Places Develop People

from http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/

For talent migration, tolerance doesn't matter. The idea that London is a winner in the vote-with-feet competition because of its cosmopolitan disposition is amusing. No city is immune to parochial attitudes:

But London in 2012, like most other global cities, is in significant flux, much less beholden to sepia-tinged notions of what it used to be and much more a product of its new arrivals. Over the last decade, the foreign-born population reached 2.6 million, just about a third of the city. In addition to longstanding Irish, Indian, Jamaican and Bangladeshi communities, there are now many new immigrants from Nigeria, Slovenia, Ghana, Vietnam and Somalia. I’ve seen Russians fly in on their private jets, and Eastern Europeans breach the city limits in cars filled to the roof with suitcases and potted plants.

The changing population has inspired a certain amount of nativism in the city, sometimes good-natured, sometimes less so. There are those who believe that true Londoners are cockneys, and to be one of those you must be born within earshot of Bow Bells. Or: True Londoners are born within the ring of the M25 motorway. Others think that all it takes to be a Londoner is to have lived here for a great deal of time — at least 70 years, or 52 years, or 8 years, or, in one case, just over a month. “But it was a very good month,” this new Londoner told me, fresh from the north of England. “I’ve totally forgotten Macclesfield.”

Emphasis added. This reality check casts a pall over the slew of welcoming committees designed to increase immigration to shrinking cities. Rolling out the red carpet to any migrant won't do much to enhance talent attraction and boost population. The same is true for expensive urban amenities and transit boondoggles.

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Original Article

People are flocking to crowded and expensive locales. The traffic in Northern Virginia is awful. Yet, here I am. What makes you think that your cheaper and friendlier city with better public transit will change that?



Mark Neville for The New York Times

Revelers at Boujis, an exclusive private club in the wealthy neighborhood South Kensington.



Architect hopes to complete trio of Dallas bridges

WFAA.com Dallas/Fort Worth article:

DALLAS — The world-famous architect behind Dallas’ new bridge says his work in Dallas is not yet done.

Santiago Calatrava has already finished designing a second bridge over the Trinity River to complement the soaring single white arch of his new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge spanning the Trinity River.

Now, he says he hopes to design a third bridge, as originally planned — back when dreams and budgets seemed to be bigger.

"It is necessary, I think, to do at least a third piece, who will, of course, compliment [the other bridges]," the Spanish architect told News 8 on Saturday. "They have to be like sisters speaking with each other!"

World’s Greenest Building Might Be In Pittsburgh

From Earth Techling article:

Back in November, we brought you word that the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh was taking on the deep green challenge set by the Pacific Northwest’s arm of the U.S. Green Building Council and the International Living Building Institute. Now we’ve got specs in our hot little hands for the new Center for Sustainable Landscapes, set to open this spring, and man-oh-man, is there any green building strategy in the known universe this building doesn’t showcase?

Sure, it’s got all those green build prereqs: a high-performance building envelope, low-e windows, and an impressive amount of insulation, as well as natural daylighting and smart-control building/occupant sensors. Low-flow faucets and fixtures, check; solar power, check; solar thermal (hot water system), check. You’ll also find recycled/sustainably sourced materials throughout, a green roof, native/drought resistant landscaping, and a rainwater harvesting system.

But this is pretty much where comparisons between the Phipps Conservatory’s Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL) and the majority of green build projects we cover begins to break down. Because this building goes further—much further.

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What It Takes to Build a Subway

from Architeizer:

The photographs, taken by Jake Dobkin, capture a glimpse of the mind-blowing feats of engineering that have been so unjustly relayed to urban commuters via service change announcements printed in nonchalant Helvetica. Certainly, the limp barricade of pink tape that limits access to the 7 train on Saturdays and Sundays will tell you that something is going on down there. But these images of ten-story drops and cavernous concrete vaults speak volumes about the $2.5 billion dollar expansion project that hopes to assuage the afflictions of frustrated New Yorkers by early 2014.

