Tag: Architecture

Chicago Architecture Biennial Review: Floating Museum Aims High

Faheem Majeed, a member of the art collective the Floating Museum and one of the artistic directors of this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial, was standing on a patch of soil on the South Side on a brisk, sunny afternoon last month. Next to him was the artist Erika Allen, a founder and the chief executive […]

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A Swiss Home So Well Designed It Needs Just One Door

As their careers took them to various cities in Europe, the United States and Asia, Stef Claes and Michiel De Meulemeester, who are both Belgian, were used to leasing whatever lackluster apartments they could find. But when Mr. Claes, an architect, and Mr. De Meulemeester, a business executive who manages Mr. Claes’s firm, settled down […]

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In Rio de Janeiro, Architecture That’s in Sync With the Jungle

FOR AT LEAST half a decade, Juliana Ayako has been fascinated by a strange, slapdash house on a bare hillside that she passes when she drives from her home in Rio de Janeiro to her partner’s family farm on the outskirts of Teresópolis, a small city roughly 60 miles to the north. It’s nothing special, […]

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After Earthquake, Morocco Debates How to Rebuild

Boujemaa Kouti still remembers the screams of his neighbors trapped under the rubble of their houses, calling for help that horrific night 63 years ago. He was just 8 and asleep when a large earthquake struck Morocco in 1960, wiping out entire neighborhoods in the coastal city of Agadir, near the Atlas Mountains, and killing […]

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Downtowns Are Full of Empty Buildings. Universities Are Moving In.

On a conspicuous corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, in a once gaudy building that used to house the Newseum, the 10-story, $650 million Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center has just opened in Washington. I’ll say straight off: It’s not architecture for the ages, but it’s an interesting, high-end model of an urban quad and a good […]

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Anthony Vidler, Architectural Historian Who Reshaped His Field, Dies at 82

Another way Mr. Vidler and his cohort broke with their field was with their interest in shaping architecture as it was being practiced around them. Soon after he arrived in the United States from England in the mid-1960s, he joined the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, an organization, led by the American architect Peter […]

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What Is a Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library Doing in North Dakota?

Here in Medora, a tiny town in the badlands of western North Dakota, Teddy Roosevelt is everywhere. The cabin from his Maltese Cross Ranch sits at the gateway of the 70,447-acre Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Downtown, you’ll find the historic Rough Riders Hotel, pince-nez-wearing teddy bears in the gift shops and, in front of the […]

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It Might Be Time to Consider Timisoara

Families stroll and savor gelato cones as bike couriers whiz by. Pensioners relax on benches near manicured flower beds while earbud-wearing hipsters walk dogs and children chase pigeons by a fountain laden with bronze fish. The scene in Victory Square in Timisoara, Romania, is quintessentially European — modern meets Old World. Scanning the imposing Art […]

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A marvel in masonry shows the art of the possible

In the Hudson River Valley, on a hill inside the Storm King Art Center, a new addition to the country’s leading outdoor sculpture collection was unveiled this fall. “Lookout,” by the eminent American sculptor Martin Puryear, is a beguiling, domed brick structure with confounding curves, a walk-in entrance, and 90 apertures. The sculpture “could be […]

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Views of the Empire State Building Are Being Blocked

Sometimes New York’s a downer. I had an appointment the other day near Madison Square Park. For years, one of the great architectural twofers in the city has been the view up and down Fifth Avenue from the pedestrian plaza next to the park, south toward the Flatiron Building, north toward the Empire State. When […]

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Building on an enduring bond

Robert Robinson Taylor’s impressive legacy straddles two institutions. There’s MIT, where he studied architecture and became the Institute’s first African American graduate; and then there is Tuskegee University, originally the Tuskegee Institute, where Taylor spent most of his career, heading the architecture department of the historically Black college, helping to shape its educational philosophy that […]

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Joshua Ramus Is Lifting Off

At the Lindemann, a shimmering, fluted (and fluted again) aluminum curtain wall nods to the intricacy of its historic campus surroundings and evokes a billowing stage curtain disappearing into the ground. To avoid the challenges of the location — including vibration from a bus tunnel and an exceedingly large footprint on Brown’s modestly scaled campus […]

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Designing a revolution

It is widely recognized that the period in the early 1970s in which Salvador Allende was president of Chile was a moment of political innovation, when people thought they could bring about socialist transformation peacefully and within existing democratic institutions. “People thought that this would be a political third way,” says Eden Medina, an associate […]

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Circa Central Park Is Notorious for Bird Collisions. Residents Want Change.

