March 7, 2013
Best Creativity: NYC Loop, by FXFOWLE.
When Mayor Bloomberg announced New York City’s Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge last winter, we were excited to see how designers would reimagine these idle relics of last century’s infrastructure into something other than a shading device for smartphone-browsing in sunny weather. From the looks of the finalists, which Bloomberg announced Tuesday, tomorrow’s payphone could have a lot of app-style features, from weather reports and wayfinding to voice and gesture control.
A handful of New York’s roughly 11,000 payphones already serve as wifi hotspots thanks to a pilot program (PDF) launched by the city last summer, so the leap to hyperconnectivity isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem. A few years down the line, we could all be using a shiny new network of payphones to call taxis by voice command, charge our devices, check the weather for our urban farms, and, inevitably, look at ads. The six finalists in five categories—creativity, connectivity, functionality, community impact, and visual design—are now competing for the popular choice prize. Vote for your favorite on Facebook before 5 p.m. EST on March 14, and you could help shape the payphone of the future. Read more!
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March 7, 2013
Great news! So, you remember back in September, when Google tapped us to be a content partner for an awesome app called Field Trip? Well, the free Android app is finally available for the iPhone. (Just in time for SXSW!) The app allows users to discover hidden gems, historic tidbits, and cool art happenings and restaurants from any location, whether in their own neighborhood or in a more exotic locale–say, Austin (did you happen to see today’s roundup!)? Read more about the app!
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March 7, 2013
Zaha Hadid has unveiled her firm’s latest project in China, the Changsha Meixihu International Culture and Art Center. The massive urban project, which broke ground in October, is a grab-bag of swirly sculptural objects, each one complex and semi-independent of the other. Taken together, they constitute a strange, Martian landscape — a “pedestrian-friendly” Martian landscape — that, in ZHA’s words, will pose a “strong urban experience.” (As opposed to a weak, scrawny, timid urban experience?) The complex megaplex centers around a central public space that feeds into three cultural centers: a contemporary art museum, multipurpose hall, and grand theater. Click through for more.
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March 7, 2013
No one quite seems to know what to do with Battersea Power Station — well, not everyone, it seems. The landmark decommissioned power plant presides over Southwest London like a monumental sculpture and some kind of historic relic — a notion emboldened by the building’s use in futurist/sci-fi graphic books and films — exerting a visual power that few, if any, of the city’s contemporary buildings match. So it’s easy to see why architects and developers have continuously tried to revamp the site since the station’s closure in the early ’80s. In that time, there have been a surplus of imaginative redevelopment projects, many of which, including Rafael Vinoly’s various “eco” schemes for the site, incorporated a combination of office and residential structures plus A LOT of green roofs. None of the projects was particularly appealing, nor did they do any justice to Battersea’s architecture and history.
This conceptual scheme from French designers Atelier Zündel Cristea is definitely not more of the same. The project envisions wrapping a massive roller coaster around the whole of the iconic building. We wholeheartedly approve. Click for more!
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March 4, 2013
Photo: Matthew Amster, Los Angeles Magazine
Though the demise of Richard Neutra’s Cyclorama has been in the works since 1999, it’s still hard to imagine Gettysburg without its modernist concrete punctuation mark. Commissioned in 1962, the Cyclorama was built to house a 377-foot panoramic painting that depicts the infamous battle in vivid, immersive detail. When the painting was moved to a new visitor center in 2008, the National Park Service renewed its effort to demolish the structure and restore the battlefield to its 1863 sight lines. Despite a last-ditch protest organized by Neutra’s son, the architect Dion Neutra, demolition began on Friday, bringing the war of historian aggression to a rumbling close. The arrival of the bullzoder signaled a hard-won victory for Civil War buffs and a bruising defeat for preservationists and fans of modern architecture. Read more.
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March 1, 2013
Adaptive reuse is a buzz term of sorts that combines big topics like “urbanism,” “sustainability,” and “program” to both good (the High Line) and bad effect. We’re unsure where this prison-turned-hotel in the Netherlands lies on that plane, but we’re guessing it’s closer to the “bad” end of things. After closing its doors in 2007, the Het Arresthius (literally “the Judgement House”) prison in Roermond was purchased by the Dutch hotel group Van der Valk and converted into the Het Arresthuis Hotel. Dating back to 1862, the prison was most recently used as an emergency facility for “bolletjesbajes,” or in plain English, drug-smuggling body stuffers—cozy! Click through for more!
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February 28, 2013
Project: Respol Headquarters
Architect: Rafael de La Hoz Arquitectos
Location: Madrid
Rafael de La Hoz Arquitectos has just completed the new headquarters for Respol, one of the world’s largest petroleum refining companies. The sprawling office complex consists of four large buildings centered around a central garden area, and is designed to reflect a new image of sustainability for the company by incorporating energy-efficient building systems. The interconnected floor plans, transparent glass façade, outdoor common area, and ample balconies and green spaces encourage interaction and exchange among the 4,000 employees who call this sleek new building their workplace.
See more of this project in the Architizer database.
Photos: courtesy of Rafael de La Hoz
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February 21, 2013
Herzog & De Meuron has recently released the renderings of the Luz Cultural Complex in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and let’s start by saying: Wow–it is huge! In fact, it is so big, that the architects who designed it started with a street grid. The grid turned into the actual venues of the complex, stacked perpendicularly at half levels and creating a weaved mesh of rectangular elements. This net allows guests to move freely between the nodes dedicated to creative spaces. Lush vegetation and trees fill every void of this entangled, textural building, making for lots of intimate spaces and an indoor-outdoor gradient. See more images!
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February 18, 2013
Left image via Vulture; right image via Curbed
Usually pop-ups are relegated to the tiny and the temporary, like Zaha’s pop-up hair salon or this hammam-turned-library in Bulgaria. But if the ambitious Hudson Yards development continues apace, come 2017 the city may bestow on itself one of its fanciest architectural toys yet: a 150-foot-tall giant glass box outfitted with a hideaway synthetic shell that can glide out and enclose a public plaza.
Like a modern-day Crystal Palace, the 170,000-square-foot Culture Shed—designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro and David Rockwell—will be an insta-venue that can house programming from all over the city, from Fashion Week to large-scale art installations to heretofore-unthinkable collaborations between the city’s artists, musicians, and performers.
“The Culture Shed encourages the city to shed those old definitions of culture,” Justin Davidson writes at Vulture. “It will operate the way the Forum did in Ancient Rome, as a neutral meeting ground where ideas can be incubated and influences exchanged.” Read more!
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February 15, 2013
It’s been a long time coming, but Sir David Chipperfield‘s expansion of the St. Louis Art Museum is finally scheduled to open later this year.
The museum, which houses one of the most comprehensive art collections in the United States (including an impressive catalog of post-war German artists), is located in the city’s large urban landscape, Forest Park. In 2005, the Museum Board selected Chipperfield to design the expansion, with St. Louis-based HOK serving as the project’s architect of record. Two years later the Museum finally released plans and renderings of the design, which sparked controversy among local residents.
Halted in 2008 during the economic downturn, the project did not break ground until 2010. Now, eight years in the making, the expansion—Chipperfield’s largest U.S. project to date—will finally open this summer. Read more.
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