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Today’s News - Wednesday, May 8, 2019

●  We lose two much too soon - a sad way to start the day: Menking pays tribute to New Orleans-based Wayne Troyer, "one of one of NOLA's most distinguished and engaged architects" - and "an architect's architect," sayeth Hummer.

●  Hilburg pays tribute to photographer Michael Wolf, "best known for his work in Hong Kong, where he isolated chaotic samples of the built environment out of context to reframe the urban environment."

●  Kamin offers his take on the proposed One Central, a $20+ billion, 34-acre mega-development built over train tracks in Chicago: It's "a mix of audacious and dubious," and "could easily become a white elephant"; it "looks socially isolated - and politically tone-deaf" (and "resembles an asparagus patch").

●  Russell roams around Columbia's new Manhattanville campus, and parses its "mandate to better connect the institution to the world, but many in the neighborhood strongly opposed, fearing displacement - a reflection of the trust Columbia had failed to build over the years," but "at least, it is beginning to see neighbors as partners and collaborators rather than impediments."

●  Hilburg parses NYC Mayor de Blasio's proposed crack-down on glass towers as part of the city's Green New Deal: He "came out swinging against Hudson Yards - claiming many of its towers should never have been built," but "aides were quick to point out that the administration wasn't banning glass as a facade material - it would be imposing much rigid standards" (details "were sparse," but SHoP's American Copper Building got a nod).

●  Hardy takes a deep dive into "how Venice is managing Europe's worst tourism crisis" that "is threatening the city's very survival. But grassroots initiatives are making a difference - and may even help other cities meet the challenge of sustainable tourism."

●  Kimmelman delves into the glorious history of the old Penn Station, "meant to be uplifting and monumental - like the Parthenon on steroids," and its demise: "Today's version is humiliating and bewildering," and represents "a city disdainful of its gloried architectural past" (great read!).

●  Dickinson has a lively discussion with Pedersen, Salingaros, and Ruggles "about why the word 'beauty' has suddenly taken on such urgency - beauty is not always what designers can control, or show."

●  Wainwright wanders Hanada's new Bauhaus Museum in Weimar: "Standing as a chiseled concrete bunker, exuding the austere presence of a memorial, a mute grey block - thankfully, enlivened by the colorful stories found within it" (though "there are some gaping holes" in the stories presented).

●  Quito, meanwhile, brings us a Bauhaus primer - "the design utopia we're still living in. A century after its founding, why do we still bow to the Bauhaus? How did it become a super-brand?"

●  Capps considers RSH+P/Hickock Cole's International Spy Museum in Washington, DC: "The new and imposing museum hopes to draw crowds and establish a new cultural hub - it is several things: An immersive intelligence whitewash enclosed within a baronial engineering triumph. A gala platform supported by a romper room."

●  Going back to the 1930s, architects in Charlottesville, Virginia, have been "quietly creating a collection of modernist-influenced homes - lurking on otherwise traditional city streets," and challenging the city's Jeffersonian "red-brick, neoclassical legacy."

●  Jacob tackles the "age of post-digital drawing" that has "produced Frankenstein assemblages - in its undead, post-physical, digital form, the architectural drawing has returned richer, stronger, and more provocative than ever."

●  Ten (great!) winning projects take home the Docomomo US 2019 Modernism in America Awards.

●  ICYMI: ANN feature: Andrew Pressman: "Design Thinking: A Guide to Creative Problem Solving for Everyone": Three vignettes excerpted from his recently published book, which focuses on how design thinking is applied to real-life challenges.

Of gentrification and housing:

●  Grabar delves into how "gentrification got gentrified - gentrification is one of those things you know when you see. Data rarely changes minds - the debate over what's gentrifying - and what can gentrify - will have enormous consequences for what gets built."

●  Campbell-Dollaghan delves into the rise in multigenerational housing and co-housing. "Just one problem: American housing stock isn't really designed for it" - and who's doing what to change that (an Airbnb for aging designed to let families try out living together in multigenerational layouts).

●  Mortice parses a new program in L.A. that "seeks to finance and build accessory dwelling units [ADUs] for homeowners who agree to rent them to Section 8 voucher-holders - backyard homes could provide a runway for larger-scale affordable housing to take off" (despite NIMBY homeowners).

●  Rogers is impressed by Interface Studio Architects' Tiny Tower in Philadelphia, "a 12-foot-wide test-case for small sites that many might consider unusable - 12' x 29' lots may once again see the return of housing."

●  Speaking of tiny: The Atlantic Station Tiny House Festival in Atlanta this weekend "includes tours of 20+ tiny houses, shipping container homes, school bus homes," and more.

  


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