It’s been exactly two decades since Celebration, Florida, broke ground in 1994, a major anniversary for a community that enjoyed a massive amount of media attention when it emerged. Yet we don’t hear much about Disney’s foray into real estate lately, apart from the odd fire.
A competition to re-imagine suburban surface parking lots tapped architects to transform the often-wasted space into flexible urban plazas. This entry, dubbed "Civic Arches" by Utile, Inc. Architecture + Urban Planning, proposes using the the arches beneath a Long Island Railroad viaduct to park cars of commuters during the week, then reclaim the space as a farmers market on the weekends. [Architect’s Newspaper]
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"I want to set some ground rules for what I think we all should do in L.A., which is to really resist cliché," stated Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti last night during a future-focused public event at Occidental College. While "certain publications"—which the mayor did not name, but we all know who they are—like to make L.A. into a story of density vs. sprawl, pedestrian vs. car, he said, it’s never that easy to define us.
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The story of how Berkeley, California, first got wheelchair-accessible sidewalks in the 1970s is an unlikely mix of public protest, anti-war sentiment, and the grassroots potential of urban planning for the people, by the people. Writing for Boom, Bess Williamson explains how the city began to redesign itself for everyone to navigate.
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Last week, we asked you where you thought Obama’s forthcoming presidential library should be built: Chicago, Hawaii, or (psh) New York? Chicago was the popular winner, and now the first speculative design for a Chicago library has been published online.
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A new airport complex is taking shape in Abu Dhabi, where roughly 12,000 construction workers are on-site daily to finish the massive structure, whose floor area is larger than that of the Pentagon. According to UAE paper The National, it will take 84,000 tons of steel to build the structure’s dramatic arches, designed by New York-based KPF.
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When Steve Jobs presented the initial design for his donut-like headquarters to the Cupertino City Council, in 2011, he described the building as a reaction against suburban office parks. “We’ve come up with a design that puts 12,000 people in one building; which sounds a bit odd,” he said. “But we’ve seen these office parks with a lot of buildings, and they get pretty boring pretty fast. We’d like to do something better.” The question, though, is better for whom?
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These images by Martín De Pasquale are so surreal that, obviously, you know they aren’t actual photos. But they are perfectly executed. And the reason for that is not awesome Photoshop skills as much as good planning. If you want to make perfect photo composites, it’s not that hard if you plan in advance. Martín’s examples will show you how to do it. More »
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