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Economy Ideas Smarter Cities Society

Digital Billboards, Skyscraping Videos: Let’s Not Cover Our Cities In Screens

As digital facades and minimalist design dominate the urban landscape, architect Florent Auclair argues for the revival of ornamentation as a cultural language that connects buildings to their time, their place, and the people who live among them.

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Economy Geopolitics Society

Grandeur, Mind Control, Trump: Why Architecture In The Gulf Is So Political

Architecture is a form of soft power, a symbolic language through which Gulf states tell stories about themselves to the world and to their own citizens — and ultimately, to exercise control.

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Food / Travel Society

Brutalist Architecture Wonders: 15 Buildings Inspiring The Oscar-Nominated Epic

The Brady Corbet movie featuring Adrian Brody is inspired by the post-War architectural style called Brutalism, which found its way from New Delhi to L.A. to Buenos Aires, with concrete stops around the world.

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Society

Le Vele Chronicles: The Mob And Urban Ideals Mix In A Naples Housing Complex

The tragic death of two people inside the Neapolitan housing complex has thrown the spotlight back on a place that had transformed quickly from model city to a Camorra stronghold. Le Vele are now once again a model for other suburbs.

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Society

How Modi Is Using Architecture To Build His “New India” Political Legacy

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plans for beautification supposedly capture the aspirations of citizens but are a cover for the actual political project of legitimizing his narrative of history, which glorifies right-wing groups and appropriates leaders who have been purportedly overlooked by Congress.

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In The News

Worldcrunch Magazine #85 — Women, Safety & Our Cities

June 3 – June 9, 2024

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Food / Travel Society

Super Bowl: Reinventing The Toilet, With A French Flair

Long neglected in our homes, toilets are undergoing a revolution through both technological and design innovations. As we spend on average more than a year of our lives on them, consumers are increasingly looking for something more than purely functional.

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This Happened

This Happened — May 28: Golden Gate Bridge’s Grand Debut

Updated May 28, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. The Golden Gate Bridge was inaugurated on this day in 1937. Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge began on January 5, 1933, taking a total of four years and three months. Where is the Golden Gate Bridge located? The Golden Gate Bridge is located in San Francisco, California, […]

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Society Women Worldwide

Why Egyptian Building And City Design Make Life Riskier For Women

An anthropologist who has focused on urban geography and violence, Omnia Khalil reflects on how her daily movement was shaped by architectural design in Egypt, a country where sexual harassment is a widespread and serious problem.

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Society

Converting Convents? A Sacred Response To Lisbon’s Housing Crisis

Throughout the ages, convents have been adapted and transformed to fulfil the needs of growing cities such as Portugal’s capital city Lisbon. Now more than ever, with an ongoing housing crisis, researchers, politicians and developers are looking at convents to be transformed into housing solutions.

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Green

How Morocco’s Traditional Clay Homes Resist Earthquakes, Climate Change

When a violent earthquake rocked the High Atlas in 2023, traditional earthen buildings resisted the seismic shocks better than other more modern ones. Yet despite its resilience and sustainability, this valuable cultural heritage is the victim of misperceptions and risks abandonment.

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Economy Russia-Ukraine War

What Explains The Surprising Boom In Ukraine’s Real Estate Market

Real estate is booming in Ukraine, even as the war with Russia has fundamentally changed where people want to live, and in what kind of buildings. There is, in any case, a lot of activity as lives are uprooted — and a general preference for lower floors.

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Food / Travel Green

Santorini To Machu Picchu To Mount Everest — The War Against Over-Tourism Is On

From setting new rules, imposing tolls and fines, local officials in some of the world’s most desirable tourist spots are trying to figure out the right balance to keep visitors coming without ruining the environment, or the experience.

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Food / Travel Society

How The Centre Pompidou’s Original Sketches Were Rediscovered — In A Parking Lot

Four hundred tubes that tell the story of the architectural adventure of the making of Beaubourg, which is about to undergo a major renovation project as its 50th anniversary approaches.

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Society

When A Library Is Born On A Tiny Italian Island

Inside an old watchtower dangling over the crashing waves of the port of Capraia, dwell 6,000 books and their keeper: 33-year-old Viola, a librarian who took the time during the COVID-19 pandemic to ask herself, “What makes you truly happy?”

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Economy

La Défense Or Bust? Inside The Battle To Save Europe’s Largest Business District

Deep structural problems were already pushing it to breaking point. And with teleworking becoming the new normal after COVID, Paris’s La Défense business district stands as a melancholic shadow of its old, buzzing self. Can it find a way to reinvent itself?

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This Happened

This Happened — October 20: Sydney Opera House Opens

The Sydney Opera House opened on this day in 1973. Who designed the Sydney Opera House? The Sydney Opera House was designed by the renowned Danish architect Jørn Utzon. Its innovative and iconic design is internationally recognized and admired for its distinctive shell-like structures. It is considered one of the most iconic and significant architectural […]

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Food / Travel Society

The Palace Of Versailles, A 400-Year-Old Construction Site

The emblematic palace of King Louis XIV, born from the will of his father Louis XIII, is celebrating its 400th anniversary. Throughout its adaptation to different eras and restoration, the work has (almost) never stopped.

