• The City 2.0 is the 2012 TED Prize winner - ideas welcome on how to spend $100,000 to be invested in seeding the "one wish to change the world."
• Hume x 2: he's very concerned about the growing trend of selling pieces of the public realm to private ventures - "public debt can disappear and re-emerge as a surplus in the wave of an accountant's wand. Not so a de-accessioned amenity."
• He cheers the new breed of urban pioneers populating the new urban frontier of former industrial wastelands: "We don't think of condo dwellers as pioneers, but that's what they are."
• Staying north of the border, there's a new report on the "ghettoization" of Canadian cities.
• Doig digs deep into the trend of tearing down highways, "creating bold new public spaces - and building a future without cars...Few urban design initiatives can instantly transform a large swath of a city like building (or unbuilding) a freeway" (great links, too).
• Scotland unveils £60 billion infrastructure plan that includes rail and road networks, schools, hospitals, and housing.
• Heathcote on the "greatest airport architect of the age" + Foster explains the genesis of his vision for an airport in the Thames estuary: the Millennium Bridge and the redevelopment of Trafalgar Square are "the same project in microcosm. They're about issues of cities, public space, mobility, communication."
• London's Boxpark made of shipping containers is "probably the most environmentally friendly shopping mall ever built" (great slide show of container architecture; alas, no mention of architects).
• Rus on Rios Clementi Hale's re-do of Beverly Hills' Temple Emanuel: "the hydra-headed project demanded an adroit resolution of complex imperatives, some seemingly contradictory" (great pix).
• Heymann's second installment of his series on the charged relationship of buildings and landscapes offers a close reading of Loos's famous and still shocking 1910 essay "Architecture," which is "more radical today than when it was written."
• A "spectacular and sad" spat "involving two of Australia's foremost architects" goes public: "The bitter exchange has dismayed Melbourne's competitive, but ultimately collegiate architecture scene."
• Jones ponders whether an AK-47 belongs in a design museum: "can a lethal weapon be a design classic? This is a killing machine, cold and inhuman. But it probably does belong in the Design Museum. Unfortunately."
• A stellar line-up of participants graces the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, which opens tomorrow.
• The NEA is leading a new initiative "to encourage more and better research on how the arts help people reach their full potential at all stages of life."
• The ACE Mentor Program of America receives the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math and Engineering Mentoring.
• AIBC extends deadline for presentation proposals for the 2012 AIBC Annual Conference in Vancouver next May.
• Libya will be launching a competition to create park in Tripoli next year (no details yet, but we'll keep our eye out).
• One we couldn't resist: amazing images of what is being found in dried-up lake beds in Texas: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime find and maybe the only silver lining in the ongoing drought."
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window.
External news links are not endorsed by ArchNewsNow.com.
Free registration may be required on some sites.
Some pages may expire after a few days.
