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Today's News - Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Survey on green construction shows major misjudgments. -- U.K.'s Merton Rule not really as green as it purports to be. -- Small businesses tapping into green energy in D.C. -- Hawthorne on green spaces in L.A.: "one of the most crucial urban-planning issues" facing the city's future. -- From Australia: Perth may have new-found optimism, but it still has a long way to go to be a world-class city. -- Missing in Melbourne: a clear vision (and too much Robert Moses-style planning). -- Pearman finds Valencia's mayor a power-house of vision. -- A call to end the "bogus brouhaha" over Fayetteville Museum. -- Russell on making a new home for Barnes collection: will be "the most peculiar major architectural commission in years." -- Towering plans for London's Victoria station. -- Dyckhoff, Glancey, and Woodman offer their spin on the spiraling Serpentine Gallery (opening this weekend). -- Chicago Mag (and the pro's) pick the city's Top 10 contemporary masterpieces. -- In a Modernist mode: What's so bad about modern architecture? (nothing). -- New Canaan finally taking its small Modernist masterpieces seriously. -- Boddy finds "the best modernist house on B.C. shores." -- On politics and design: "We cannot wait for neo-enlightened political leadership. We have to act now."

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Green construction costs massively overestimated, survey claims: Study finds professionals misjudging sustainable budgets and underestimating carbon footprint of buildings -- World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) [link to report]- Building (UK)

Blinkered thinking hampers greener buildings: Requiring a building to generate 10-20% of its energy through onsite renewables – as prescribed under the Merton Rule – is a far less efficient way of cutting carbon than by investing in the actual energy efficiency of buildings.- Easier.com (UK)

Washington’s Small Businesses Tap Into Green Power: ...the initiative by these very small businesses in Washington illustrates that green energy is not just for the major players.- New York Times

Green With Envy: What’s with all these smaller, less teeming cities building more parks than L.A.? ...it's not just a growing need for open space that makes parks one of the most crucial urban-planning issues Los Angeles will face in coming years. By Christopher Hawthorne -- Meléndrez; George Hargreaves/Michael Maltzan; Fregonese Associates- Los Angeles Times

Sleepy Perth as bad as Adelaide, says architect: ...Perth’s booming economy gave it a new-found optimism that it could become a world-class city but it had a long way to go. -- Donald Bates/Lab Architecture- The West Australian

Op-Ed: No vision means no future: ...deja vu over the latest grand ideas to solve the city's transport woes...Missing...was a coherent, honest plan...goes to the heart of what is missing in Melbourne: a clear vision for the city's future and an internally consistent, long-term strategy and detailed plan for implementing it.- The Age (Australia)

Olive belt boomtown: Valencia boasts Calatrava, Foster, Chipperfield, Bofill and a mayor with a mission...If you're a fringe world city these days, you need someone like Rita Barbera fighting your corner. By Hugh Pearman [images]- HughPearman.com (UK)

Op-Ed: Bogus brouhaha: The mayor and some City Council members are trying to torpedo the completion of Festival Park...want to stop the Fayetteville Museum of Art from putting a magnificent building on the...corner of downtown’s signature park...the fear that the museum building will take up too much of the park...That’s equally bogus. -- Enrique Norten/TEN Arquitectos- Fayetteville Observer (North Carolina)

Eccentric Barnes Collection Faces Uncertain Future: Moving poses its own perils...The collection can neither grow nor shrink. It's got to be the most peculiar major architectural commission in years. By James S. Russell -- Paul Philippe Cret (1925)- Bloomberg News

Wilkinson Eyre reveals towers at Victoria station; Land Securities schemes also features designs by Lynch Architects, Benson + Forsythe and Allies and Morrison [images]- Building (UK)

Come for a spin at the Serpentine: This is the cleverest pavilion yet...it sure packs a shapely punch. ...fuses concept with form in a tight, explosive intellectual package, exploring the very idea of a pavilion itself. By Tom Dyckhoff -- Kjetil Thorsen/Snøhetta; Olafur Eliasson- The Times (UK)

Magic circle: With its off-centre cone shape and long spiral ramp, the Serpentine's new summer pavilion is a happy play of illusions. Jonathan Glancey gets a sneak preview...a delightful and beautifully thought-out game...spiralling plywood and steel eye-catcher... -- Olafur Eliasson; Kjetil Thorsen [image]- Guardian (UK)

Serpentine Gallery: A spinning top on an epic scale: ...long-delayed summer pavilion, with its ascending promenade and superb views, has been worth waiting for. By Ellis Woodman -- Kjetil Thorsen/Snøhetta; Olafur Eliasson [image]- Telegraph (UK)

Ten Modern Masterpieces: These innovative new buildings illustrate Chicago's enduring power to attract great design...illustrate why we are, once again, a global epicenter of architecture. -- John Ronan; Murphy/Jahn; Frank Gehry; Perkins + Will; Krueck & Sexton; Wheeler Kearns; Booth Hansen; Jean-Paul Viguier; Lohan Caprile Goettsch (now Goettsch Partners); Cohen & Hacker; Rafael Viñoly; Pei Cobb Freed; Josef Paul Kleihues [images, links]- Chicago Magazine

Make Mine Midcentury Modern: What's so bad about modern architecture? -- Walter Gropius; Mies van der Rohe; Frank Lloyd Wright; Joseph Eichler- Wall Street Journal

A Trove Of Modernist Homes: New Canaan Has Come To Value Residences That Once Faced The Wrecking Ball...credit the opening of the Glass House for much of the change in attitude. -- Hugh Smallen; Philip Johnson; Marcel Breuer; Elliot Noyes; Landis Gores; John Johansen- Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

House on the rocks: Creative spirit shines in a Sunshine Coast home that makes space for the rocky headland on which it sits...the best modernist house on B.C. shores I have seen this year: a Tony Robins-designed home... By Trevor Boddy [slide show]- Globe and Mail (Canada)

Politics, the political and design: ...designing is ever ideological, and this understanding of design, i.e., revealing the designed as continual process rather than just as realised product, is ever political...if we want another kind of future than the one offered by the unsustainable status quo, then we all have to change direction, redirect our practices and all that they bring into being...- Design Philosophy Papers/Team D/E/S (Australia)

Henry Madden Library at California State University, Fresno: A new campus library looks to the future while embodying Fresno's Native American and agricultural heritage. -- AC Martin Partners; RMJM Hillier [images]- ArchNewsNow

-- Exhibition: Le Corbusier: Art and Architecture - A Life of Creativity, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
-- New location: arcspace Virtual Community, Second Life on our own island and our members are taking over the cubes in the new grid.

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