Cities, Landscape

The Viability and Vision of Oyster-tecture

Oyster-tecture envisions a network of oyster reefs: a continental-scale storm water management system that would spur tourism, aid public health, and create a biologically-rich living laboratory.
Neil Chambers,

Oyster-tecture envisions a network of oyster reefs: a continental-scale storm water management system that would spur tourism, aid public health, and create a biologically-rich living laboratory.

Design as a Public Service

John Cary,

At the University of Minnesota College of Design graduation ceremonies, on Saturday, May 12, John Cary, who received his BA in 1999 from the same school, delivered the 2012 commencement address. After thanking dean Thomas Fisher and the faculty of the educational institution that “has given me so much,” Cary started with his inauspicious beginnings and launched into the story…
Design Education, Sustainability

Racing Past a Gigawatt

Ryan A. Cunningham,

The college experience,  a quintessential right of passage, has always been about camaraderie, experiences, and learning. Whether your experience was full of all-nighters, hair-pulling group projects, or last page computer crashes; in the end college prepares us for the “real world” and all its challenges. On some campuses, learning to deal with real world challenges includes tackling issues surrounding sustainable…

Reference

Sarah Hucal,

Bold Move Although Erick van Egeraat’s flashy Chess Club may seem a bit out of place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia has a reputation for attracting eccentric architecture. Take, for example, the World Mammoth and Permafrost Museum in Yakutsk. We wrote about the unique structure, designed by New York–based Leeser Architects, in 2007 (www.metropolismag.com/story/20071121/woolly-headed). The museum is perched on 20-foot-tall concrete pylons,…
Arts + Culture, Cities

99th Edition of the Armory Show

Jade Dressler,

From Susan B. Komen to Kony, public discourse is the art “Happening,” taking to the streets and Twitter to affect global change and re-invention. Fortified with OWS, riots, performances, street art and viral social media campaigns, our public policy as well as our public lives are shaped by this expanding discourse. Art for social exchange and change is vital to…
Cities

New York Impressions

Joseph Brin,

Empire State Building Photo: Joseph G. Brin © 2012 Have you ever seen someone do a bad impression? It’s kind of embarrassing. You either have the gift or you don’t. Philadelphia should just give it up, stop trying to be New York City or wishing it was New York City. We already have two fake Chrysler Buildings (Liberty Place I…
Cities, Landscape

What Would NYC’s 6th Borough Look Like? Here Are 4 Ideas

The 2012 ONE PRIZE design competition, calling for new visions for NYC's waters as well as a potential sixth borough, has announced the winning teams.
Ryan A. Cunningham,

We love the waterfront. It’s a great place to walk the dog, stroll with your love, and work up a sweat. And for about as long as New Yorkers have lived on the water’s edge, there have been ideas on how to make ours a city of the sea. This past Wednesday evening, the 2012 ONE PRIZE design competition, organized…

Bienvenue a Haiti!

SarahW,

This October 5, Project Haiti was announced at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre to an audience of 15,000 during the keynote at Greenbuild 2011. HOK is the USGBC’s official design partner for the project, the redesign of an orphanage and children’s center badly damaged in the 2010 earthquake in Port au Prince. The importance of this project was stressed by both…

Smart, and on the Move

Avinash Rajagopal,

Portable Spot Cleaner, designed by Adrian Mankovecky, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovakia If the Electrolux Design Lab competition were given charge of the future of our home appliances, all our gadgets would be monochrome, have oversize back-lit interfaces, and be either rounded or flexible. Since its inception in 2003, the competition has been asking industrial design students to…
Design Education

Many Voices, One Village

Six students and one professor from the University of Minnesota Architecture School head to Haiti to help design and create an urban infrastructure for a town.
Amanda Pederson,

Six students and one professor from the University of Minnesota Architecture School head to Haiti to help design and create an urban infrastructure for a town.

Plastic Pollution

Site Staff,

Beth Terry shared these nurdles and plastic fragments found on Marin, Calif.’s Kehoe Beach in March 2010. Photo: Becca Harsch. Manuel Maqueda says we’re stuck midway. We understand plastic pollution issues, but we don’t have the solutions. The voice of the Earth is not being heard, Maqueda, co-founder of Plastic Pollution Coalition, says. He was driven to seek plastic pollution…

Arts + Culture

Interior Design Films

Georgy Olivieri,

Last month, attendees at the annual Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) conference, were shown the best films chosen from this year’s Interior Design Education Video Competition. Aiming to change the public perception of the profession, the competition asked students to demonstrate the quality of interior design education and industry standards. This year’s theme:  “How is the public’s health, safety and…
Arts + Culture

Qiugang and Ponca City

Avinash Rajagopal,

Watching the Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday, I waited eagerly for a section I don’t usually pay much attention to – the award for Best Documentary: Short Subject. As Jake Gyllenhall and Amy Adams opened the envelope, I was rooting for The Warriors of Qiugang, the rousing story of Chinese villagers who are protesting a pesticide factory that is poisoning…

Touching Light

Spanish lighting designer Arturo Alvarez experiments with materiality in new objects.
Avinash Rajagopal,

Spanish lighting designer Arturo Alvarez experiments with materiality in new objects.

Arts + Culture

Building New Skins

Avinash Rajagopal,

The curtain-wall is perhaps the defining innovation of twentieth century architecture. Since the heyday of high modernism, a search for new building forms has usually meant grappling with a glass and steel grid. But as the demands on architecture have changed, in terms of energy performance and sustainable materials, we’ve had to completely rethink the role of a building’s skin….

Blowing the Others Out of the Water

Avinash Rajagopal,

There is a new naval battle being fought off the coast of Britain, but not of the kind that Admiral Nelson would recognize. The ocean is turning out to be the next frontier for renewable energy, and Britain leads the world in off-shore wind energy generation – it has already installed 330 wind turbines on its seas. Now several engineering…

The Salon Lives On

Avinash Rajagopal,

From left: Andy Warhol, David Whitney, Philip Johnson, Dr. John Dalton, and Robert A. M. Stern in the Glass House in 1964. Photo: David McCabe Writing 24 years ago in Architectural Digest, Vincent Scully called Philip Johnson’s Glass House “the most sustained cultural salon that the US had ever seen.” Within the glass walls of that modernist marvel, people like…

A Recipe for Disaster Relief

Avinash Rajagopal,

Considering that we’ve seen some of the century’s worst catastrophes in the past few years, it is only natural that design for disaster has been on all our minds. I’ve seen reconstruction plans and pre-fab shelter designs galore, but a recent event in New York takes the cake for bizarre inventiveness.  Last Thursday the Urban Assembly School for Design and…