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Today’s News - Tuesday, July 1, 2014

•   ArcSpace brings us Meyer's take on Brazil's World Cup stadiums (we finally know who designed them!); 7 pools that "will leave you chilled and stunned" (indeed!); and 8 things to see in Toronto & Montreal.

•   Heathcote has issues with Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Centre winning the Design Museum's Design of the Year: it may be the first time "it has been won by a woman and for a building. But in not taking into account sufficiently the social, political or moral context, the award threatens to seriously undermine its own international credibility."

•   Wainwright weighs in on the "wave of protest" by Human Rights Watch over Hadid's Baku prizewinner (though the jurors' comments are something else: "It is as pure and sexy as Marilyn's blown skirt" - puhleeze).

•   Betsky takes issue with the U.S. State Department's Design Excellence program being "once again under attack. The crux of the argument is that we are sacrificing security and cost to make the buildings 'pretty.' That is such a dumb and reductive notion."

•   Florida parses where cities are growing faster than their suburbs that "seems like good news for urbanists and city boosters. The era of rapid suburbanization at the expense of city vitality may, at long last, have come to a close."

•   O'Sullivan reports on the "pernicious realities of 'artwashing'" in London: "poor residents are being flushed out and artists are being played" by developers who "need to be called out."

•   Grescoe delves into how Denver is becoming the city to watch when it comes to the future of transportation on this continent: "even skeptics are starting to see a future for transit."

•   Lamster x 2: a campaign to tear down an elevated highway in autocentric Dallas is gaining traction: the city "has woken up to the reality that continually adding capacity in an endless effort to reduce congestion is a fool's errand, and one with human, urban, and financial costs that are simply too high to bear."

•   He explains why "Dallas needs to figure out its growth issues": while it's "reimagining itself for the future, with a greater emphasis on walkable, pedestrian friendly spaces - the status-quo remains a powerful force...you need look no further than its system of urban planning" (sounds like a mess!).

•   Capps digs deep into problems looming over Gehry's underground expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art - the biggest being Gehry: he "might be Apollo Creed-level bad" for the city.

•   Saffron x 2: She has a most interesting Q&A with Gehry re: his museum plan: "How does it feel to tinker with such an iconic art museum?" "It's an extraterrestrial experience, transcendent. This is going to change Philadelphia."

•   She's only slightly optimistic about a third proposal for a building next to the Ben Franklin Bridge - "a shapely, Miami-white apartment building that teases Philadelphia with the possibility of real architecture," but it "looks good only by comparison" to the previous designs.

•   Hess's eloquent lamentation that too many projects are "erasing Pereira" in Southern California: "will enough of his buildings remain to be enjoyed?"

•   How Proyecto Helicoide is trying to save Caracas's "gargantuan spiral" (and "infamous") 1960s Tower of Babel.

•   King gets the scoop on how Julia Morgan finally won the AIA Gold Medal: "skeptics raised the specter of tokenism. Morgan's supporters saw something else."

•   Stephens gets the upset with Trump's gigantic sign on his Chicago tower, but ponders the "curious anonymity of architecture": "What's surprising is that the people who design buildings rarely, if ever, get the slightest recognition in the public realm" - how about at least "a nice plaque" that would "gratify architecture nerds and give due credit to a noble profession."

•   How even "very big cheeses of the architecture world" are "turning their attention to smaller things" (of course, "there could be a downside to this").

•   It could be that an 11-story building that collapsed in Chennai - with more than 20 fatalities - may not have been designed by a qualified architect.

•   Autodesk acquires David Benjamin's The Living to "collaborate on researching new building typologies and materials."

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