An Opaque and Lengthy Road to Landmark Status

A six-month examination of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year. NYT | Interactive Map

Razing a neighborhood to save a city?

Local and federal officials on Tuesday announced plans for a 70-acre medical campus in the heart of New Orleans to replace two hospitals damaged during Hurricane Katrina, a $2 billion investment that supporters say will create thousands of jobs and begin to rebuild the citys shattered health care system. However, the National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates there are some 165 historic structures that will go down if the hospitals are built. Additionally, an earlier report by RMJM Hillier concluded it would be more quicker and more cost effective to renovate the old exisiting Charity Hospital. link and Report press release

Chicago Architects Win Union Station 2020 Competition

These are quite neat.

On Aug 1st, the Chicago Architectural Club and the Chicago Humanities Festival launched UNION STATION 2020, an international design ideas competition for the conversion of Chicagos Union Station into a high-speed rail hub, regional market, and meeting place. The three winners and seven honorable mentions of this competition have now been announced. Bustler

An American Socialite in Venice?

Eric Holm has an amusing post about his attempt to have a conversation about the Biennale with a visiting tourist. Metropolis POV

Architects Against Museum of Tolerance

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine issues a protest in Guardian against the Museum."We call on the Jerusalem municipality, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the Israeli authorities not to allow this architectural time-bomb to proceed." Among the signaturesare; Charles Jencks, Richard MacCormack, Neave Brown, Abe Hayeem, Haifa Hammami, Hans Haenlein, Cezary Bednarski, Kate Mackintosh, Suad Amiry,Shmuel Groag, Beatriz Maturana, Walter Hain, Ian Martin.

European Trio for International Justice

A jury has selected three winners for the international architectural competition for the new International Criminal Court building in The Hague. Results on Bustler.

The happy architect

Irena Bauman is on a mission to make cities more loveable. Martin Wainwright hears why she is challenging the profession to stop, look around and stand up to developers. Read and Watch video

Campanile

Campanile, originally uploaded by Super Bjorn.

One of my favorite photographs I have taken.

ShowCase: The Waiting Room

From Archinect:

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies. We are always accepting nominations for upcoming ShowCase features - if you would like to suggest a project, please send us a message. Enel Contemporanea, the art sponsorship program of Italian utility company Enel, recently opened its third installation created by the American artist Jeffrey Inaba, in Collaboration with Luca Peralta Studio, Rome, Italy, at Rome's Policlinico Umberto I, the most important hospital in the Italian capital and one of the largest in Europe. A multi-functional medical structure which was at the cutting edge when founded at the end of the 19th century, today it is often the subject of debate and controversy. ↑ Click image to enlarge This is being countered by a gradual but significant process of renovation. The artistic project is focused particularly on the waiting and transit areas, used every day by large numbers of people. Within the delicate and complex social context that a hospital represents, the artist offers different kinds of space where patients, passers-by, visitors and doctors can enjoy moments of relaxation.  ↑ Click image to enlarge ↑ Click image to enlarge Colors, lights, geometric shapes and various environmentally friendly elements give the hospital a new, dynamic energy. Through art, waiting becomes potential energy, transmitting positivity and bringing an element of comfort to an architectural space normally seen as a temporary and highly emotional environment. ↑ Click image to enlarge The solar PV system generates more than the energy needed for the electricity to run the lights and the monitors and DVD player inside the sphere. The project uses a sustainable system but it is also intentionally accessible in form and image (Alice in Wonderland mushroom meets solar ray chomping PacMan). ↑ Click image to enlarge Jeffrey Inaba Jeffrey Inaba is founder of the architecture and cultural consulting studio INABA based in Los Angeles, which operates across architecture, art and urban design with a special focus on research and social issues. He is also Director of C-Lab, the architecture and communication research group of Columbia University and the Features Editor of Volume Magazine. From 1997 to 2003, together with Rem Koolhaas, he co-directed the Project on the City at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He recently exhibited work at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin) and will participate next month in the show, BIG, INABA, MAD, MASS: Four Urban Proposals for Ansan, at the Gyeonngido Museum of Modern Art in South Korea. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

View article...

Public Spirit: Philip Johnson's Lost Town

from Archinect:

In 1955, Canadian uranium magnate Joseph Hirshorn commissioned Philip Johnson to design a plan for an entire town in Ontario, Canada. The project was never realized. Public Spirit, an animated tour of this Utopian town, debuted at the prestigious Directions exhibit in the Hirishhorn Museum on November 7th, 2008. ↑ Click above image to view high resolution video Joseph Hirshhorn is best known as the man whose collection fills the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. But few people know about Hirshhorn's ambitious 1955 plan to build a Hirshhorn Museum in the wilderness of Canada as the centerpiece of a Utopian "town of culture" The town of Hirshhorn, Ontario was designed by Philip Johnson according to a progressive modernist program. Special attention was paid to aesthetics; Hirshhorn requested "the most beautiful small town in the world." Public Spirit communicates the excitement and optimism of the town project with an emotionally uplifting mix of animation and music. Public Spirit is a wall sized animation, part of a larger installation piece with research about the town of Hirshhorn, and a scale model of the office tower. This project was commissioned by the Hirshhorn Museum. All design and animation was done by Sticky Pictures.  Archinect: Describe your collaboration with Terence Gower on Public Spirit.  Sticky Pictures: Terence is a video artist and architectural afficianado. He discovered the plans for the Hirshhorn by Philip Johnson and needed a creative and production team to partner with in order to realize his goal of creating this Utopian town to exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC. Our role was to find a visual direction for the project including an editorial flow, town layout, environmental elements and all production aspects.  What resources did you have to recreate the town of Hirshhorn? Alexandra Kiss was contracted separately by Terence to do the bulk of the modeling for the buildings. Many photographic references were supplied by Terence. Many of the textural elements were created from original photographic elements taken by us specifically for this project. Some of these textures were very period specific such as "aggregated concrete" and more challenging to find samples of. Other than that it was up to the team here at Sticky Pictures to realize Hirshhorn.  What were some of the most challenging parts of this project? The biggest challenge of this project turned out to be the environmental aspects. Man made objects such as buildings are relatively simple compared to nature. There's probably more complexity in one tree than the entire town. When you start building an entire forest....well you get the idea. Architectural rendering often use 2-D cut outs of trees to solve this problem. However because of the elaborate 360 camera movements in some of the shots we needed to use 3-D trees in order for them to not look like cut-outs. Other than that the duration of the finished piece and the need to render in HD meant that rendering was a huge time-factor in the project. Artistically, coming up with a color palette that was both subdued, and period specific was also challenging.  What tools (hardware/software) did you use? Maya, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator Directions-Terence Gower, Public Spirit is on display from November 5, 2008 to March 22, 2009 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Sticky Pictures is a Brooklyn based design and animation house specializing in 3D and 2D digital animation. With experience in live action, illustration, and cell animation, as well, out full skill set is ready to accommodate the various needs of our client. We are about making the smart choices that best illustrate a brand's indentity. Our goal, to create a kick-ass visual experience that viewers want to see again and again. Michael Darmanin the founder and creative director started Sticky Pictures after working in the motion graphic industry for over 10 years, here in NYC and in Australia his native country. Now he has been freed to paint the town. On a more personal note we are a company with a green edge. We believe green is not a fad, but rather a commitment to our world. Our work practices are green from recycling, to the eco-frendily furniture we built, to how we commute to work. For us, green means integrity in all actions.

View article...