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My heroine of the week is Amanda Baillieu, editor of architects’ trade journal Building Design. She noticed that when Environment Secretary Hillary Benn gave a talk at the Royal Institute of British Architects the other day on the looming peril of ManBearPig, hardly anyone bothered to turn up. In an extremely brave editorial entitled “Is Global Warming Hot Air?” she speculated that the reason may have been because even architects are getting tired of listening to hysterical drivel about impending eco-doom and the so-called “consensus” on Anthropogenic Global Warming. In fact, you’d be forgiven for not knowing there is a...

A posh palace is being built on the bank of Istrin water reservoir in the Moscow region. It’s a mansion looking like a huge 18th century palace, which is already informally named “Istrin mansion�. Its appearance, quick development and approximate cost were recently debated in Russian blogs. But still having some guesses about who could own such a luxury, no one has an official confirmation on who the lucky man really is. The thing is that this building together with its adjacent lands was earlier presented in Google Maps, but now there are no any marks of it. To be...

Someday, people will realize that they can demand better buildings and cities, and they will do so. Extraordinarily rich and powerful people will sense a market in flux, will shudder, see their fortunes heading for the door, and tap their politicians on the shoulder. Architects will start making places people like. Look for a tipping point. It could have happened during the redesign process after Sept. 11, 2001. It did not, but it could have. Someday it will. When it does happen, it will not be because millions suddenly read a book called “A Theory of Architecture” (2006) by architectural...

Image: Jim MerithewAfter the end of World War Two, tension and mistrust continuously grew between the USSR and its satellite states versus a western coalition led by the USA. A game of one-upmanship, lasting almost 50 years, developed with each group inventing stronger and more deadly weapons in an attempt to hold a military advantage.Alongside this military might developed a deep-seated fear of what would happen if there ever was an enemy strike. As a result, both nations went on a massive building campaign of bomb shelters, nuclear fallout sites and bunkers. Not to mention all the missile sites and...

A Santa Monica architect known for his high-rise designs is working on what may be the ultimate "spec" building -- a 224-story skyscraper with green ambitions that would be the tallest structure in the world. The tower is envisioned for a man-made island in Abu Dhabi, if leaders of the oil-rich emirate decide they want to make a statement to rest of the world and perhaps one-up neighboring Dubai. A conceptual design for the $3.5-billion project in the United Arab Emirates is under consideration by an Abu Dhabi planning committee, said Tommy Landau, the architect who created the design and...

The design for One World Trade Center has attracted substantial criticism, which is to be expected with a project of such public importance. Some of the gripes have merit. Overall, the finished site will be less impressive than the twin towers it is replacing. Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times called the design "somber, oppressive and clumsily conceived, the project suggests a monument to a society that has turned its back on any notion of cultural openness." Not to mention any notion of collective courage in the face of the terrorist threat. The building's most objectionable feature is the...

A towering North Korean hotel which Esquire magazine once dubbed "the worst building in the history of mankind" has come back to life with a facade of shiny glass windows affixed to one side of the concrete monolith. But few expect the North will ever finish construction of its 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel, started in 1987 and halted for 16 years because it could have bankrupted the destitute state. "The hotel doesn't look as shoddy as it once did, probably because of the reflective glass," said a member of a civic group in South Korea that recently returned from a visit...

Living Architecture: Growing your house, one chair at a time Plants are amazing: they provide food, air, medicine, and material with which we can create buildings, furniture, and art. But through an ancient yet obscure craft, still-living plants can themselves be turned into bridges, tables, ladders, chairs, works of art, and even buildings. Known variously as botanical architecture, tree sculpture, tree-shaping, tree-grafting, pooktre, arborsculpture, and arbortecture, the craft is, at its essence, construction with living plants. The concept seems to date back to prehistoric times. Perhaps the oldest examples are the living bridges of Cherrapunjee, India. 1. Root Bridges of...

The Federal Building in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, features an extensive use of natural light to illuminate offices and a white roof to reflect heat. It has LEED certification, the country’s most recognized seal of approval for green buildings. But the building is hardly a model of energy efficiency. According to an environmental assessment last year, it did not score high enough to qualify for the Energy Star label granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which ranks buildings after looking at a year’s worth of utility bills. The building’s cooling system, a major gas guzzler, was one culprit. Another was its...

