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Today’s News - Wednesday, January 9, 2019

● Glancey makes his pick of the 8 best new buildings of 2018: "a great year in architecture - despite increasing pressure to build crudely and insensitively in the rush to maximize profits" (Berlin's rebuilt Stadtschloss: "its walls pregnant with Baroque").

● Wainwright files a fascinating report from Tehran, "like Los Angeles with minarets. Cranes stretch to the horizon," but the "practice of selling density" does not bode well (#3 in "The next 15 megacities" series - links to #1: Baghdad, Iraq; #2: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania).

● Ghanaian-born Adjaye cheers the new Ghana Building Code as a "major milestone" - "introduced following a succession of fatal building collapses."

● King cheers "subtle changes carved into" one block of San Francisco's Financial District: "Architecturally, the block isn't much to look at. But for a crash course in how downtown's fine-grain landscape evolves, it can't be beat."

● Kamin x 2 re: Lincoln Yards: It's "too tall and out of place - more Anytown than Our Town - push developer and SOM to rethink and redesign." The "plan is not without good strokes. But these are sweeteners."

● In a follow-up, he cheers an alderman's "bold Lincoln Yards move. A good first step, but it's more axe than scalpel" - at least a stadium and an entertainment district are out of the picture - though the "fundamental problem with the $5 billion-plus, 50-acre plan remains its overwhelming bigness" (great graphics!).

● Grabar takes us on a tour of Chicago's astonishing mega-sewer that "may be the world's most ambitious and expensive effort to manage urban flooding and water pollution," but "did the city, and its imitators, pick the wrong solution?" (who knew reading about a sewer system could be so fascinating!).

● O'Connor takes us on a tour of "the surreal architecture porn of Baku, Azerbaijan. The fast-growing capital is not all Zaha Hadid's - a dizzying blend of 19th-century charm and 21st-century over-the-top-ness."

● We ran the early segments of Mun-Delsalle's reports on how architects are inventing "groundbreaking waterborne solutions to climate change" - this links to all 7 parts.

● Morgan convinced us to cover a residential project (which we rarely do), but we couldn't resist: "Daniel V. Scully, son of historian Vincent Scully, has built an auto-inspired compound - his own world of 'carchitecture'" that is "whimsically serious work - more idiosyncratic than frivolous."

● Louis Kahn's once-threatened "floating concert hall finds a permanent home" on Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County - Point Counterpoint II "will become a center for music education for local children, including those from one of the poorest communities in Florida."

● MacFarquhar parses the "massive 'Stalin high-rises' - rechristened for tourists with the more palatable name of the Seven Sisters" - they "desperately need renovating," but "they are stuck in limbo over who will foot the substantial bill."

● Stinson reports that 8 Frank Lloyd Wright buildings have been nominated to be World Heritage Sites - "the first pieces of modern architecture to be submitted for the honor by the U.S."

● The Sottsass Archive (over 100,000 items) is deeded to the Fondazione Cini in Venice, and "will be the first archive to be entirely digitally recorded by ARCHiVe."

● Eyefuls of Slovenian photographer Danica Kus's (stunning!) black & white photographs of Niemeyer's surviving architecture.

● Hashim Sarkis, Boston- and Beirut-based architect and dean of MIT School of Architecture, is named curator of the Biennale Architettura 2020.

● Cornell Dean Kleinman will join the RISD community as provost in March.

● One we couldn't resist (90+ comments!): Fairs parses lampooning of Trump's "beautiful" border wall: Bozikovic: "unfathomably stupid"; Goldberger: "It is stunning in its vapidity, stupidity, disingenuousness and deliberate aesthetic confusion"; Bierut: "Now he's gone and ruined minimalism."

Winners all:

● Venturi, Scott Brown's 1991 Sainsbury Wing for the 1838 National Gallery in London wins the 2019 AIA Twenty-five Year Award - it "originally drew a mixture of scorn from both traditionalists and modernists who felt the scheme was trying to have the best of both worlds."

● Entrants from Edinburgh, NYC, Nanjing, Sydney, and Shanghai win the LA+ ICONOCLAST design ideas competition "to redesign New York's Central Park, which has been fictionally devastated by eco-terrorists" (definitely link through to presentations!).

● Entrants from Austria, Finland; Poland, and Ukraine win the Silent Meditation Forest Cabins competition with their eco-friendly and cost-effective proposals for off-the-grid cabins in rural Latvia.

