StructureHub

                                                  
Exactly six months have passed since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti by taking the lives at least 250,000 Haitians and the   work to rebuild the country is creeping along slowly. The government seems to be at a loss for how to redevelop themselves after two million people were left without a home. [...]

Assessing an architect’s earliest commission or first completed project is always fun (though perhaps not so for the architect), since such acheivements often document the architect’s early insecurities, capture what it is later recognized as a trademark flourish in an awkward state of development, or memorialize early mistakes that are hopefully not repeated.
Such observation is [...]

Do these events seem familiar to you?
- A run-down and/or unloved building, between 30 and 60 years old, piques the imagination of a greedy developer, cash-strapped city, or poor property owner;
- A plan is hatched - often for money, but perhaps for the community’s sake - to “improve” the neighborhood by fixing up the property;
- For [...]

Roberta Smith’s recent column about the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhausting quest for bigger, better, magnetic gallery space (and restaurant, gift shop, etc.) is generally spot on.
She is right to be nervous that the museum’s relevance as a New York institution may decline if nothing is done about its worn-out Marcel Breuer-designed gallery space (above).  After [...]

Steven Holl is renouncing architecture to run for Congress.  According to sources (but denied by him), Holl felt snubbed when he was not selected for this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Soon after SANAA’s Kazuo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa were selected by the Pritzker jury, Holl reportedly began consulting Wikipedia about the ins-and-outs about running for public office; [...]

Although the jury citation for this year’s Pritzker Prize was written to praise SANAA’s Kazuo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, a couple phrases bubble over with unmistakable disdain for unnamed (but very identifiable) architects who stand little chance of winning a Pritzker from the current jury.     
This year’s 8-member jury (the roster changes over time and varies between [...]

The 2010 Pritzker Prize has just been awarded to Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, the Japanese architects who helm the increasingly ubiquitous firm SANAA (see a slide show of their work here).  Because the prize was just announced, I have yet to really form a reaction to their selection.  But I can say that while I did not expect [...]

Even though Minneapolis constantly shows up on “best _____ city” lists, a swath of neighborhoods in North Minneapolis tend to (unwillingly) manifest traits that would undercut any city’s claim to be the best of anything.  High crime; rampant poverty; empty houses; abandoned blocks; few businesses with well-paying jobs.  Even positive signs of progress have ended [...]

So it turns out that after all, Santa Monica got played by Eli Broad.  And ironically enough, the heated competition to host his foundation’s significant collection of contemporary art was not won by any of the competitor cities (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, or reputedly, Culver City), but by Los Angeles.  When the dust settles, Broad’s modern art collection [...]

The Architecture of Secularism
Ross Douthat’s admission that he has a “reactionary taste in architecture” mostly explains his recent blog post on religious architecture - the flimsy rhetorical framework of which is doubtless a result of Douthat’s typical focus on political commentary.  Although I normally enjoy reading commentary on architecture, regardless of the author’s profession, Douthat’s blog [...]