In the coming disaster movie "2012," tragedy strikes Randy's Donuts in Inglewood when its giant rooftop donut becomes unhinged and is last seen bouncing down the street in the direction of star John Cusack's limo. The incident is just digital magic, of course. In real life, Randy's -- once a member of the now-defunct Big Donut chain -- is very much intact, as 405 Freeway drivers know well.

The Pier Head Ferry Terminal in Liverpool has been named the country's ugliest new building ahead of London's Westfield shopping centre and the fire station at Poundbury, the Prince of Wales's Dorset model village. A panel of experts from Building Design magazine unanimously voted the £10.5m building, designed by Belfast-based Hamilton Architects, as the most notable new example of bad architecture. The judges said the damage the ferry terminal had done to Liverpool's waterfront, which is a Unesco world heritage site, meant it deserved the 'Carbuncle Cup'. Amanda Baillieu, editor of Building Design, said: "It was given the Carbuncle Cup...

Self-preservation is something that most humans take quite seriously, and that a few take to extremes. Faced with the real or imagined threat of attacks levied by nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry, some people opt to head 25 feet underground, surrounded by concrete and complex air-filtration systems, surviving off rations and waiting, so to speak, for the end of the world.That’s the subject of Richard Ross’s Waiting for the End of the World, originally published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2004, for which Ross spent five years traveling over three continents, photographing the interiors of bomb shelters. “I’m a child...

Justo Gallego Martínez is building his very own Cathedral in Mejorada del Campo near Madrid, Spain This is no "model" cathedral and he is neither a qualified architect, nor engineer, nor bricklayer -- he is a farmer. "The plans have only ever existed in my head" and have evolved over time in response to opportunity and inspiration. Nor does he have formal planning permission from the authorities of Mejorada del Campo -- the town in which it is located (20 km from Madrid under the flight-path to the Barajas airport).Nor does he have the benediction or support of the Catholic...

Featuring log buildings presently under re-construction at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Virginia. This provides a good look at how such buildings were made.

A rare opportunity to live in a national landmark has arisen in Los Angeles where Ennis House, an architectural gem designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, has gone up for sale for $15 million. The architect designed Ennis House in 1923, dubbing the stark, concrete block-clad mansion his "temple on the hill" and predicting that it would still fascinate people a century later. It offers wonderful views across the city and, with its exotic, Mayan temple exterior and cathedral-like interior, it has featured in more than a dozen films including Blade Runner, The House on Haunted Hill and Black Rain. The...

Behind the glass- and marble-clad great arch of La Défense - built at the behest of François Mitterrand two decades ago - another French president is preparing an even more ambitious grand projet for Paris. Nicolas Sarkozy is planning a massive expansion of the business district on the north-western edge of Paris to challenge the City of London as Europe's pre-eminent financial centre. In spite of his tirades against financial capitalism, Mr Sarkozy wants a bigger slice of the business. The blueprint for La Défense - which includes several spectacular skyscrapers and, eventually, a further 1m sq m of office...

MADISON, Wis. – The nation's largest group of atheists and agnostics filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block an architect from engraving "In God We Trust" and the Pledge of Allegiance at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington. The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in western Wisconsin, claims the taxpayer-funded engravings would be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The House and Senate passed identical resolutions this month directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave "In God We Trust" and the pledge in prominent places at the entrance for 3 million tourists who visit...

HICAGO – Visitors to the Sears Tower's new glass balconies all seem to agree: The first step is the hardest. "It's like walking on ice," said Margaret Kemp, of Bishop, California, who said her heart was still pounding even after stepping away from the balcony. "That first step you take — 'am I going down?'"

Frank Lloyd Wright and LEGO would seem an unnatural fit: curve meets corner, prairie meets cube. But like a red brick and a yellow brick, the worldwide trademarks are now joined with a blue brick, an Illinois company called Brickstructures, in creating and selling LEGO building block versions of Wright’s iconic creations, Fallingwater and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum. Can Madison’s Monona Terrace be far behind? And how will the notoriously formal Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation handle its partnership with a worldwide company that also puts out a SpongeBob SquarePants model? You’ll have to make your own LEGO Monona Terrace, said...

