- Via Pruned

” Andrew Raimist, of Architectural Ruminations, has uploaded some terrific images of Isamu Noguchi’s unbuilt UN playground to his Flickr account here.

On the unrealized project, Raimist writes: “Noguchi designed this playground for a portion of the United Nations complex on the East River in New York. The project was to be privately funded and located on property given a special international diplomatic designation. Nevertheless, Robert Moses (the authoritarian director of public works for the City of New York) was able to get the project canceled. Moses was Noguchi’s arch-nemisis in NYC having ridiculed his design for Play Mountain back in 1933. He continued to thwart any public park of Noguchi’s design from ever being constructed in New York. I believe Moses criticized this design as ‘dangerous’ and little more than a ‘rabbit warren’.”

A UN playground is anything but for children and innocent play, it would seem.
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Popularity: 1% [?]

- Via BLDGBLOG

” The New York Times reports today on what it calls the “Pompeii of World War II,” an abandoned village in Italy now “overtaken by vines and lime trees.”
That village is San Pietro, an “11th-century cobblestone mountain village nestled among wild figs and cactus,” as well as the scene of months of horrific fighting between Allied and German troops.
Nearby, atop Monte Cassino, was “one of the holiest sites in Christendom,” a monastery “founded by St. Benedict in the sixth century, a shrine of Western civilization” – indeed, “a center of art and culture dating back nearly to the Roman Empire” – which the Allies bombed into rubble, suspecting (or not suspecting, but caught up nonetheless in the machinations of bad intelligence and unquestioned orders) that German troops had taken refuge there.
“After the battle ended,” we read, the entire chain of small mountain valleys in which San Pietro once stood “would be left uninhabitable for years, demolished by Allied bombs, beset by malaria.” …..” Read the full article here

Popularity: 1% [?]

- Via Plataforma Arquitectura

Sorry Guys….. but i couldn’t find any english text regarding the project..but below are the photos.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

- Via Inhabitat

” Static is not a word that describes the Sino-Italian Ecological and Energy-Efficient Building (SIEEB) at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Designed to maximize passive solar capabilities and fitted with state-of-the-art active solar elements, the SIEEB is a dynamic energy-efficient oasis that optimizes its urban location with ecological considerations. Architect Mario Cucinella and the Milan Polytechnic conceptualized the structure to educate and showcase possibilities for energy-efficient building, particularly in regard to CO2 emissions.
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Popularity: 4% [?]

- Via Archinect

” The one thing you will not find in school–or even on Architecture Registration Exams–is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don’t have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

This UpStarts feature looks at the post-OMA practice of WORKac’s Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, who have proven that in architecture one can not rely on pedigree alone. When this husband and wife partnership started their own design firm in 2002, they created a 5-Year Plan that allowed them to build on their previous experiences while developing a personal voice and remaining financially viable. Amale Andraos and Dan Wood spoke with me via telephone from their New York City office.” Read the interview at Archinect

Popularity: 1% [?]

- Via FRAME

by Archi-Tectonics

“The P.A.N. (Progressive Architecture Network) exhibition will open on September 20 at the SESV gallery in Florence. 

After its success at the Frederieke Taylor Gallery in New York, the P.A.N. exhibition – curated by Winka Dubbeldam and Helene Furján – presents the research and the production of five young architectural offices that are well established on the international scene:
- Sadar Vuga Arhitekti from Ljubljana
- R&Sie(n) from Paris
- J. Mayer H. Architects from Berlin
- IaN+ from Rome
- Archi-Tectonics from New York

The five groups, that found their initial stimuli at the ArchiLab meetings in Orléans, share a common attitude towards experimentation.” FRAME

Popularity: 2% [?]

- via The Guardian

Glasgow city council’s Bridge Arts Centre created a new library and learning centre, multifunction auditorium and a base for the National Theatre of Scotland.

” Projects ranging from a recyclable visitor centre to a rooftop nursery have been named on the 18-strong shortlist for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award, announced today. The award recognises projects that have achieved high standards in design, construction and financial management. The winner will be named in October.”

check below the participants:

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Popularity: 6% [?]

- Via Arkinetia

” The architectural concept of the house HB was determined by the location of the property on the prominent part of the landscape. The site is extremely picturesque, while being at the same time a typical Slovenian suburban situation, surrounded by accumulation of anonymous cliché two story individual houses, typical of postwar central European architecture. The project attempts to define another kind of domestic environment. The house HB is a redefinition of a specific from of traditional house, of low and elongated rural typology.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

The recently completed Young Vic theatre in Southwark, by Haworth Tompkins Architects. Mesh screen, and painted facade panels by Artist Clem Crosby (image above)
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Popularity: 4% [?]

- Via Dezeen

“Architects Asymptote have announced Penang Global City Center (PGCC), a large development in northern Malaysia. The million square metre mixed-use development features two sixty-story towers and is part of the Malaysian government’s plans to boost economic growth in the area. It was unveiled in Penang last week by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last week.”

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Popularity: 5% [?]