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Jonathan Glancey: Eight of the best new buildings of 2018: A perfect palace, a charming church - and a brutalist bus station...a great year in architecture: ...innovative architecture works with rather than against the grain of its setting...something we have begun to see more of...despite increasing pressure to build crudely and insensitively in the rush to maximise profits.... -- JKMM Architects; Kengo Kuma; Keith Ingham/Charles Wilson/Building Design Partnership/BDP (1960s); John Puttick Associates; Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners; Eberhard Wimmer; Nicolás Campodonico; Gianni Botsford Architects [images]- BBC Designed

Oliver Wainwright: 'Like LA with minarets': how concrete and cars came to rule Tehran: The next 15 megacities #3: With nearly 10 million people doing daily battle with some of the world’s highest levels of congestion and air pollution, headscarves should be the least of the authorities’ worries: Cranes stretch to the horizon...[It] is a city on the brink...its modern urban structure was laid out by...Victor Gruen [1966]...The practice of selling density has led to an identikit form of residential development [and] a proliferation of huge commercial buildings with little regard to their wider impact...Over the past decade, around 4,000 hectares of former gardens have been destroyed by the so-called “garden tower” act...population now exceeds its capacity by more than 70%...Without wholesale reform of the planning system, real investment in public transport, and an end to the cash-for-towers culture, that statistic stands little chance of improving. -- Ahmadreza Hakiminejad [images]- Guardian (UK)

Ghana Building Code is "major milestone for the country" says David Adjaye: ...introduced at the end of last year...it was a "highly significant step"...a modified adoption of the International Building Code...The code was introduced following a succession of fatal building collapses... -- Adjaye Associates- Dezeen

John King: San Francisco’s subtle changes carved into single city block: Architecturally, the one square block...isn’t much to look at. But for a crash course in how downtown’s fine-grain landscape evolves, it can’t be beat...What you see, in essence, is the ongoing redefinition of urban life itself...None of the changes on this block is dramatic...Instead, they convey the subtle dynamics of a city...where prosperity is taken for granted and cultural trends are never static. And buildings, like people, adapt the best they can. -- IwamotoScott Architecture; Jeanne Gang/Studio Gang [images]- San Francisco Chronicle

Blair Kamin: Lincoln Yards: Too Tall and Out of Place. Slow it Down: ...push developer and architects to rethink and redesign: It would be dramatically out of scale with its surroundings, piercing the delicate urban fabric of the city’s North Side with a swath of downtown height and bulk...more Anytown than Our Town. And that’s what the debate...is really about...urban character. What kind of city are we building? Who is it for? ...plan is not without good strokes...But these are sweeteners...City Hall’s message to Sterling Bay should be simple and direct: “Do better.” -- Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM); James Corner Field Operations [images]- Chicago Tribune

Blair Kamin: Ald. Hopkins' bold Lincoln Yards move: A good first step, but it's more axe than scalpel: ...killed plans for a 20,000-seat stadium...and an entertainment district...decision could amount to a partial, or even hollow, victory...The fundamental problem with the $5 billion-plus plan [to] transform more than 50 acres...along the Chicago River...remains its overwhelming bigness...that would loom over the delicately scaled, nearby neighborhoods...The real issue...How to turn Lincoln Yards’ dense cluster of uses...into a vital city district that avoids the bland public spaces of [60-acre] Cityfront Center... -- Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) [images]- Chicago Tribune

Henry Grabar: Tunnel Vision: Chicago tried to dig its way out of urban flooding decades before climate change made it a national crisis. Did the city, and its imitators, pick the wrong solution? This megasewer, a filthy hidden portrait to the Chicago River’s Dorian Gray...may be the world’s most ambitious and expensive effort to manage urban flooding and water pollution. It is a project, in the visionary tradition of Chicago engineering, to bottle rainstorms...has been an unreserved success...it’s now clear that this 50-year, multibillion-dollar project will not be sufficient to stop flooding...If Chicago built a bathtub, Philadelphia is trying to transform itself into a sponge...spending $2.4 billion to implement the nation’s largest green infrastructure plan...- Slate

William O’Connor: The Surreal Architecture Porn of Baku, Azerbaijan: The fast-growing capital is not all Zaha Hadid’s, as this seaside metropolis is a dizzying blend of 19th-century charm and 21st-century over-the-top-ness. [images]- The Daily Beast

Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle: Architects Worldwide Invent Groundbreaking Waterborne Solutions To Climate Change, Parts 1 - 7 -- Koen Olthuis/Waterstudio; Mohammed Rezwan; BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group; Charles Wee/GDS Architects- Forbes

William Morgan: Daniel V. Scully, son of historian Vincent Scully, has built an auto-inspired compound: ...a fascinating, if little known, example of a self-referential project that consumed half of its designer’s life...pop culture - particularly cars - crucially informed his design aesthetic...his own world of “carchitecture"...house in Dublin, New Hampshire, is a stylistic combination of regional Greek Revival, Shingle Style, and an early 1950s Pontiac...whimsically serious work is more idiosyncratic than frivolous. [images]- The Architect's Newspaper