The dazzling views of Central Park come with a dark side. Each spring and fall, dead and injured birds litter the front sidewalk and interior courtyard of a glassy, crescent-shaped building of about 50 condominium units on the northwest corner of the park. The casualties are brightly colored travelers on migrations that would normally take […]

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From MIT to Burning Man: The Living Knitwork Pavilion

Set against the vast and surreal backdrop of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, Burning Man is an annual gathering that transforms the flat, barren expanse into a vibrant playground for artistic and creative expression. Here, “Burners” come to both witness and contribute to the ephemeral Black Rock City, which participants build anew each year. […]

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Ours Is the Least Artistically Innovative Century in 500 Years

As early as 2006, well before the reverse chronology of blogs and the early Facebook gave way to the algorithmic soup of Instagram, Spotify and TikTok, Winehouse sensed that the real digital revolution in culture would not be in production, in the machines that artists used to make music or movies or books. It would […]

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Jack Fisk: The Genius Behind Hollywood’s Most Indelible Sets

Much of this history Fisk only learned recently, when Scorsese gave him a copy of Menzies’ biography, “The Shape of Films to Come.” Unlike many of his contemporaries, who worked their way up through the art department, Fisk doesn’t describe himself as a film obsessive, and he’s careful not to watch movies while he’s designing. […]

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Worried About Living in a Flood Zone? Try a House That Floats.

As sea levels rise and storms worsen, threatening the planet’s fragile coastlines, some architects and developers are looking to the water not as a looming threat, but as a frontier for development. “We want to change cities worldwide, we want to see how we can push the cities into the water,” said Koen Olthuis, a […]

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MIT welcomes nine MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars for 2023-24

Established in 1990, the MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program at MIT welcomes outstanding scholars to the Institute for visiting appointments. MIT aspires to attract candidates who are, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.” The program honors King’s life and legacy by expanding and extending […]

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New Volpe Center opens to support the country’s most innovative transportation projects

On a crisp Tuesday afternoon, representatives from MIT, the state and federal government, and the Cambridge community celebrated the official opening of the new John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was the culmination of nearly a decade of collaboration in which MIT designed and constructed the highly energy-efficient […]

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One Architect Shows Sustainable Home Renovation Is Possible in Brooklyn

When Aaron and Anna Schiller began thinking about building a new home in Brooklyn where they could start a family, Mr. Schiller knew he could use his training as an architect to his advantage. It was 2017, and housing prices were already soaring. Mr. Schiller, 39, the founder of the architecture firm Schiller Projects, assumed […]

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How Hudson River Park Helped Revitalize Manhattan’s West Side

Twelve hundred tons of sand arrived last month in Hudson River Park, the sliver of green space on the western edge of Manhattan, and it took only a quarter-century to get there. In 1998, when Gov. George E. Pataki signed the law authorizing the creation of the park, he vowed it would have a beach. […]

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Raymond Moriyama, Designer of Humane Public Spaces, Dies at 93

One of the firm’s standout works was the Toronto Reference Library, a generous glass and brick structure, completed in 1977. But their projects were not confined to Canada. They designed a transit mall in Buffalo to revitalize the city’s main street; the National Museum of Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh; and the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, […]

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A Spectacular Marble Cube Rises at Ground Zero

The new Perelman Performing Arts Center is the most glamorous civic building to land in New York in years. The official ribbon cutting is on Wednesday. You may have noticed the building under construction if you were near the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan during the past year or so. A floating, translucent marble […]

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Jackson Jewett wants to design buildings that use less concrete

After three years leading biking tours through U.S. National Parks, Jackson Jewett decided it was time for a change. “It was a lot of fun, but I realized I missed buildings,” says Jewett. “I really wanted to be a part of that industry, learn more about it, and reconnect with my roots in the built […]

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MIT at the 2023 Venice Biennale

The Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest and most visited exhibition focusing on architecture, is once again featuring work by many MIT faculty, students, and alumni. On view through Nov. 26, the 2023 biennale, curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Lesley Lokko, is showcasing projects responding to the theme of “The Laboratory of Change.” […]

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