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Ideas Society

How Modern Warfare Warps A City’s Future — Reflections Of An Architect From Homs, Syria

It has been almost 12 years since the author left his hometown, which was at the center of the Syrian uprising. He’s made an academic career studying the impact of war on architecture and cities and researching acts of deliberate destruction.

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Food / Travel Green Society

Mendoza’s “Recycled” Winery — Argentine Eco Architecture With A Splash

Architects in Mendoza, western Argentina, have used hundreds of tons of recycled building material, shipping containers and discarded decorations to create an otherwise high-tech winery.

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Future

Out With The Car, In With The Urban “Super-Island”

Barcelona architect Ton Salvadó explains how a new way or organizing urban areas might lead to greener, more peaceful cities.

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Society

Return To Clay: Why An Ancient Building Material Is Back In Fashion

Concrete and glass are often thought of as the only building materials of modern architecture. But Francis Diébédo Kéré, the first African winner of a prestigious Pritzker architecture prize, works with clay, whose sustainability is not the only benefit.

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Geopolitics Russia-Ukraine War Society

Beyond Post-Soviet: Ukraine’s Architectural Opportunity From The Rubble Of War

The war rages on, but some in Ukraine are already looking to how society can be rebuilt. Two Ukrainian architects share their vision for what a future Ukrainian urbanism — and society — might look like.

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In The News

Beyond Bauhaus, The Case For Preservation Of Postmodern Architecture

Postmodern architecture has always been divisive, so how should we approach the preservation of this roundly unloved style described by everything from “kitsch” to “neoliberal”? Some experts would prefer to simply tear it down.

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Ideas Society

Build Back Freer? Anarchist Architecture As Post-Pandemic Model

Imagine self-organized forms of building, from remodeling existing structures to building entirely new spaces to accommodate individual liberty and radical change in social organization. It’s a movement whose time may be coming.

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Green Green Or Gone Ideas special series

Facing Climate Emergency, Africa Must Reinvent Its Cities

Due to climate change and pollution, entire neighborhoods and cities on the continent are destined to vanish. A new vision of African urbanism is needed to replace the illusion of the “city without limits.”

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Food / Travel

La Sagrada Familia Delayed Again — Blame COVID-19 This Time

Hopes were dashed by local officials to see the completion of the iconic Barcelona church in 2026, in time for the 100th anniversary of the death of its renowned architect Antoni Gaudí.

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Ideas Society

Cairo Is Urban Trauma, Postcard From A City Planner

This dearth of urban planning in the Egyptian capital dates back half a century. But it reached a new peak starting in 2019, when one of its last livable districts saw its old ways demolished.

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In The News

Brutalism Is Back! — But With Some Softer Twists

Truth be told, the post-World World II frenzy for straight lines and exposed concrete never really left. But it has evolved, as demonstrated by Kouichi Kimura’s ‘Tranquil House’ in Japan.

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In The News

Healthier Spaces: COVID-19 Prompts Rethink Of Hospital Design

While it may make sense from a business perspective, healthcare facilities should focus on more than just optimizing space. Hospital architecture lessons from a pandemic.

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Society

Stuck At Home? Let There Be Good Lighting

Now more than ever is the time to find just the right light for our homes and apartments.

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Society

In Buenos Aires, A Cemetery That Blends Beauty And Brutalism

A pair of French architects are bringing new attention to a unique, underground section of the Chacarita cemetery in Buenos Aires.

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Ideas Society

How To Renovate Kyiv: Start By Replacing All Soviet-Era Slums

There’s an old joke about the apartment complexes named after Khrushchev​.

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In The News

The Many Benefits Of Building With Bamboo

Drawing inspiration from his childhood in Colombia, architect Mauricio Cárdenas is convinced that the age-old material also has a bright future.

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Society

Subterranean Earthsick Clues: If Climate Change Forces Us Underground

Global warming may eventually force Homo sapiens to again seek cover from the elements. A global tour of the history of humans living underground.

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Ideas Society

Bauhaus In Britain: History Of London’s ‘Modern Living’ Experiment

A derivative of the Bauhaus revolution, the Isokon building brought modernity, and affordable rent, to conservative Britain — 85 years ago.

Categories
In The News

A Century Ago, Birth Of The Bauhaus

The Bauhaus movement came to life in Germany after the end of World War I. And it lives on today in many ways.

Categories
In The News

Fusing Design And Psychology To Boost Office Productivity

BUENOS AIRES — Mariana Stange has lots of market experience, particular in the corporate sector. She’s a realtor who specializes in helping firms move premises. For the best results, she uses scientific research, which may not be the standard practice, but it is very effective. The intersection of architecture and psychology has created neuro-architecture. “It’s […]

Categories
Food / Travel Society

Belle Époque Glamor Coming Back To Harrods — In Buenos Aires

Architects plan to restore one of the Argentine capital’s architectural gems, but with new co-working and co-living spaces that reflect the latest trends.

Categories
Ideas

Is Modernity Destined To Destroy Beauty?

-OpEd- PARIS — Between all the brutal Brexit fireworks, the British government took an initiative of rare poetic dimension by establishing a “Building Better, Building Beautiful” commission. According to its official terms of reference, the commission’s task is to “develop practical policy solutions to ensure the design and style of new developments, including new settlements […]

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