Morning Dew on Spider Web by Andrew Russell

Spider webs on a tree catch the early morning dew.

Master acoustician, Yasuhisa Toyota, talks about kickstarting his career with the Disney Concert Hall

"Our collaboration has been since 1989, and now it's long-term," Toyota says of Gehry. "With Frank, I learned many, many things." Chief among them, he says: "Flexibility." "His thinking is very free and without restrictions. His spirit and creative mind is [open]. And we were able to work together in this way," Toyota says. During the construction of Disney Hall, Toyota, ... was inspired by Gehry's design and perfected what he sees as his personal style of acoustics.

It's 2023 in London

The project identified nine key trends; More globally than city wide connected communities, Neighbourhoods become more important, Collaborative production as well as consumption, Active aging population, Flexible working, Fragile energy supply and environment, Inequality causing skills and housing divides, Increasing collection and use of personal data and Socially divisive access to communication technologies

Zaha Builds for "The People"

For the sake of argument, let's say that Bashar al-Assad is on the phone. He wants her to build him a prison in Damascus. "Well, I wouldn't mind building in Syria," she shrugs. "I'm an Arab and if it helps people, if it's an opera house or a parliament building, something for the masses, I would do it. But if someone asks me to build a prison, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't build a prison, irrespective of where it is, even if it was very luxurious." She won't build a prison? How many buildings have been designed, and constructed where the intent is one thing, and the ultimate use has been for something quite nefarious? I don't care who she builds for, ultimately she has to live with those decisions, but she can't be this naive, and expect not to be taken to task, for her blindness. I am sure there are many Syrians that would see her buildings in Syria, as extensions of the oppression by the Assad regime, and might even find that those small, windowless rooms, quite appropriate for torture.

Ground/Work Competition Finalist Entry by EFGH

If you've been following the Van Alen Institute's Ground/Work competition along with us for the past few months, then you were probably hoping to find out who the winner is by the end of this past week. However, we received word from the organizers that we'll have to wait for the big announcement until Monday. So while we sit tight for a little longer, we're excited to share an in-depth look into another finalist entry, this time from EFGH.

Collective–LOK Wins Van Alen Institute’s Ground/Work Competition

Earlier this morning, Ground/Work, the design competition for Van Alen Institute’s new street-level space in NYC, announced Collective–LOK as the overall competition winner. The victorious design team was formed as a collaboration of Jon Lott (PARA-Project), William O’Brien Jr. (WOJR), and Michael Kubo (over,under). Collective–LOK's winning proposal, titled Screen Play, was selected from a group of three finalist projects.

The Digital Future of Architectural History

In creating associated descriptive metadata, in tagging building entries to describe their materials, types, and, perhaps most especially, their styles, the author of metadata is practicing the historian’s craft and engaging in the historian’s stock in trade. "Name it, then we’ll know what it is," Reyner Banham suggested at the end of “The Great Gizmo.” We can name it metadata creation, but we already know what it is: architectural history. For several years Gabrielle Esperdy has been part of a team working on the development of SAH Archipedia — an online encyclopedia of American architecture sponsored by the Society of Architectural Historians. Here she explores the critical challenge of creating structural and descriptive metadata for the new resource — and argues that the digital platform has the potential "not only to publish scholarship but to produce it."