“A bird’s nest for a greedy pterodactyl” is how French architect Rudy Ricciotti describes a bamboo building he has designed in Paris. The $41 million project, dubbed T8 after its plot number, will provide offices, shops, and some 40 apartments overlooking an irregular-shaped courtyard pool. Built on a concrete platform astride a railway line, the seven-story, 47,684-square-foot building will occupy a two-acre rectangular site in the up-and-coming Tolbiac Chevaleret quarter, opposite the French National Library. Images: Courtesy Rudy Ricciotti Rudy Ricciotti surrounded the exterior of the T8 apartment building in Paris with a screen of bamboo, resembling a bird’s nest.
Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is designing a condominium tower in Manhattan for developer Slazer Enterprises above a Creative Artists Agency screening room at Madison Square Park.
Progressive Architecture, Interiors, World Architecture, Architecture, Nest: Publishing is a fickle business, and the death knell has clanged particularly loudly for magazines devoted to architecture and design. That point resonated last month, when Condé Nast publications president and CEO Charles H. Townsend announced that the December 2007 issue of House & Garden would be its last, citing, “We no longer believe it is a viable business investment for the company.” House & Garden had been shuttered once before, in 1993, corresponding with Condé Nast’s purchase of Architectural Digest. The parent company re-launched House & Garden three years later under editor-in-chief
A civil judge in Bilbao, Spain, has ruled against Santiago Calatrava in his suit challenging Arata Isozaki’s addition to his 1997 footbridge over the Nervión River. The addition was built without Calatrava’s knowledge and opened last February.
A Hollywood brat ordering a new chateau? Not quite. This is how Pitt is helping rebuild a flood-ravaged New Orleans neighborhood with his “Make It Right” project, which last week unveiled 13 design models for replacing 150 houses in the Lower Ninth Ward destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Editor’s note: You may read the news digest below or listen to it, plus other news headlines from ArchitecturalRecord.com, as a podcast by clicking this link. Click the play button to begin | Click here to download Gluckman Mayner Architects’ conceptual scheme for a Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio was unveiled this week by Donald Fisher, the project’s backer and founder of the Gap retail chain. Fisher is seeking to build a 100,000-square-foot building to house his art collection in San Francisco’s Presidio, a former military base turned National Park. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported on December 4,
The British architectural profession has had a largely negative response to plans for London’s 80,000-seat Olympic stadium, which were unveiled last month. Critics say that the design, by HOK Sport and architect Peter Cook of HOK, lacks the flair of conceptual images shown during London’s bid to host the 2012 Games. But the city’s Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) defends the stadium as an adaptable and practical structure that can be re-used. Images: Courtesy Team Macarie Critics have panned designs for the 2012 Olympic Stadium in London, an 80,000-seat arena created by HOK Sport and architect Peter Cook of HOK. The
With its climate-defying indoor ski slopes and outdoor golf courses, the United Arab Emirates might seem the least likely place to tout environmentally sensitive design. Last year, the World Wildlife Fund ranked the Emirates first among the world’s 71 most populous nations in consumption: roughly 30 acres of land and water are needed to sustain the needs of each citizen per year, compared to the average of just 4.5 acres in other nations. The U.A.E. also gets poor marks for its high levels of carbon emissions and its reliance on fossil fuels, half which are used to power, light, and