The Architectural Practice.
Christoph in anArchitecture
'stakeholders' in the building process
Architectural practices are a project based businesses: Changing teams create unique, tailor-made products or services (e.g. a building). A project is characterized by a network of different groups or companies (sometimes referred as 'stakeholders') like clients, designers, model makers, engineers, etc - temporary working together. Although people change from project to project their collaboration is based on trust.

93% of Home Buyers Won't Pay More for Green Home Features
Preston D K in Jetson Green
In the Spring 2008, the NY Times commissioned a study to learn how the real estate market and economy may be affecting people's attitudes towards buying a home.  Their study skewed young, affluent, and New York/Metro area (with roughly 250 NY participants).  It was also conducted in two-stages with the online study portion first and a follow-up interview second.  They concluded the study with Five Core Insights, with the following two points relating to environmental concerns: 93% of all home buyers, both nationally and in the NY Metro area, ARE NOT willing to PAY MORE for green or energy efficient features when building a home.  Consumers said that green features that save them money, such as energy efficient appliances, are important, while green features that are capital-intensive are less important.

2030
Dan Hill in cityofsound
For future reference, a fairly random selection of urban visions/strategy statements. Interesting how many are pinned on 2030. Far enough away to enable the magical convergence of speculation and possibility? I presume Cerda's Barcelona plan or Hausmann's equivalent for Paris weren't framed in the context of a quarter of a century hence? New York's and London's here have the feel of ongoing development projects instead (perhaps therefore forgoing the opportunity to envision the future of each city? But perhaps also more pragmatic.)

Village of Dancing Fish
Michelle Linden in Atelier A+D
The Village of Dancing Fish is a special needs housing project in Paju, South Korea by Byoung Soo Cho Architects. The adult living group home provides farmland for work as well as a village-like community. The buildings are grouped in order to provide individual spaces for the residents that can still be monitored by teachers... These clusters provide intimate 'neighborhoods' within the overall shared community. The plywood and steel structure and clean interior lines are interesting, but I think the big idea of a well designed community for the mentally disabled is even more exciting and impressive.

mad architect in architechnophilia
The Olympic Delivery Authority is aiming to deliver on its statement to make the 2012 Olympic Games in London the first sustainable one with this building. The Energy Centre will be part of a primary electrical substation within the Olympic Park to form the new utilities network that is being built across the British city. The Olympic Energy Centre when constructed will be both sustainable and flexible enough to integrate future technologies as developed in the years to come.

Belcher & Joass at their most intolerable
owen hatherley in sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy
If you spend too much time reading The Buildings of England it begins to warp your brain. You start to see everything through the eyes of Nikolaus Pevsner, and write in your head in a curious Germanic English. The 188 bus to a design by Stagecoach, showing usual Souter uninspired chuffing. Flyover at Elephant & Castle by GLC 1969, unlovely composition with mannerist concrete aggregate. Board school opposite, Grabber & Grabber, 1879 - wrong are the Gothic details, wrong are the huge gaping windows, wrong also are the lurid yellow bricks. Stafford Cripps Estate by LCC, 1958 - a fine, humanitarian work before the wilful ugliness of Brutalism set in.

transparent house, michael bell architect
Justin in materialicious
A transparent house by architect Michael Bell, sited on 12 acres in New York’s Hudson River Valley, evokes Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

Tom Dyckoff Reviews the Finally Opened CCTV HQ Building
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
Staying in China for just a minute, but putting the Olympics aside to catch our collective wits before they melt from overexposure (and there's nothing worse than melty wits), we turn to one of the first full review of Koolhaas/OMA's new CCTV Headquarters in Beijing. This comes from the Times' resident architecture critic, Tom Dyckoff, who got a chance to take a look at the place after it finally finished up last week and spoke to one of the co-designers (the one who isn't Rem Koolhaas and therefore doesn't get nearly enough credit on the project), Ole Scheeren. It's an interesting look at perhaps the most talked about building of the past couple of years, one Dyckoff proclaims as "the most significant building of the century thus far."

