These were among the mind-bending ideas for what Chicago might look like 100 years from now, presented as part of “The City of the Future: a Design and Engineering Challenge,” a competition of local architectural teams held last month at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Sponsored by the History Channel (as an offshoot of “Engineering an Empire,” a series that examines architectural and engineering marvels of the ancient world) and other groups, the contest (more…)
Just because he designed Beijing’s 2008 National Olympic Stadium — along with the Swiss-based architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron — doesn’t mean he will actually ever visit it. “I look at the stadium as a project, not as a national stadium. It takes the same passion for me to build a stadium as it does a toilet facility,” said Ai Weiwei of Beijing, China, a man who possesses not only an overwhelming artistic prowess and architectural ingenuity, but also a striking sense of individuality that pushes him to straddle the fine line between artistic freedom and stringent Chinese law. He has yet to visit the construction site, and said: “I have no interest in national activities, and I don’t see myself as working for the government.”
(more…)
Sao Paulo, Brazil, home of 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Paulo Mendes da Rocha, is often described as a place of dreams and nightmares.
The population of the world’s fifth-largest city has doubled in 30 years, to more than 18 million.
Unemployment hovers at 20 percent, but commerce is so good that skyscrapers jostle for airspace. Four million autos cruise 10,000 miles of streets, creating traffic jams that send the elite fleeing to helicopters in a Blade Runner escape from everyday reality.
(more…)
A major revolution is occurring in design products for post modern outdoor landscaping applications and indoor use. Serralunga, Studio4LA, and the Trivi Collection are in the vanguard for many of these new exciting shapes and forms that are sweeping the world of art, architecture, and exterior design.
These products showcase spectacular artisan fabrication, unique geometry, and post modern design features that are wowing crowds in Milan, Pairs, and New York. The result is a new school of art that is a world apart from their predecessors. (more…)
Hugh Stubbins Jr., an architect who often used his cocktail napkins to sketch designs for buildings such as Manhattan’s Citicorp Center, Boston’s Federal Reserve Bank or Congress Hall in Berlin, has died. He was 94.
Stubbins, who died Wednesday of pneumonia at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, designed buildings that now stand coast to coast: from the Senior Center at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, to PacWest Center in Portland, Ore. He also designed Landmark Tower in Yokohama, Japan’s tallest building; the Ronald Reagan President Library in Simi Valley, Calif., and Veterans Stadium, the home of baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies and football’s Philadelphia Eagles which was torn down two years ago. (more…)
