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Obituary: Robert Kliment, 1933-2017: [He] practiced a humanistic architecture...As a practitioner, he brought a rigorous precision to the everyday craft of design. -- Kliment Halsband Architects- Kliment Halsband Architects

Obituary: Influential modern architect William Krisel, 92: Fans of brightly colored doors and whimsical rooflines, lament...A tipster tells us that director Jake Gorst has opened up free streaming to his documentary "William Krisel, Architect" for the next two weeks.- Curbed Los Angeles

Justin Davidson: Why shiny glass towers are bad for city life: It's as if you reduced all of the world's cuisines down to airline food...Shiny towers are an invasive species...choking our cities and killing off public space...architects and developers have begun to rediscover the joys of texture without backing away from modernity. -- Philip Johnson; Snøhetta; Stefano Boeri; SHoP; Ennead; Jean Nouvel; Frank Gehry [link to video]- TEDTalks

Michael Bond: The hidden ways that architecture affects how you feel: ...city designers are re-thinking buildings’ influence on our moods in an era of “neuro-architecture”: ...the Conscious Cities Conference in London considered how cognitive scientists might make their discoveries more accessible to architects...psychology-based insights could change how cities are built. -- Ruth Dalton; Alison Brooks; Minoru Yamasaki; Colin Ellard; Charles Montgomery; Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg; William H. (Holly) Whyte; roject for Public Spaces; Snøhetta; Kate Jeffery [images]- BBC

John King: Design teams compete for best solution to sea-level conundrum: An ambitious design competition...dubbed “Resilient by Design,” will select 10 interdisciplinary teams...The danger...an open call can lead to endless delays, with pushback from localities that don’t make the final cut...has the potential to reshape the region...allows planners and politicians to get ahead of events..."a way to prepare for the future with creativity, not just fear.”- San Francisco Chronicle

Call for entries: Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge (international): propose community-based solutions that will strengthen the [San Francisco] region’s resilience to sea level rise, severe storms, flooding and earthquakes; deadline: July 7- Resilient by Design / Bay Area (San Francisco)

Daniel Viola: Canada’s Most Hated Building, 10 Years Later: A decade after the Royal Ontario Museum’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal opened to a chorus of boos, have feelings softened? When the ROM Crystal debuted, negative responses were loud and sustained...long view of architecture is a point that Christopher Hume makes. “It takes Torontonians years, if not decades, to get over their shock, to learn to accept something, and finally to love it." -- Daniel Libeskind [images]- Azure magazine (Canada)

Oliver Wainwright: Sober look of Google's 'landscraper' shows tech firm is trying to grow up: London building...sports polite corporate costume: ...proposals for the £1bn project...have considerably cranked down the wow factor...there is little reason to believe the finished product will rise much beyond BDP's usual standards, nor much evidence of how Heatherwick and Ingels’ role extends further than being the signature stylists to lubricate the project through the system. -- Thomas Heatherwic; BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group; Gillespies [images]- Guardian (UK)

Oliver Wainwright: Party on the helipad! My day sipping champagne with the superyacht set: Basketball courts, recording studios, deep-sea submarines...a taste of the latest must-have accessories in superyacht design: At times, it was hard to tell if the SuperYacht Gallery - a jamboree of fancy boats and luxury lifestyle paraphernalia, with tickets starting at £50 - was actually an elaborate piece of performance art. -- Zaha Hadid; Charles Saatchi; Espen Øino; Philippe Starck; Terence Disdale [images]- Guardian (UK)

Lee Rosenbaum: Diller Thriller: MoMA’s Mega-Makeover, An Irreverent Photo Essay: ...the completed phase had less to do with galleries than with auxiliary activities, amenities and eating opportunities...The austere black seating in MoMA’s new lounge area...isn’t as uncomfortable as it looks. -- Barry Bergdoll; Diller Scofidio + Renfro [images]- ArtsJournal

OMA unveils sliced design for Boston Seaport: ...490,000-square-foot mixed-use retail and office project...developer has coalesced around a number of esteemed firms...as the firm looks to invest in the area...88 Seaport...to offer a series of cascading terraces that form part of a dramatic, angled slice through the structure... -- Shohei Shigematsu; Sasaki; NADAAA; James Corner Field Operations [image]- The Architect's Newspaper

More renderings revealed for Hudson Yards tower near Vessel and the Shed: ...a slender stone and glass building from...Davis Brody Bond that will saddle up next to structures by Thomas Heatherwick, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and KPF...amenities suite, designed by Andre Kikoski... [images]- The Architect's Newspaper

Maev Kennedy: Wanted: brave buyers to give saddest UK buildings new lease of life: From half-timbered manor to squatter’s tiny cottage, conservation charity Save to publish...catalogue of at-risk buildings: They are the ultimate in fixer-uppers...Up My Street catalogue...lists hundreds of such buildings, some of which have broken the spirit and the bank of previous would-be saviours... [images]- Guardian (UK)

A wealthy group bought the heart of a poor Maine town to build an artist colony: The Libra Foundation bought a huge chunk of Monson and plans to spend as much as $10 million revitalizing it...goal is ambitious: To save a dying industrial town known for slate quarries and furniture-making with a dramatic infusion of cash into the arts, agriculture and eventually recreation.- Bangor Daily News (Maine)

How a $25,000 NEA grant became a springboard for change in a rural Minnesota community: ...helped launch an initiative...to effect visible change in Fergus Falls...received over $1.2m in funding from private donors...to encourage young people to stay in the town and see it as a viable place to make a living and raise their families...a way to promote rural-urban exchange and to “see a rural community as part of a national conversation.” -- National Endowment for the Arts; McKnight Foundation; Springboard for the Arts- The Art Newspaper

Record Houses 2017: Over the years...selections have veered from the quirky, quixotic, and idiosyncratic to the ruggedly vernacular or elegantly modern...the latest winning houses in Japan, Chile, France, and America. -- OHLAB; Envelope A+D; Shigeru Ban Architects; Bates Masi + Architects; Jakob + MacFarlane Architects; Smiljan Radic; Audrey Matlock Architect; Olson Kundig [images]- Architectural Record

Amanda Kolson Hurley: Undecorating Art Deco: A team of architects tried to understand the appeal of New York City’s most-loved buildings by recreating them for the 21st century: “New(er) York” grapples with how to include an abstracted kind of ornament in progressive architecture today...may not be the next Art Deco. But it’s a breath of fresh air in the age of the boring glass box. -- Hollwich Kushner/HWKN [images]- CityLab (formerly The Atlantic Cities)

Feargus O'Sullivan: Florence Loses Its Mind Over Tourists Eating Sandwiches: Italians may be Europe’s greatest gastronomic hardliners, but this time they’ve gone too far: Eat a sandwich on the steps of our cathedral and we’ll turn a hose on you...[the mayor] is sick of visitors picnicking on the steps the Cathedral of Santa Maria Dei Fiore.- CityLab (formerly The Atlantic Cities)

ANN feature: Peter Piven: Nuts + Bolts #13: Safe Harbors: A Case Study on End-game Strategies: A new way of dealing with ownership transition that can benefit some principals who face difficulties in achieving successful exits.- ArchNewsNow.com

Cadaval & Solà-Morales: Córdoba ReUrbano, Mexico City: ...exemplifies the objectives of Mexico's Urban Recycling start-up initiative by re-imagining and re-programming a significant heritage building... to include medium-density housing and...generating streetscape vitality... [images]