are harshly lit but give a nice feel for the space. Via Freegorifero. Related: Our favorite building anywhere. Jason's visit to Farnsworth House.
"Since about ten years Theo Jansen is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind." Found with other first-class links, as per the usual, at the new Well Vetted, #26.
The Cooper Union unveils plans for a new academic building, designed by Morphosis as an innovative learning environment. Amazing. Check the gallery. Via Archinect.
"The Archinect School Blog Project. We have recruited representatives from a collection of architecture programs around the world to maintain blogs documenting their experiences and discoveries from each institution during the fall 2004 semester."
"The Water Cube will be one of the most dramatic and exciting venues to feature sporting events for the Beijing Olympics in 2008." From the proposed National Swimming Center. Thanks Carlos. Slow-loading but worth the wait.
If one is going to live in a box, why not make it a really really cool box. via surfstation.
Marshall points us to this photo gallery. "July 27, 2004. My visit to the Villa Savoye, designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Janneret, in Poissy." From Jason Farago's Sapheneia.
Tall Buildings, a new exhibition at MoMA. "A focused study of twenty-five tall buildings... designed within the last decade for sites around the world."
Today's Chicago Tribune features a piece on what's left of the White City built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition [reg req]. If the Trib piece leaves you hungry for more stories of the White City, there are a few dandies here.
Kristi Cameron's Metropolis Magazine piece on the swell-looking NYC restaurant, Public. Created by the design group, Avroko.
The World's Tallest Virtual Building is Mr. Wong's Soup'Partments. The construction project was terminated long ago but the structure still stands, mighty and tall. Via the Ftrain.
Undercity, a guerrilla historian in Gotham. " Like a living being, a city does not willingly reveal its complexity and secrets to any random stranger." Via Blurbism.
A comprehensive visit (with tons of photos) to Frank Gehry's new MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center. A feature of the recently reconstructed Archinect.
Classic movie theaters: Some demolished, others renovated; in Baroque, Art Nouveau and even Egyptian styles; many in the US, a few in New Zealand. This and more at Cinema Treasures.
Danvers State Insane Asylum. Abandoned since 1992, over fourteen structures currently reside on the highlands and all are scheduled for demolition in late 2004. Lots of interesting history and eerie photos here, some in a gallery called 'Tunnels.' Via the new and improved Blurbism.
3D models of urban Chicago in the Windy City Project.
Link o' the month. Expo-Park from Vasily Bazhenov till Vasily Bychkov, architecture of exhibition pavilions from the collection of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture. Not much text in support of this exhibition and in some ways none needed. Faves: I. II. III. Spectacular. Via The Cartoonist.
The LV Home Kit by Rocio Romero. Prefab modern. Via Blurbism.
Space FX creates and installs intergrated entertainment and electronics systems for intelligent homes. Their site, by Liquidchrome, is terrific and the photos in the 'gallery' and 'case studies' sections demonstrate an amazing attention to detail and a clean, modern aesthetic. Via Netdiver.
Nicely collected, illustrated and documented. The Crystal Palace, The Great Exhibition of Industry of All Nations. Via the Cartoonist.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed a high-rise? Who knew? OK, *I* didn't. Now I have a reason to visit Oklahoma.
15 Rules for rebuilding the world. Or anything else for that matter.
"In an arcology, the built and the living interact as organs would in a highly evolved being." The Arcosanti Project by Italian architect Paolo Soleri . For 30 years, he's funded the project through sales of bells.
The Quik House "can be delivered anywhere in the U.S. eight weeks from the time of your order. During that time, we recommend that you obtain your building permits and build the foundation. From the time of your order to the day you move in should be less five months." Via MarcHDesign.
The Official Souvenir Flash Card Set of the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, ED-U-Cards. Dig the IBM Pavilion and The Schaefer Center. Via Plep.
Norman Foster's new Beijing Airport versus Richard Rogers new Shanghai Airport.
The Mall War continues. Mike writes, "Not to steal anyone's thunder or dare to challenge the commercial history of Wisconsin or Minnesota, but here's some info on what could be dubbed 'the first mall.'"
Andrew from Osaka via Wisconsin, writes "Sorry... Valley Fair Mall in Appleton, Wisconsin was the first enclosed mall built in the US. This is a USA Grade-A argument maker between folks from Wisconsin and Minnesota."
Nearly 50 years ago Victor Gruen began work on what would become the worlds first shopping mall, The SoutHDale Shopping Center, which would lead Frank Lloyd Wright to ask, What is this, a railroad station or a bus station? The rest is, as they say, history.
Levittown, Pennsylvania was the largest planned community constructed by a single builder in the United States. The State Museum of Pennsylvania is hosting a big, detailed online exhibition on the subject. It's worth a long look but if you're pressed for time, go right to the kitchen. Found in a list.
MoCoLoco. Modern Contemparary Design. Via The Sachs Report.
From the London-based Foreign Office Architects, a well-designed Flash site on compact architecture. Link via No Sense of Place.
The delicious Blue Moon Hotel in Groningen, Holland, as photographed by Christian Richters for Kultureflash. Via NSOP.
