HWKN’s spiny blue beauty is a return to form for MoMA’s Young Architects Program. P.S.1 recently held an opening party for HWKN's Wendy. Prepare to get the song “Windy” stuck in your head. According to HWKN principal Mark Kushner, that 1967 bit of bubblegum was the inspiration for giving the name “Wendy” to his firm’s installation at the New York contemporary art space P.S.1. Part architectural experiment and part well-branded cartoon character, the giant blue sea urchin straddles a wall on one side of the courtyard at the Museum of Modern Art-affiliated former school building in Queens. Stretched across an

A new 27-month highway-transit measure is close to congressional approval, after nearly 33 months of short-term funding extensions.  Leading Senate and House negotiators said June 27 they had reached agreement on the new bill, which would fund surface-transportation programs through Sept. 30, 2014. Related links Grimshaw and Gruen Score Contract for Union Station Master Plan in Los Angeles Construction and transportation industry officials, who have lobbied hard since at least 2009 to get a long-term bill, hailed the news from Capitol Hill. National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association Chairman Ronald Summers, said, “This is an extraordinary step toward the passage

Photo © Ernst Halberstadt/Wikipedia Boston City Hall was completed in 1968. Some competitions immediately catapult architects into architectural history. Gerhard Kallmann, who died June 19 in Boston at the age of 97, earned his place in the pantheon early in his long career when he and his collaborators, Michael McKinnell and Edward Knowles, all teachers at Columbia, won the competition for Boston City Hall in 1962. There were 256 entries in two rounds; the final vote was unanimous. Related links Record Reveals: Boston Boston was in decline. Architecture, as a means of shaping society and revitalizing cities, was ascendant. Their design

Photo courtesy Metro LA Metro has hired Grimshaw and Gruen to design a master plan for Union Station and the surrounding area. It’s official: Grimshaw Architects and Gruen Associates will design the master plan for Union Station and the 40 acres surrounding it. The board of directors for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted today to award a contract not exceeding $4.15 million to London-based Grimshaw and LA-based Gruen—one of six final teams that were vying for the high-profile commission. Related links In Los Angeles, Grimshaw and Gruen on Track to Win $4 Million Union Station Contract The

Image courtey HDR and Corgan Associates Construction is under way on Parkland Hospital, a 2.1 million-square-foot project in Dallas by HDR and Corgan Associates. UPDATED 6/28/12: The Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health-care law in a watershed 5-to-4 decision on Thursday, ruling that an individual insurance mandate is legal because of Congress’s power to collect taxes. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Court’s liberal wing to support the individual mandate, widely viewed as the most vulnerable part of the law. The ruling was not a complete victory for the President and Congressional Democrats: the Court limited a federal mandate requiring

With help from Buro Happold, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art unveils Michael Heizer’s 340-ton Levitated Mass. Michael Heizer, Levitated Mass, 2012 Los Angeles County Museum of Art Four decades after its conception, artist Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass is finally open to the public. A 21-foot boulder looming over a concrete trench, the installation allows visitors to walk beneath the massive, 340-ton rock. The boulder made a historic and much-chronicled trip through four counties over 11 days in March on its way to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from a quarry 60 miles east of the

Image courtesy EMC An iteration of Frank Gehry's design for the Eisenhower Memorial. Political stumbling blocks continue to slow progress on Frank Gehry’s proposed memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower. The House of Representatives is currently poised to withhold the $59.84 million in funding requested by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission (EMC) in February. The proposed budget released Tuesday for Interior and Environment Appropriations in fiscal year 2013 does not include a line item for the commission. This does not mean that the EMC has been defunded, or that it will cease to exist: It may receive funding when the bill is

This story original appeared on ENR.com