Chunks of this city's rich and eclectic architectural history tumble to the ground every few days, piece by piece, forever lost in the rubble. Neo-Baroque and Art Deco treasures deteriorate at an alarming rate. Every three days, there are two partial or total building collapses in Central Havana alone, according to architectural experts. No official figures are available. "Buildings are standing by sheer luck," said architect Jose Antonio Choy, president of a Cuban nonprofit organization devoted to the conservation of Havana's modern architecture. In September, after Hurricane Ike's lethal 41-hour odyssey across much of the island, authorities reported 67 buildings...

THE summer evening was autumnally cold and damp, the backless stone seats in the outdoor theater unforgiving. Many of the 8,000 spectators were irritable; most of us had shown for a rained-out performance the night before. And frankly, I’ve seen better productions of “Carmen.” But as the performers began to move, their shadows rose 100 feet and danced across the imposing backdrop of a yellow limestone wall. A marble statue of Caesar Augustus stood ghostly white upon his perch in the wall, his right arm raised as if he had just commanded the singers to begin their performance. When Carmen...

NYC's Guggenheim celebrates Frank Lloyd Wright By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press Writer – 47 mins ago NEW YORK – For Frank Lloyd Wright, the slow rise of the spiral ramp at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum allowed paintings to be displayed as if on an artist's easel. When the museum opened 50 years ago, the groundbreaking design embodied the architect's guiding ethos that form and function are indistinguishable. That philosophy was expressed in projects large and small but perhaps best realized in his then-controversial, now-revered design for the art museum on Manhattan's Upper East Side....

Would You Live in Any of These? In the spirit of April Fool's Day, these outlandish structures display architectural humor and prankishness. And—far from foolish—some of them are darned well-designed, too.

Strange days indeed - when leafing through a new book of boundary-shoving architecture suggests nothing so much as a stroll down memory lane. A museum that looks like a modular helicopter! A 1,476-foot-high tower for Moscow that includes a 3,000-room hotel! A library designed to resemble a volcano! How times have changed in the past year, so much so that a book titled "Architecture Now!" has the distinct whiff of then. The idea that new buildings should strive for cultural buzz, or that contorted silhouettes are the in-crowd ideal, all seems so ... 2007. Which doesn't mean innovative design is...

The British Houses of Parliament stand beside the Thames, a symbol of London itself. Their silhouette, culminating in the great clock tower that houses Big Ben, is famous all over the world. Yet this is a building that came about by accident and whose precise authorship was for many years clouded by controversy. Its proper name is the Palace of Westminster, for it replaced the medieval palace, begun by Edward the Confessor, where from the 13th century onward Parliament habitually met. Over the years the old building was expanded, altered, filled in and divided until it had sprawled into a...

It is an unforgettable moment. As the sun traverses the sky its light is suddenly focused into an intense beam which illuminates a carving of Christ on the Cross.  This is not a scene from an Indiana Jones film, however, but a stirring piece of visual synchronicity that dates from medieval times.  At the spring and autumn equinox, the setting sun hits a window at Holy Trinity Church in Barsham, Suffolk, and illuminates the 5ft carving for four spellbinding minutes. The spectacle dates back to the 1300s, when the narrow window was built in the church tower, but it...

Some news on the home-front, but significant for the Church in America. See the dome which is empty? The picture doesn't show it well - but it's by far the largest in the church. It is the last and final internal beautification project of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. Local blogger William Newton interviews one of the CUA students competing to design it: Ryan and his colleague, John-Paul Mikolajczyk, gained national attention for the liturgical furniture they designed, which was used by Pope Benedict XVI for the Papal Mass here in...

Ten of the world's leading architects on Thursday detailed their plans to dramatically transform the French capital into a Grand Paris, in what has been described as the most complex city project ever. A computer image of a project for a bigger and greener Paris, in La Courneuve, by French architect Roland Castro Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, asked the architects, including Britain's Richard Rogers, to project 20 years into the future and dream up the world's most sustainable post-Kyoto metropolis. Among the more outlandish plans is Antoine Grumbach's proposal to extend the city all the way to the Channel...

Pictured: The grandeur of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel before the Solemn High Mass on Sunday March 8.