The beauty of the land and the water on the shore of Lake Superior inspired the people who designed and built this cabin and this website, The Tofte Project.
FabPrefab, "a web resource dedicated to tracking developments in the realm of modernist prefab dwellings."
"Hoerde Torch is dead. She fell in grace, and she took her time: more than 12 seconds, twice as long as predicted. After inclining less than ten degrees, it seemed as she stood still in the air for a short while." Lovely photo series from Hebig.
"When it was first constructed in Colorado in 1969 by Charles Deaton, the house was considered an eyesore by some of its neighbors, but now it's a landmark." The house from Woody Allen's 'Sleeper,'
The Ontario College of Art and Design is building a new facility. It's er, um, really something. This guy doesn't like it much and I myself don't exactly know what to say about it, except "Thanks" to Marshall for bringing it to my attention and posting a couple pix of it in under construction.
Living inside an elephant. Strange and unusual buildings.
"Before the invention of modern billboards, sign painters used to paint advertisements and company names directly onto building walls. These gradually fading painted signs are known as ghost signs."
"Van Alen had publicly announced the intended height for the Chrysler Building at 925 feet, but he and Chrysler wanted to claim the title of world's tallest structure so badly they planned and secretly assembled the 180 foot needle-like finial inside the tower. When the building was nearing completion, the finial was hoisted into place, making the Chrysler Building the world's tallest and leaving 40 Wall Street in its dust by 172 feet." From Building the Chrysler Building by Emily Zimmerman. Found among other things.
"Fallingwater has only a little to do with architecture and engineering: the quality we perceive here is essentially spiritual." From Jonathan Yardley's review of "Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House" by Franklin Toker. More info and photos here
A virtual tour of VW's transparent factory.
Decay is beautiful. Art In Ruins.
Presentation of Competition for the Architecture Design of the 2008 Olympic National Stadium. My vote goes to B12. Amazing. Via K10k.
The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's Home House Project in which artists and architects proposed new designs for single family housing for low- and moderate-income families using Habitat for Humanitys basic 3-and-4 bedroom house as a point of departure. Award winning designs are posted and it's a nice browse although the images are tantalizilngly small.
A lot has changed since I visited the City of Bath in England 5 years ago as they prepare to reopen the baths and revitalise thousands of years of spa culture.
Home, A place to live. The Housing Design Awards 1997-2003. A varied collection of excellent projects, well-organized and displayed. The PDF files that accompany most entries are excellent too. Thanks Mabe.
Over a decade of impressive architecture projects at Volker Staab, Berlin, Germany.
Workspheres from the MoMA Archives. "The official office awaits most of us every weekday and typically hosts us for about eight hours." Is it the type of space we would wish for if we could start over and design the environment for the work that gets done and not the other way 'round? Probably not.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by architect Frank Gehry and the new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "will be one of the most acoustically sophisticated concert halls in the world, providing both visual and aural intimacy for an unparalleled musical experience."
The Changing of the Avant-Garde, Visionary architectural drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, at MoMA. "The Gilman Collection focuses on radical projects from the 1960s and 1970s and includes some of the most famous utopian drawings of the twentieth century."
Loads of signs. Here and here.
Ukranian bus stop shelters.
"Roadside Peek will take you on a roadside journey in time. As you travel, visit old motels, bowling alleys, drive-in theatres, neon signs, petrol pumps, googie sites, tiki villages, and much more."
Dead malls.
If you've read The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson or if you are at all interested in Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893, you may be curious as to what the buildings and landscape of this dream city actually looked like. This should help satisfy your curiosity.
"A weekly dose of architecture looks at contemporary architectural works with architectural and/or cultural significance. The broad focus of the articles is the ideas embedded within the works."
Prospect, a New Urbanist community in Colorado, is a uniquely livable blend of traditional and modern planning concepts, built out in a broad range of architectural styles.
The Best example of deconstructive post-modern architecture.
"Too bad execs at Disney did not have more foresight as The House of the Future would arguably be one of the most popular exhibits there today -- had it not been demolished in 1967."
Brigata Italia #1.0, The RED Issue features a great illustrated piece on architect Louis Kahn.
Modern Ruins by Phillip Buehler. "I photograph modern ruins because I find it disturbing to find familiar objects and technology to be abandoned. I'm reminded that nothing is permanent, that everything is always in a state of transition." Via Blurbism.
Body Movies, a relational architecture installation. Complete and utter genius. An amazing installation and the movie outlining the concept and execution is mesmerizing. Via mefi.
When we build it they will come.
The abandoned subway stations of New York and disused platforms of London — images, mystery and nostalgia galore.
From MIT, a fabulous collection of links entitled Homes of the Future of the Past. Includes lots of great stuff. When living here in Chile, don't throw rocks. A movie from General Motors' 1960 World's Fair Exhibit called Futurama.
Homes made from 727s. Via America's No. 1 website.
Gunter Henn's Transparent Factory, Volkswagon's ultra-sleek manufacturing facility in Dresden can be examined online. Via K10k.