The Tech Details Behind the Olympic Opening Ceremonies
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
So, if you're like this writer, try as you might, you couldn't possibly avoid catching a healthy portion of the Olympics' opening ceremony this past Friday. As we were watching it, this writer's fiancee kept asking "How are they doing that?!" or "How is that working?!" to which we'd sort of have to fake our way through an explanation. Luckily, through the power of the internet, we were able to track down this info on how all of it functioned, like those insanely huge LED screens, including some good quotes by the tech team responsible for their creation. Also, for the more cut and dry reader out there who just wants the various details in list form, we can provide this for you as well. Overall, while we only made it through an hour and a half of the opening before saying, "Okay, enough of this, it's time for bed," the fiancee got it right when she said, "Say what you will about China, but damn if they can't do fireworks."

IKEA Solar Panels on the Horizon
Mike Chino in Inhabitat
Eponymous big-box colossus IKEA has shown some great green developments lately, from flat-pack bike trailers to eco-friendly lines of housewares. Now the patent purveyor of all things flat-pack has announced plans to invest $77 million into its GreenTech energy fund with the goal of eventually producing solar panels, efficiency meters, and energy efficient lighting. Granted its massive distribution network, IKEA’s uptake of green tech could pose a monumental shift in the accessibility and affordability of these technologies.

One Waterfront Place Going Super Green
Preston D K in Jetson Green
Just recently, I noticed news that One Waterfront Place in the River District of Portland has received Platinum precertification under the LEED-CS program.  One Waterfront Place is said to be the first Platinum precertified project on the West Coast and the first precertified project of any level in Oregon.  And, as you can tell with the above rendering, the $100 million, 270,000 sf commercial office building has a posh location right near the river.  The Class A+ building will have a host of green amenities:

Contemporary Architecture Practice
Young in Architecture
"Contemporary Architectural Practice was founded in 1999 and is located in SoHo, New York City, Contemporary Architecture Practice has established an award winning profile in futuristic work using cutting edge digital design and production techniques. Their work includes master plans, residential, commercials and product design projects. A book on Contemporary Architecture Practice titled Catalytic Formations was recently released.

Architectural Styles of Contemporary Universities
admin in mirage.studio.7
You know, the last paragraph on the architecture style of universities is sort of true - “… to convince alumni and parents they’re getting their money’s worth.” A good learning environment is important, which is something sorely lacking in a number of Malaysia’s local universities - lousy facilities, bias lecturers, bias system based on the colour of your skin. What amazed me is the unreasonable idea by the Dean of university with petty stuff such as dress code, for instant male students are required to wear long sleeves, leather shoe, and long pants in XXX ‘university of I translated your phd research from english to the malay language and claimed it as mine’.

Building Diagrams
John in A Daily Dose of Architecture
I've always found the gulf between architect and end user most fascinating, particularly the legibility of architectural production (plans, elevations, sections, details, sketches, models, perspectives, renderings, etc.) by -- for lack of a better term -- laypeople. It goes without saying that much of that produced by the former is not fully grasped by the latter, in terms of how a set of drawings, for example, will translate into a building. Models and renderings attempt to bridge this gulf of understanding, but in some cases diagrams done after a building's completion can prove even more helpful.

Dear India: You do not need your own Dubai.
Brendan in Where
I can't be the only person who's bored to death with videos like the one here, screenshot'd above, for the Nanocity deveopment north of New Delhi, can I? Obviously, the presentation, with its sweeping aerials and zooming close-ups of crystalized placeholders for buildings is intended to impress. And yet. After Masdar, and the Palm Islands, and that insipid Koolhaas Death Star development, these "impressive" videos have become mundane, commonplace. There is the slight tweak to the trope, in this case, of the development's being located in India. Still, knowing what little I do of India's wild and dynamic culture, the change of location actually generates more disgust for the project. Here is a sanitized, plagiarized version of Next Generation Urban Density™ for yet another developing country.