Architecture student Viktor Ramos has a brilliant idea that may be the key to the Israel-Palestinian Gordian Knot: Instead of building grim walls or tunnels, create livable bridges so two states can live together, superposed. Can architecture make Israel and Palestine coexist peacefully together? Sounds like a pie in the sky proposition—no pun intended—but with given the resources, it may be the only way to have the two countries living together, on top and below each other. Viktor's concept is simple, but absolute genius: Bridge the Israel and Palestinian territories with large structures that can sustain life, house people, and...

In the 1980s, while the west towers were construction, Washington National Cathedral held a decorative sculpture competition for children. Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader. The fierce head was sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter, carved by Patrick J. Plunkett, and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral.

IMAGINE a White House where the Oval Office faces an interactive media wall filled with live commentary from citizens and visitors. Or a White House that is raised and lowered according to poll results, with an unpopular president brought down to the level of disgruntled constituents. How about one that changes colors according to the Homeland Security Advisory System? Or that has been emptied of human content and made into a central server for United States democracy? However intent he is on change, even Barack Obama might draw the line at trading the Lincoln Bedroom for a situation room at...

Balancing the demands of shameless and brutal commerce with the impossible dreams of the preservationists, JetBlue has restored a measure of sanity into this cuel and sterile world. JetBlue resisted the temptation to raze Eero Saarinen's iconic Terminal 5 to make way for their new JFK complex. Just as significant, they also pushed back attempts to preserve the site as an obsolete museum piece.

Albert Kahn is America’s forgotten architect — even though in his lifetime, he (and his firm) produced more buildings than any other architect, and his design and production method changed the face of the country. Eighty years before the bailout of the auto industry, just before the Great Depression, Kahn built the most opulent of Detroit’s new corporate skyscrapers — the Art Deco-style Fisher Building. Facing the GM headquarters, Kahn’s grandest expression of civic architecture defined the unique American union of commercial and civic identity. Detroit Auto Show 2009 this month pinned its hopes for a twenty-first century transformation of...

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Sinking 401(k) balances, increasing foreclosures, giant bank and auto company bailouts. Now taxpayers can add Boston City Hall to the list, as they will have to continue to endure the concrete behemoth for the foreseeable future, thanks to the economic recession. Mayor Thomas M. Menino has shelved plans to replace the building, recently voted the ugliest in the world, with a new City Hall on the South Boston waterfront. The mayor cut the $2 million budgeted for the project and he is not putting the current building up for sale. "I could not get value out of the City Hall...

A group of New Yorkers is fighting to save Tin Pan Alley, the half-dozen row houses where iconic American songs were born. The four-story, 19th-century buildings on Manhattan's West 28th Street were home to publishers of some of the catchiest American tunes and lyrics -- from "God Bless America" and "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" to "Give My Regards to Broadway." The music of Irving Berlin, Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, George M. Cohan and other greats was born on Tin Pan Alley. The buildings were put up for sale earlier this fall for $44 million, with plans to replace...

JITTERY developers in Florida recently dumped the modern architecture of a proposed upscale residential project and chose Spanish Colonial-style bungalows instead. The switch was reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune on Oct. 13 in “Modern no more,” by Harold Bubil. “As the real-estate market founders,” he writes, “the Houses of Indian Beach’s modernist concept has been abandoned in favor of something ‘more marketable.’ ” Bubil followed up his news story with an online column on Oct. 18 revealing his opinion of the decision he described in the news story. Both pieces, which I obtained through ArchNewsNow.com, include great quotes exposing modern...

Just about everyone knows we’ve got to change our way of life to save the planet. Isn’t it a bit odd, then, to find architects doing the same stuff they’ve always done and going around making out that they’re the eco-warriors to end all eco-warriors? Why is it that the same old glass-walled boxes and tower blocks that were invented in the energy-rich sixties and seventies can do the business for the energy-challenged noughties? Architects have discovered the magic of greenwash. The big idea behind contemporary architecture was that the “new century” (meaning the 20th) was all about the latest...

An Adidas advertising campaign in China, this May, showed a man named Hu Jia, dressed in a red swimsuit, standing on a platform made of twisting hands and arms emerging from an endless sea of people, sketched in gray. This is the Olympic diver Hu Jia, not the civil rights activist and political prisoner Hu Jia, who was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison in April. Hu, the diver, was one of China's hopes to take home a clutch of medals at the Beijing Games before injuries forced him off the team. The architecture on which he stands, in...