Louis Kahn’s floating concert hall finds a permanent home in Palm Beach County: 42-year-old Point Counterpoint II has found a new life in Florida, only a year after fears were raised that the boat might have to be scuttled...has since been brought to Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County...will become a center for music education for local children, including those from Pahokee, one of the poorest communities in Florida. [images]- The Architect's Newspaper

Neil MacFarquhar: Stalin’s Soaring Moscow Towers Sorely Need Body Work: The massive “Stalin high-rises"...still offer some of the best apartments in Moscow, but are now badly decayed: ...desperately need renovating. They are stuck in limbo...over who will foot the substantial bill...Stalin high-rises, rechristened for tourists with the more palatable name of the Seven Sisters...the décor is Russian baroque, even if various American landmarks heavily influenced the architects...Some people find the resulting confection magnificent, others eerie and intimidating. -- Mikhail Posokhin [images]- New York Times

Liz Stinson: 8 Frank Lloyd Wright buildings nominated to be World Heritage Sites: They would join masterpieces from Le Corbusier, Barragan, and Gropius: Remarkably, Wright’s buildings are the first pieces of modern architecture to be submitted for the honor by the United States...This wouldn’t change much aside from increased tourism...Many of Wright’s homes and buildings are already historical landmarks, [images]- Curbed

Ettore Sottsass Archive at the Fondazione Cini: ...by means of a deed signed by Barbara Radice, the wife of the great Italian architect, artist and industrial designer, whose centenary was celebrated in 2017...over 100,000 items, including his personal writings, designs for architecture, exhibits, interiors and industrial objects...Memphis Group documents, and correspondence...will be the first archive to be entirely digitally recorded by ARCHiVe (Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Venice).- Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Celebrating Oscar Niemeyer and His Masterworks Through a Photographic Lens: Slovenian photographer Danica Kus published a series of black and white photographs highlighting Niemeyer’s surviving architectuse...encompasses the subtleties of Niemeyer’s premier works and spans his career. [images]- ArchDaily

Hashim Sarkis appointed curator of the Biennale Architettura 2020: ...principal architect of Hashim Sarkis Studios (HSS), established in 1998 with offices in Boston and Beirut, and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)...the 17th International Architecture Exhibition to be held from May 23 - November 29, 2020.- La Biennale di Venezia/Venice Biennial

New Provost Brings Experience + Vision: Kent Kleinman will join the RISD community as provost in March 2019...For the past decade, Kleinman has served as...Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell...Design Intelligence named Kleinman among its Top 25 Most Admired Educators in both 2016 and 2018.- Rhode Island School of Design/RISD

Marcus Fairs: Trump's "beautiful" Steel Slat Barrier for Mexican border lampooned by designers: ...pointed out that the barrier is "technically not a wall" and that if to scale, it would be over 12 metres high and the gaps between the slats would be wide enough for people to squeeze through. Cameron Sinclair: "Not to be a curmudgeon but technically this is not a wall"; Alex Bozikovic: "unfathomably stupid"; Paul Goldberger: "It is stunning in its vapidity, stupidity, disingenuousness and deliberate aesthetic confusion"; Michael Bierut: "Now he's gone and ruined minimalism"- Dezeen

Venturi, Scott Brown’s Sainsbury Wing wins the 2019 AIA Twenty-five Year Award: ..a 120,000-square-foot addition to the 1838 National Gallery [London], was completed in 1991 and originally drew a mixture of scorn from both traditionalists and modernists who felt the scheme was trying to have the best of both worlds. -- Robert Venturi/Denise Scott Brown/Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates (VSBA) [images]- The Architect's Newspaper

LA+ ICONOCLAST design ideas competition winners: ...to redesign New York’s Central Park, which has been fictionally devastated by eco-terrorists...Each winning entry will receive $4,000 + feature publication in LA+ Journal. [link to presentations] -- Tiago Torres-Campos, Edinburgh, UK; John Beckmann, Hannah LaSota + Laeticia Hervy/Axis Mundi Design, New York ; Chuanfei Yu, Jiaqi Wang + Huiwen Shi/South East University, Nanjing, China; Joe Rowling, Nick McLeod + Javier Arcila/e8urban, Sydney, Australia; Song Zhang + Minzhi Lin/Song + Minzhi, Shanghai- LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture (University of Pennsylvania)

The Silent Meditation Forest Cabins competition results announced: ...off-the-grid meditation cabins in rural Latvia...eco-friendly and cost-effective proposals... -- David Florez/Stefani Zlateva, Austria; Marko Simsiö/University Of Oulu. Finland; Karolina Kielpinska/Marta Lisiakiewicz/Emilia Oworuszko/Aleksandra Bialkowska/Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland; Andrii Koval/Olha Laktionova, Ukraine [images]- Bee Breeders (formerly HMMD/Homemade Dessert)

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