Nikos Salingaros presents the case for demolishing a modernist eyesore in Rome and replacing it with a high-density, mixed-use New Urbanist neighborhood.
The Corviale building outside Rome is a social housing block that exemplifies the established Corbusian tradition of treating human beings as battery chickens. It was built during 1972-1982 as a single one-kilometer-long building. It is now estimated to house 6,000 people. Apologists who are nostalgic of Soviet-era social experiments continue to defend its paradigmatic modernist design on the grounds that every resident is EQUALLY oppressed in this inhuman environment, an ideal consistent with totalitarian notions of social equality. (source planetizin) Read more...

AMO, the think tank within the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), has extended its expertise in planning into the design of the future energy infrastructure of the EU as part of Roadmap 2050: A Practical Guide to a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Europe. The project, proposing an EU-wide decarbonized power grid by 2050, launches in Brussels today to an audience of European leaders. (source architecture lab) Read more…

AMO, the think tank within the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), has extended its expertise in planning into the design of the future energy infrastructure of the EU as part of Roadmap 2050: A Practical Guide to a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Europe. The project, proposing an EU-wide decarbonized power grid by 2050, launches in Brussels today to an audience of European leaders. (source architecture lab) Read more…

With yesterday’s long-delayed opening of Pier 1, the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park is now approximately seven percent complete! OK, so there’s still a long way to go until New York’s third great urban landscape is whole—but, if this first section is any indication, it will be worth the wait. (source metropolis magazine) Read more…

A great post on Urban Omnibus investigates the potential of implementation of urban reforestation blended into existing buildings in our urban areas. (source landscape and urbanism) Read more…

This intervention is part of an urban requalification plan for an avenue in Sacavém, on the outskirts of Lisbon. It is promoted by Loures City Hall. The project was composed of three interventions, but only two were completed. (source mimoa) Read more…

Chinese firm MAD architects have sent us in images of their 2008 'fake hills' project. their design for a new housing development is located in the coastal city of beihai, on a long, narrow waterfront site. (source designboom) Read more…

According to statistics Belgium is 99% urbanized. Driving through it, one is forced to rethink one’s “Chinese” perception of urbanization. Belgium is fully peri-urbanized, offering a strongly mixed territory of housing developments, roads, warehouses, churches and open fields. (source movingcities.org) Read more…

New York-based painter Carmen Einfinger has won an international competition to transform Dolna Square in Gdansk, Poland, into a vibrant outdoor gallery. (source bustler) Read more…

It sounds like the plot of the movie Jurassic Park (minus the dinosaurs), but JDS Architects’ have created an incredible plan for a zoo located on the South Korean island of Dochodo. The island could, according to the architecture firm, be a “case study to define a tourist region based on sustainable development only, where natures and structures function in equilibrium, symbiotically feeding one another.” (source inhabitat) Read more…

Finally, an urban informatics project I worked on that I can talk about here, even if it’s currently still ‘paper architecture’ (pixel architecture?). The nature of urban development is such that I can’t yet say much about recent design work on projects (including Masdar (with LAVA), Helsinki (with Sauerbruch Hutton/Experientia), and just yesterday Seoul (with Studio Libeskind) etc., as well as various others I can’t yet mention, and building/infrastructure-level projects in Brisbane and Sydney.) (source city of sound) Read more…

Caught between the past and the future, Oslo is constantly struggling with expansion while maintaining its charactiristic low density. (source worldview) Read more…

Two architects, changki yun (korea) and xiaoyi zhang (china) and kyungam architects  have sent in images of their just completed project floating stage named diliter:dancing  light and water) located on the han river. The project is part of the han river renaissance  master plan and will be an eco friendly icon that harmonizes with yeoido's bam island. (source designboom) Read more…

The Novartis building by Gehry Partners is part of the Masterplan for Novartis, designed by Vittorio Magnano Lampugnani, that will transform the St. Johann site, its headquarters in Basel, from an industrial complex to a campus of innovation, knowledge and encounter. (source arcspace) Read more

I've started a new collaboration with an interior architect. Her name is Ina. She's an intelligent, assertive personality who will shape all my insides. We'll be stimulating the collaboration between architects and interior architects. You can follow our most inspiring discussions in the daily strip.