"Hey friend, say friend, come on over, if you're looking for happiness, this is the place!" Our friends at Portage have discovered the National Archives of Canada site dedicated to Expo 67 in Montreal. David recommends that you not miss the Flash animation at the open, and boy is he right.
Want to fire up an argument in a room full of architects? Start quoting Nikos A. Salingaros who says "I have found, to my surprise, that architects are not interested in laws of architecture. They prefer to design buildings on the basis of artistic fashion and ephemeral philosophical concerns." Then he really gets going. Via Archinect.
Over 12 days in 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave a 42-hour lecture on his life's work. This extraordinary site has the complete transcript as well as audio and video of the event. Via BrainLog.
Almost a MoOM link: The Periodic Table Table.
In the future, I predict, every person will have a doppelblogger providing a daily debunking of everything he says or writes. New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp has his already.
These guys have been doing some serious trespassing and we're richer for it. Via blurbism.
An explosion of custom neon typography and an innocent and attractive "modern" architecture is what Early Vegas is all about, baby. To stake your own claim on the strip you'll probably need the Las Vegas Collection, from House Industries.
From 1908 to 1940, Sears sold more than 100,000 ready made "kit houses" through their mail-order Modern Homes program. At the The Sears Modern Homes website you can look at large scans of original catalog pages whose renderings of houses, price listings, and original sales pitches will make you wish it was 1910 and you had $1,500 in your pocket.
Architect Alessandro Cancelliere's beautifully crafted plastic models of buildings.
File this under "underappreciated (until now) everyday stuff." The Holiday Inn sign.
Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in the village of Box, in Wiltshire England. A modern, organic reinvention of an historical architectural design displayed in a thoughtfully constructed site.
Building the Washington Metro. The story of the planning, design and construction of Washington's mass transit system.
Abandoned stations on the New York subway.
The Moscow Metro: The Underground Dream. 'The historical photographs and contemporary documentation on this website illustrate not only the evolution of a rapid mass transit, but also the remarkable attention paid to aesthetic media -- architecture, sculpture, painting and decorative arts -- in a monumental public works project. ' Only the pages for the First Line are completed at the moment, but this is still a fascinating site.
Virtual tours of Tokyo's recent architecture and Prague's twentieth century architecture. From Ellipsis, which publishes wonderful 'travel guides' to modern architecture in major cities around the world.
The Vanishing Wall. The 'East Side Gallery', bizarrely yet beautifully decorated, is one of the few remaining parts of the Berlin Wall.
Marshall Sokoloff writes, "Along the lines of recent Cold War posts: Missile Bases, unique underground properties.
What lies beneath London? As well as the Underground, there are abandoned stations, sewers, buried rivers, Roman roads, bomb shelters and the Post Office railway.
Mall destroyed by Blues Brothers still in ruins, guarded by Dobermans.
The challenge, design and engineering of London's Millennium Bridge, the 325m steel structure links the City of London at St. Paul's Cathedral with the Tate Modern Gallery at Bankside.
The Blur Building is a planned media pavillion for Swiss Expo 2002. "The pavilion is made of filtered lake water shot as a fine mist through 13,000 fog nozzles creating an artificial cloud that measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 65 feet high." via Textism
Eric Helin writes, "so many countries, so much architecture."
Creepy, yet strangely compelling. A photographic tour of abandoned buildings, complete with directions on how to break in. Stay out of the cellars of the Castle of Mesen. As featured on Metropolis.
The winners of the Archinect Communication Booth Competition are online. The idea for this competition is brilliant and the winning entries amazing. Take some time to pour over these.
Pity I don't speak Dutch. The look and feel of the site for the magazine, de Architect, is inspiring, especially the featured work of Werner Sobek.
Animated Manhattan. "a computer model which simultaneously presents a layered, cartographic history of the lower half of Manhattan Island, and an exploded timeline chronicling the real-estate devlopment of high-rise office buildings which constitute the skylines of Midtown and Downtown Manhattan." Incredibly smart, rich and beautiful, presented by Brian McGrath.
Mies in Berlin, Mies in America.
L.A Obscura: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman From USC, a great collection of buildings by the likes of Richard Neutra, who, for residential design, put the "mod" into "modern."
Allied Works Architecture from Portland.
Big Buildings: "Included in this survey are structures that were at one time the world's tallest or that are Jumbos or Super Jumbos, categories invented for this exhibition that describe size measured by volume."
The Futuro House, an ideal weekend cottage for the family of tomorrow.
A photographic tour "through the fabulous and vanishing ruins of my beloved Detroit."
I remember being seven years old and going there for the first time. The walls are glass and angle inwards so that, if you have tennis shoes and get a running start, you can run up the windows and slide down again until your mom finds out.
Do Design Office, an LA architecture firm, has crafted some clean and inspiring spaces and catalouged them in a slick site. Check the Max House if you're fond of concrete.
Find a Jobjewelboxing
Our professional-grade, short-run DVD/CD packaging system. Here's a bit from the latest Jewelboxing weblog entry:
"My favorite part about Jewelboxing is how professional and sturdy they are, with neither form nor function sacrificed." Read the entire post.
