When Coney Island’s Astroland amusement park closes its gates this Labor Day weekend, it will be for good. The kitschy but beloved 1962-vintage venue in Brooklyn is making way for a massive new entertainment and hotel complex developed by Thor Equities. Nearby businesses and residents successfully pushed to have this project scaled back, but there’s no stopping a wave of redevelopment sweeping the area.
Summer camp is usually for kids, but imagine trading your drafting pencil and computer mouse for a hammer and chisel—or laying the bricks that form a building you design. Some 40 early-career architects did just that at a weeklong masonry camp, which ends today, hosted by the International Masonry Institute (IMI) in Bowie, Maryland. Photo: by Hazel Bradford, Courtesy the International Masonry Institute Some 40 early-career architects spent the week learning six different masonry techniques from journeymen at a camp sponsored by the International Masonry Institute in Bowie, Maryland. For their final project, which is being critiqued today, the architects
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 Most of New Orleans will be spared flooding if the Army Corps of Engineers completes $7.6 billion in levee and floodgate improvements by 2011, according to projections and maps released this week. The enhancements are designed to protect the city against the failure of its pumping system during a 100-year storm, equivalent to Hurricane Rita, the Times Picayune reported on August 22. Calling
By itself, the image is not necessarily striking: a battered boxcar being hoisted into place at a construction site. Its power lies in knowing its history. The car, an exhibit at the new Museum of Memory and Tolerance, which opens next year in Mexico City, once transported Jews and other people destined for Nazi death camps in Poland during the Holocaust.
The search for a new dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) came to an end on August 10 with the announcement that the school had nabbed Mohsen Mostafavi, who is currently the dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York.
Urban revitalization is emerging in Poland in tandem with world-class design, drawing the likes of architect Robert Krier and filmmaker David Lynch to the scene for movie-related building projects. In Lodz, a town outside of Warsaw where Lynch shot scenes for Inland Empire in 2006, the pair is in development talks for an urban renewal project whose cornerstone will be a film studio and arts center.
Columbia University’s simmering tension with Harlem residents over its plan to build a new, 17-acre campus in Manhattanville came to a boil last week when a rowdy, standing-room-only crowd of roughly 400 people armed with signs and maracas packed into a hearing on the school’s 197-C development plan, developed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM). This reaction made yesterday’s rejection of the plan by the local Community Board an inevitability. Columbia’s 197-C plan, named for a clause in New York City’s charter that requires potential developers to seek zoning approval through a land-use review,
After hearing hours of testimony on August 14, the Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) recommended landmark designation for John Johansen’s 1967 Morris Mechanic Theater. It also granted the structure “special list” status, which routes any applications for exterior work to CHAP for approval. This status can delay new construction permits by up to six months in order to accommodate obtaining official landmark status from the Baltimore City Council. As RECORD reported earlier this month, the Mechanic’s current owners are seeking to add a 10-story residential tower and retail space onto the vacant building, which will drastically alter
The American Institute of Architects’ Architectural Billings Index (ABI) rose more than four points in June for a total score of 59.3—its highest level since last summer. Institutional projects accounted for much of the gain. ABI data comes from surveys sent to 300 mainly commercial firms. Studies suggest a correlation between the ABI and construction levels nine to 12 months in the future.
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