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Today's News - Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Readers weigh in on San Francisco's Transbay tower plans (and King answers back). -- Forget Beijing's "bird's nest" and "water cube"; some of the best architectural thrills will be in hotel rooms. -- Design for new Cleveland State University student center is "a nuanced and fluent interpretation of Modernism, filled with wit and dynamism." -- Goldberger weighs in on the "retro opulence" of Stern's 15 Central Park West. -- Liverpool's International Slavery Museum opens tomorrow. -- A reposte to Paroissien's op-ed re: plans for National Gallery of Australia. -- Architects for new New Zealand arts center taking a chance. -- Sioux Falls could "easily outdistance N.Y., Paris"(???). -- An interesting take on the corporate legacies of Seifert and Foster. -- Q&A with Eyal Weizman on architecture of occupation and why he wrote "Hollow Land." -- Q&A with would-be architect Frank Stella (including the "unseemly cattiness" of architects). -- Efforts to turn New Yorkers into bikers. -- Call for EOI/PPQ: Woolwich Squares International Design Competition. -- Call for nominations: ASCE OPAL Awards, OCEA Award, and more. -- How could we resist: Brad Pitt dons jeans to make big bucks for Farnsworth House. -- The truth about global warming? Blame it on Norwegian moose.

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Readers weigh in on plans for new Transbay tower. By John King -- Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM); Pelli Clarke Pelli- San Francisco Chronicle

The Road to Beijing: ...when Beijing finally gets its Olympic moment in the sun, some of the thrills will simply require a room key...hotels are staking space among the iconic buildings that now line the city's monumental thoroughfares like surreal Morandi-esque still lifes. -- Koolhaas/Scheeren/OMA; Philippe Starck; Pei Zhu; Kengo Kuma; Steven Holl; Ai Weiwei [slide show]- New York Times

Plan opens Cleveland State University campus to city: A proposed new $50 million student center...a strong, assertive, memorable building open to the city and campus on all sides...The design is a nuanced and fluent interpretation of Modernism, filled with wit and dynamism. By Steven Litt -- Don Hisaka (1974); Gwathmey Siegel & Associates- Cleveland Plain Dealer

Past Perfect: Retro opulence on Central Park West...seems less a piece of architecture than...an homage to the city by someone who not only loves the New York of the twenties and thirties but actually believes that he can will it back into existence... By Paul Goldberger -- Robert A. M. Stern- New Yorker

Liverpool's International Slavery Museum Revealed: ...an ambitious mission to use the museum to explore not just the abolition of slavery but also wider issues around racism through history. -- Austin-Smith:Lord; Redman Design [images]- 24 Hour Museum (UK)

Op-Ed: Foreign galleries no match for National Gallery of Australia: Paroissien's attempt to dumb down Colin Madigan's design for the National Gallery by using unsubstantiated comparisons with other galleries discredits his authority to state that the designs for the NGA respect the original building. By Graeme Trickett- Canberra Times (Australia)

Britomart architect on Len Lye centre design team: In an unusual move, the architects have offered to do the preliminary conceptual plans, knowing that if backers of the centre do not raise the $10-$15 million needed to built it, they risk not getting paid. -- Boon Goldsmith Bhaskar; Mario Madayag- Taranaki Daily News (New Zealand)

Architect: Sioux Falls could 'easily outdistance N.Y., Paris': New York architects known internationally for designing buildings to increase people's life span are working on a campus design for a new Montessori school... -- Madeline Gins and Arakawa- Argus Leader (South Dakota)

Speculative Surrealism: Seifert, Foster and London’s Corporate Legacies: ...people have started to talk of Foster in terms of the great shapers of London--Wren, Hawksmoor, John Nash. However there's another precedent for this rash of building, and one rather less romantic--the firm of R. Seifert and Partners. [images]- Archinect

Eyal Weizman interview: Israel's oppressive architecture of occupation...[and] what had prompted him to write "Hollow Land"- Socialist Worker (UK)

Interview: Frank Stella: In a rare disappointment in his otherwise charmed career, none of Stella’s proposed projects has as yet been built...names his favorite architects...talks about how to make “exalted architecture”; jokes about the “unseemly cattiness” of architects... [slide show, video]- Architectural Record

State of Cycling: The current plan calls for the completion of an 1,800-mile system of bike routes by 2030...New York still lags behind many other cities when it comes to promoting bicycling, and a number of questions remain about safety, facilities and the fight for always scarce space in the crowded city.- Gotham Gazette (NYC)

Giving Abandoned Bikes New Life So Students Can Ride: ...abandoned bikes have a rejuvenated future....N.Y.U. sustainability task force to work with an environmental group to recycle those bikes in an effort to encourage cycling and also lessen the waste created by discarding them.- New York Times

Call for Expressions of Interest/Pre-Qualification Questionnaires: Woolwich Squares International Design Competition; deadline: September 19- Greenwich Council/Design for London/Urban Practitioners (UK)

Call for nominations: ASCE Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) Awards; Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) Award; Charles J. Pankow Award for Innovation; Henry L. Michel Award for Industry Advancement of Research; deadline: October 1- American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

House call A Pitt stop . . .Brad Pitt, an architecture buff, earned $50,000 smackeroolees for the upkeep of legendary architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House...selected...as the site for a television commercial shoot he was doing for a Japanese jeans company.- Chicago Sun-Times

Norway's Moose Population in Trouble for Belching: The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change...a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.- Der Spiegel (Germany)

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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