January 10th, 2008

The Young and the Restless [Subtopia in San Diego]
Bryan Finoki in Subtopia
Two weeks from tonight I will be in San Diego giving a presentation for the Woodbury University School of Architecture. The Lecture Series, entitled ‘The Young and the Restless,’ began last year and continues through April focusing on young architects who are engaged in dynamic volatile urban areas and/or are working within other venues and media, like blogs, non profits, publishers, etc. A refreshing focus, to say the least.
Being that this is my first ever official public lecture-like presentation as the author of Subtopia, I am super excited about this. So let me just say thanks right now to Rene Peralta and Teddy Cruz for inviting me, and to Andrea Dietz for helping to organize it all. This should be really cool, and I’ll also be touring Tijuana a bit while I'm there,too, with Rene, who (as you may or not know) pulled together the Arch League’s amazing Worldview focus on the city a while back, and who co-wrote the fascinating book, Here Is Tijuana!

Welcome to Little Maghreb
Christopher DeWolf in Spacing Montreal
Walk a few minutes east from Saint-Michel metro and you’ll find yourself in one of Montreal’s most recent ethnic neighbourhoods: the Petit Maghreb, a 15-block strip of North African businesses along Jean Talon Street between St. Michel and Pie IX boulevards. Nearly half of Montreal’s 63,000 immigrants from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia arrived here after 2001. They’re quickly making their presence felt. Last spring, a group of Jean Talon St. business owners announced their intention to create a “Petit Maghreb” business district along the lines of Little Italy and Chinatown.

Chicago’s Festival of Maps
Spacing in Spacing Montreal
CHICAGO — Not much sounds more appealing than a Festival of Maps, and Chicago delivered that holiday gift (and continues to deliver it) in its multi-site ongoing exhibit and lecture series that runs the gamut from tablet to tube map. While home for the holidays I was able to check out two exhibits, Maps, Finding Our Place in the World at the Field Museum (through Jan 27) and Mapping Chicago: The Past and the Possible at the Chicago History Museum (closed Jan 6).

Kahn on Kahn
Brian Libby in Portland Architecture
Pardon the lateness of this announcement, but this evening at 6PM the AIA Center For Architecture will be having a screening of My Architect, a film about the great Louis Kahn by his son, Nathaniel. Obviously Kahn is among the handful of very greatest 20th Century architects, and he has a little bit of a Portland connection. Thomas Hacker, head of Thomas Hacker Architects, got his start in Kahn's office. As it happens, I happened to talk with Hacker about his time in Kahn's office recently for an article I'm working on. He stressed the interweaving of teaching and professional practice, and the need to be constantly searching in one's work for new ideas and solutions.

house in southern bohemia, martina buřičová and štěpán kubíček
Justin in materialicious
Family House in Southern Bohemia (CHKO Třeboňsko, Czech Republic). Size: 280 m². Built: 2007. The site is Czech, so it’s hard to translate, but from what I understand, the house, which is right near one of the six Czech UNESCO MAB biospheric reserves, has been built with an eye towards eco-friendliness and uses alternative energy systems. If you find more info on this, or are able to translate, feel free to drop me a line. I like the house’s design, with those round skylights and the contrasting materials…..

alien library
architecture.MNP
The London-based architect behind the Selfridges store in Birmingham and the ‘pod’ at Lord’s cricket ground won the contest to design a national library in his native Prague - the first major new public building since the 18th century. But already opposition is brewing [read the article over at the Guardian...

Phos Architects: Mersey Observatory
architecture.MNP
A proposal by Phos Architects‘ has recently been shortlisted [along with 4 other proposals] for the design of the Mersey Observatory in Crosby [North of Liverpool, UK] - on a site currently occupied by a now obsolete radio tower. The design competition, held by RIBA, received around 100 entries from all over the world - which were reduced to the 5 remaining finalists. These 5 will meet with the judging panel in February, and a winner should be announced sometime in March.

Ecological Strategies in Today's Art (part 2)
Regine Debatty in WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future
Ecomedia - Ecological Strategies in Today's Art, currently running at the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg, presents projects founded on progressive ecological models and conceive utopian horizons in the process. (Part One is here.)
Tue Greenfort's contribution to the show is a simple plastic bottle. Just a bottle... until you have a look at the title of the sculpture: “Producing 1 Kilogram of PET Plastic Requires 17.5 Kilograms of Water and results in air emissions of 40 grams of hydrocarbons, 25 grams of sulfur oxides, 18 grams of carbon monoxide, 20 grams of nitrogen oxides, and 2.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide. In terms of water use alone, much more is consumed in making the bottles than will ever go into them” (2004). I can't dream of anything more self-explanatory.

Going Green - Chicago City Hall
admin in mirage.studio.7
I came across an interesting article on the latest Time Magazine, it is about greening rooftops. According to the magazine, in an effort to conserve energy, reduce storm water runoff and deflect heat, the roof of Chicago City Hall has been transformed into a brilliant garden. Undeniably it is a good idea, since urban landscape viewed from above can sometimes be an eye sore, ugly in short, or at least that is what most people perceived it to be. Green roofs are not limited to the city; instead it is what cities around the world needed the most. Chicago has 214,000 sq/m of rooftop gardens and many more on the way.

A Taste Of Tokyo In Wolfsburg
Frame Magazine
Europeans looking for a taste of Tokyo can find it at [link=http://www.autostadt.de/]Autostadt[/link] in Wolfsburg, Germany.  Read more…

Bierut Chats About Typography with The Atlantic
mediabistro.com: UnBeige
By way of the wonderful Typographica, we found this new clip of everyone's favorite "designer I wish I could hang out with a lot," Michael Bierut, talking to the online version of the magazine The Atlantic about all things typography....

Hedrich Blessing Interiors at ArchiTech
Lynn Becker in ArchitectureChicago PLUS
This Friday marks the opening of Hedrich Blessing Interiors: Architectural Photography of the 1930's: Art Deco interiors photographed by Ken Hedrich at the ArchiTech gallery. According to the announcement: Hedrich Blessingwas the the choice of the best architects and designers to document their creations. And like their famously cinematic exterior shots of the modern buildings that made them known the world over, HB's interior views often resembled movie sets.

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City
Young in Architecture
" American Institute of Architects (AIA) has bestowed one of its most prestigious awards, the AIA 2008 Institute Honor Award for Architecture, upon the addition to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City designed by Steven Holl Architects. Annually, the Institute Honor Awards program recognizes a select number of buildings with this important prize in order to elevate the general quality of architecture practice, establish a standard of excellence against which all architects can measure performance, and inform the public of the breadth and value of the architecture practice.