This is work from an architecture and design studio in Stockholm, some great stuff (have a look for yourself). Common stuff reapplied in an uncommon way, inserted into everyday life to create totally common solutions!
Stockholm practice Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter have won a competition to design a residential project in Jönköping, Sweden. (more…)
British architect Will Alsop of Alsop Architects has completed a residential building called Chips in Manchester. (more…)
Two interesting, random stories from lands afar now. First comes a piece from London, where David Grant has moved to form the architecture firm Inspire Design. Nothing particularly exciting there, except the Times reports that he moved there from Dublin where he was outed in a television documentary back in 2005 for working as an architect without formal training and creating a series of dangerous buildings, mostly hostels (one of which burnt down several years ago). Fleeing all his troubles in Ireland, he’s now set up shop in the UK while simultaneously trying to sell off all his old suspect buildings back home. We have a feeling that we would have seen a repeat of this whole thing, but on a much larger, tragic scale with David Fisher and his rotating buildings and suspect-training. On a much, much more positive, but slightly related training-for-architects note, India is reportedly opening up their university architecture programs beyond just science students. Now the country will allow anyone with focuses in math, statistics, or “business math” (we’re not sure what that means) to try and gain entry into architecture programs. Maybe both Grant and Fisher were math majors and could going back and hitting the books
Staying with the school theme here for a minute, LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne has put together a lengthy review of the new Central Los Angeles Area High School #9, a fancy, new, expensive ($232 million) arts school that will finally be opening its doors for students come September. Hawthorne details all the ups and downs the project experienced, with lots of juicy conflict, from a rapidly-rising budget to architect battles (some involving Los Angeles architecture mainstay Eli Broad). In the end, Hawthorne seems to find the set of buildings interesting to look at, but questions their function and how much all that back and forth from start to finish jeopardized what could have been an even more remarkable endeavor. Here’s a bit:
With its AC Martin skeleton, its shimmering Himmelblau flesh and its stunning, empty tower, then, the high school is hardly just an example of innovative but expensive name-brand architecture. It is a project haunted by second thoughts and 180-degree turns, a case of conservatism replaced by somewhat misguided daring and finally undercut by several failures of nerve. And nearly every twist in that story line can be read in the architecture itself.
Danish landscape architects Schønherr Landskab and Adept Architects have won the H+ competition to masterplan a 100 hectare site in Helsinborg, Sweden. (more…)
Slovenian practice Bevk Perović Arhitekti have completed a residential project in an abandoned quarry in Ljubljana, Slovenia. (more…)
Remember when it was rumored that developer Bruce Ratner was looking for another architect to replace Frank Gehry on the much-trimmed Atlantic Yards project, despite the press teams fighting off such ideas (“Frank Gehry has not been removed from the project”)? And then Frank Gehry himself sort of stuck his foot in his mouth by saying he’d given up hope on being involved with the Yards going forward — again much to the chagrin of the press handlers? Well, if you can believe it, apparently all of these crazy rumors seem to have maybe come true after all. The firm Ellerbe Becket has been hired by Ratner’s Forest City company to reevaluate Gehry’s plans for one of the few remaining projects still on the Atlantic Yards plate: the New Jersey Nets stadium. Although no one has come right out and said just that, with Ratner’s people still remaining distant, after months of hearing otherwise, it seems pretty clear that the rumors will all play out. Here’s a bit:
A Forest City Ratner spokesman Tuesday insisted the firm had been hired to implement cost-cutting measures for the estimated $800 million arena, but observers familiar with how Frank Gehry works suspect that could soon change.
“Because Gehry’s designs are fairly complex, any real changes would probably end up looking like an Ellerbe Becket project,” said a former Gehry architect who worked on Atlantic Yards until being laid off late last year. “[Gehry’s projects are] relatively difficult to execute.”
Folded House is a residence in the Wienerwald, Austria, designed by Linz and Vienna practice Xarchitekten. (more…)
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