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Why Don’t We Read About Architecture?

from New York Times:

“Buildings are everywhere,” writes Alexandra Lange, “large and small, ugly and beautiful, ambitious and dumb. We walk among them and live inside them but are largely passive dwellers in cities or towers, houses, open spaces, and shops we had no hand in creating.”

Buildings are discussed — indeed aspects of them obsessed upon — but almost exclusively in the context of economics. This building went over budget, that surplus of houses led to the foreclosure crisis, that condo broke the record for residential real estate, etc. To the layman, then, architecture is conveyed as little more than something that costs a lot and causes a lot of grief, rather than something with the potential to enhance our daily lives.

But as the architecture and design critic Lange points out in her new book, “Writing About Architecture,” we need to engage our citizenry in architecture in ways that move from passivity or accusation (i.e., Nimbyism) and to do so we need more … architecture critics.

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It was Martin Mull (or Steve Martin or Laurie Anderson — check out the discussion of quote provenance here) who said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” To ruin the analogy further, writing about architecture is like mangling language, and far too often the experience of reading architectural writing feels about as pleasurable as tooth extraction.

Arcitectural Digest top 100 in 2012

Architectural Digest top 100

Architecture and design are not static professions: Styles evolve, technologies advance, challenges propel. Driving this perpetual change in 2012 are the celebrated men and women of the new AD100, from an influential decorator working solo to visionary architects managing a spectrum of satellite offices. The following esteemed firms represent a fellowship of trailblazers and standard-bearers whose work is imaginative, intelligent, and inspiring.

a gaudy distraction from the dark financial forces

from Guardian article:

Frank Gehry: 'There's a backlash against me'

Frank Gehry's success with the Bilbao Guggenheim sparked an inevitable backlash, but, as he says, 'expression' is still vital to architecture

There are iconic architects and there is the architect who is the icon of iconic architecture. Whether he wanted to or not, Frank Gehry, as the creator of the titanium-clad Bilbao Guggenheim, made the original for 10,000 wannabes – pointy, swooshy, shiny things, would-be masterpieces that proclaimed regeneration for whichever ex-industrial swamp or intended megalopolis that happened to host them. He was feted in magazines and film and by an appearance on The Simpsons. He became the epitome of the idea – again, without much reference to his own wishes – that genius in architecture lies in spectacular shape-making.

Then there was the inevitable reaction. Iconic architecture came to be seen as wasteful, extravagant, unsustainable and, worse, a gaudy distraction from the dark financial forces for which it was a bauble. It seemed perfectly to encapsulate the great pre-crash deception, by offering only the appearance of glamour and prosperity. According to the art critic Hal Foster, Gehry's Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles is a "media logo" and his style of architecture is a "winning formula" for "any corporate entity that desires to be perceived, through an instant icon, as a global player". Someone started selling T-shirts saying "Fuck Frank Gehry" (and he bought some).

Read the rest here..

Photograph: Paul Goguen/Bloomberg via Getty

Spruce Street tower
At the age of 81, Gehry completed his first skyscraper. It brings a joie de vivre to the New York skyline unmatched for decades

KennethGarrett/National Geographic/Getty Images)

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain. Frank Gehry's abstract masterpiece has curves designed to appear random, but carefully modelled on modern software to catch the light

Michael Sohn/AP

The Neuer Zollhof building. As part of the regeneration of Dusseldorf's harbour area, Gehry's buildings tilt, lean and twist

Richard Sobol/ZUMA/Corbis

The Ray and Maria Stata Centre for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Luminaries such as Noam Chomsky and Tim Berners-Lee have offices here

AP

The Experience Music Project, Seattle. This museum pays tribute to 20th-century rock musicians and was inspired in part by the iconic design of Stratocaster guitars

 

Photograph: Susan Wood/Getty

Gehry residence
Gehry’s house, a low-budget makeover of a 1920s bungalow, was his creative calling card. He wrapped the building in corrugated sheet metal, timber and glass, translating the energy of sketches into built form