Hasta La Ideas

The nine World Architecture Festival category winners have been announced at the festival in Barcelona. (more…)

Los Angeles-based architects Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich of architectural practice Patterns have completed an art gallery on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles. (more…)

Tokyo practice Klein Dytham Architecture have sent us images of an exhibition of their work that was on show at Gallery MA in Tokyo, Japan, earlier this year (thanks to Jean Snow for pointing out our earlier error!) (more…)

It’s hopefully an established fact by now that when you want a Mies van der Rohe fix, you head straight to all around good guy, Edward Lifson. We’ve certainly posted our fair share of links to his writing about the brilliant architect, and have always enjoyed running into him around town and hearing what new things he has to say about van der Rohe’s work. So again we make the leap over to Hello Beautiful for this recent look at all the finished restoration to 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, one of the architect’s most beautiful high rises. We drive by the two towers nearly every morning on our way into the office and had seen the construction for what seems like years, but now it’s apparently all done and ready to be fawned over, which Lifson does in spades, sharing not only some great photos of the newly improved structures, but a rundown of what was fixed as well. Here’s a sampling:

All the stainless steel around the lower eight feet of the building was replaced. Much of the rest of the stainless steel was spot repaired and polished. Doors on the south elevation of 880 that had been moved to the center were restored to their original positions.

We also wanted to post this so we could remind you of what we called back in August, “The End All-Be-All of Architecture Critics Panels.” The Chicago Architecture Foundation has their program A Conversation with the Critics: Imagining the Future of the City tomorrow night at 6pm. It looks like Jonathan Glancey won’t be there, as was first announced, but he’s been replaced by the LA Times‘ Christopher Hawthorne, so that isn’t a bad trade at all. Plus, you’ll still get to see Paul Goldberger, Blair Kamin, and Sarah Williams Goldhagen. And to pull this all together, full circle, it’s hosted by Lifson. We’ll be there and we’ve heard there are tickets still available, so what are you waiting for?!

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Leaving school but staying in the same place, we turn to this great story in New York about David Burney, an architect many people might not know, but whose work is helping transform New York one small project at a time. Burney is the commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction, and in his past half-decade on the job, he’s been actively trying to update and modernize (in a design sense) many of the new building projects the city decides to push through. With new procedures like altering the hunt for architects so that the best plans are chosen, not who can do it the cheapest, and convincing firms that building for the city isn’t always a painful, fruitless endeavor. And it appears, at least through the lens of this piece, that he’s finding success (the included slideshow of new buildings he’s been involved with are beautiful, modern, and don’t read at all as “government designed”). It’s a great read, particularly if you’ve never heard of Burney and had wondered how it happens with the city (any city really) decides to build something not horrible to look at.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.