In contrast to the excitement of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial’s opening weekend, artist and Chicago native Theaster Gates addressed the press in a decidedly less enthusiastic tone. “As excited as I am about the history of Chicago architecture,” he said, “we also have an amazing history of racism, segregation, [and] a history of redlining and housing covenants that work against the poor, and against black and brown people.” Gates’ contribution to the biennial, the transformation of a derelict 1923 neoclassical building into a community cultural center called the Stony Island Arts Bank, embodies the effects of redlining very succinctly.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris designed the all-girls school in London. Thursday evening, the Royal Institute of British Architects presented London-based firm Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) with the RIBA Stirling Prize—the U.K.’s most prestigious architecture award—for their work on the Burntwood School. The 2,000-student secondary school located in London’s Wandsworth district provides an enriched science and math curriculum. AHMM added six academic buildings and two large cultural centers to the campus, linking the new facilities to existing modernist structures designed in the 1950s by renowned architect Sir Leslie Martin. The firm created double height spaces at the end of corridors
The WMF unveils its 2016 Monuments Watch List. The ancient city of Petra in Jordan. The World Monuments Fund (WMF) today announced its 2016 Monuments Watch list, a biennial designation that identifies the world’s most vulnerable heritage sites to generate awareness and prompt preservation. “The 2016 Watch includes many extraordinary places that deserve to be celebrated because they represent high moments of human culture,” said WMF president Bonnie Burnham. “Worldwide concern would strengthen our ability to save them.”This year's roster features 50 structures in 36 countries—from Albania to Zimbabwe—and encompasses a wide variety of types—from an Edwardian bathhouse to a
Ai Weiwei, China’s most famous living artist, is not a licensed architect, but he sure acts like one: He designs buildings, creates gigantic site-specific installations, organizes art exhibitions, and makes works of art constructed like houses.
Architectural Record’s annual Women in Architecture awards program is intended to acknowledge the increasingly visible role of women in the profession; to encourage firms to promote women architects and their work; and to provide an opportunity for women in the field to come together to celebrate their contributions to the design of the built environment.
A new exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art reconsiders urban renewal in Pittsburgh — and America. Aerial view of Pittsburgh, 1954. After years of combating its soot-covered-metropolis-on-the-skids image, Pittsburgh is on the march. It has remade itself from a smoky blue-collar steel town into a green white-collar information hub that lures tech companies like Google and Uber. The resurgent Pittsburgh was named America’s most livable city last year by the Economist, and, for the first time in decades, it’s a place people go to by choice rather than necessity. But this isn’t Pittsburgh’s first rebrand. From the early 1950s
Sales have officially commenced for Zaha Hadid’s 520 West 28th Street, a curvaceous luxury mid-rise tower that will join the throng of bombastic buildings abutting Manhattan’s High Line.
The 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial purports to be the largest survey of contemporary architecture to hit North America to date, and leading the monumental effort as its artistic directors are Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima.
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