Malin Alexandersson and Leif Lundgren celebrated 08-08-08 day by climbing on to the roof of the Stockholm Globe arena to tie the knot. The happy couple had to climb to the top of the 80 metre higher Stockholm landmark with the help of safety harnesses while their guests instead followed the wedding ceremony from a nearby balcony. The heavy rain that hit Stockholm on Friday was close to throwing a spanner in the works - but the rain ceased just prior to the beginning of the ceremony. The couple won the right to matrimony on the Globe's roof in a...

CLOQUET — Business as usual for the R.W. Lindholm Service Station can mean a lot of different things. To most, it’s just like any other service station: You go there to get gas, have your oil changed or maybe get your car fixed. Others see it differently. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1958, the station, which sits at the intersection of state Highway 33 and Cloquet Avenue, is regularly visited by history buffs in search of the famous architect’s work. The Frank Lloyd Wright gas station Thursday morning in Cloquet during the 50th anniversary celebration of the completion of...

Sorry for the vanity, but I've come across a minor business issue that needs some clarification in terms of building code standards in the State of New Jersey. In particular, I'm dealing with code requiremetns for a business establishment. I know the current requirements under the New Jersey Building Code, but I need to find out how the applicable code may have changed over the last 10-15 years. If there are any architects out there who are familiar with the New Jersey Building Code and/or the National Standard Plumbing Code, I'd appreciate any assistance anyone might be able to provide....

It looks almost like an average-size house that's been sliced in half. At 12 feet wide, the neat, new single-family home is squeezed onto the slenderest of strips of land on a Brooklyn Park street of modest, post-World War II houses. The home joins an 18-foot-wide one built in the past year in the community that spans Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. A similar house is planned for another of the 25-foot-wide empty lots in the area. While building on these infill lots in mature, developed communities with established roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure is considered "smart growth," residents...

Lebanon proposes to rebuild Nahr al-Bared, the Palestinian city-camp near Tripoli pulverised in a long siege last year in an attempt to kill Sunni militants holed up there. The new, as yet only imagined, town is intended to preserve the memories of the old, yet return the area to the control of Lebanon.

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The owner of the World Trade Center has abandoned the timetable for rebuilding work at the site of the 9/11 attacks, saying it was "not realistic". Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive director, Christopher Ward, listed over a dozen issues that had slowed work and raised costs. New dates for the completion of a memorial, skyscrapers and a transit hub are expected to be issued in September. It is unclear if the centrepiece Freedom Tower will now be scaled back. The tower, intended as a replacement for the destroyed Twin Towers, had been scheduled for completion in...

NEWS RELEASE MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE MOURNS CLOSING OF HOLY TRINITY CHURCH The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today mourned the closing of the venerable Holy Trinity church in Boston's South End. The parish was suppressed today by a decree of Sean Cardinal O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston. The last masses were celebrated yesterday, June 29th, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Holy Trinity was the last German Catholic parish in New England, and was one of only two venues in the Archdiocese which offered weekly Sunday celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass....

Alexander Stoddart unravels the relationship between art and politics ___ The great British philosopher Brian Magee, writing about Richard Wagner’s political life, points out that it is wrong to think of the Sage of Bayreuth moving to the Right in his later life. Magee’s proposal is compelling; Wagner leaves left-wing politics precisely as men who are maturing leave politics generally. They drift in middle age towards the static wasteland of metaphysics, and this is observed by those still remaining in politics as a move towards the Opposition, since they still cannot think of anything outside the political sphere. It appears...

Greek Style Architecture Found in the Ancient Achaemenid City Achaemenid city of Istakhr in Fars Province Tehran , 25 June 2008: Archaeologists have used geological surveys in the south of Iran to reveal rectangular formations inspired by Greek architecture dating to the Sassanid era. Archeologists have said that the structures located in Fars Province are part of the urban planning of the ancient Achaemenid city of Istakhr during the Sassanid period (226-651 CE). The design is loaned from Hippodamus style of urban planning during a series of armed conflicts with Persias great rival to the west, the Roman Empire, said...