StructureHub

One surefire way to score an exhibition of your work at a high profile art institution: (1) design household products for and license your name to the institution’s major benefactor, (2) design a new wing for the institution - primarily underwritten by and named in honor of said major benefactor, and (3) wait for your [...]

Evidently, the USPS is not exactly the best appraiser of large, abandoned buildings situated on even bigger contiguous urban lots.
Yesterday, blandly ominous-sounding International Property Developers North America Inc. emerged victorious in an auction, bidding $40 million for the property, which is nearly $40 million more than the no-reserve opening price of $300,000.
What will become of [...]

Emo Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower shows that even “Grade II” buildings can be ugly and unfortunate-looking if they really, really, shoot for it; as you can see, Goldfinger nailed it, which is kind of appropriate since the Goldfinger of James Bond fame was named after Emo.
Image courtesy of seewah

Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, whose unbuilt designs (such as Crystal City, which I noted yesterday) will likely remain just that, another dead architect, Louis Kahn, will soon reduce his tally of unbuilt designs by one.
After a terminably long delay (the project was not so much un-abandoned as it was re-invigorated), construction is set to begin [...]

For the sake of Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy, I am relieved that his design for Crystal City - an outsize “multi-use” developer’s dream nearly built in Washington, DC - never saw the light of day.  If it were built, it would be the black eye of his legacy and - channeling Prince Charles here - [...]

In a multi-layered dose of irony, Repeating a Pattern, an article in The Columbus Dispatch, gauges the en vogue status of wallpaper, decides it is back in, and by way of example, points to a couple’s home that engages in precisely the sort of wallpapering that relegated wallpaper to the “out-of-style” crowd years ago.
Of course, [...]

Critics have rightly argued that the mere physicalization of the fold can in no way approach the complexities embedded in the concept; the fold, like all other theoretical and conceptual constructs, necessarily exceeds the formal domain of architecture. [page 62]
Very soon after the introduction of Professor Lisa Iwamoto’s new book, sentences such as the one above confirm [...]

The New York Times’ Streetscapes column is a favorite of mine.  It always succeeds in revealing a back-story to NYC’s streetscapes (rarely is a descriptive column title so likable) that I never knew but am happy to know.
Just yesterday, it’s topic of conversation was the Donnell Library, an International Style building designed by Aymar Embury [...]

Perhaps to prove to everyone else that Colorado is not really an outpost of design (assuming people actually think as much), I’ve just stumbled upon an interesting competition being held in the fly-over state which should counter that perception.
Called Denver by Design, the competition is intended to reveal/promote the best “modern furniture, artwork, or object” [...]

At the moment, I think it’s fair to say that affordable eco-design is near as rare as eco-friendly NASCAR races - at least that’s the perception of most folks.  Geo-thermal heating is cheap to operate, reliable, and extremely efficient; but it also costs (often much) more than $20,o00, even after federal tax credits soften the [...]