Urban Planning Blog

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo. Let this be the best 12 minutes of your day. Watch it full-screen and in HD. And when you are done watching, read the description for a surprise.

A nice gallery of Jean Nouvel’s fantastic architectural works. Jean Nouvel was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture. In fact, he also designs home objects like bathroom faucets and showers that incorporate touch sensor technology that look to be inspired by Playstation.

[via World Architecture News]

A Daily Dose of Architecture brings our attention to the delightfully simplistic architecture of the Shanely Building. A fan of traditional ‘Rotring’ architectural rendering, I love how the end result was so close to the drawing.

The Rogers Stirk Harbour proposed design concept for the Transbay Terminal was unveiled earlier this week. The proposed towers will be the tallest structures on the West Coast. Jim Leftwich [via Boing Boing] has a different view of the design. He proposes couple of additions to the design and envisions a Middle Earth-esque vision for [...]

Constructing a cantilever structure is one of the most difficult things for a structural engineers to do. Remember the thumb-rule – for every foot cantilevered, you must anchor it at the support to a depth of 1.5 feet. For an architect, cantilevers are beautiful things and can literally extend capabilities of their building while remaining [...]

Architecture continues to push boundaries and of course, Daniel Libeskind is doing his share of pushing as designs for Gazprom City in St.Petersburg [HQ for the Russian gas giant] stream in. The building is expected to rise at least 300m into the air and symbolize the growing power of the firm. Check out the other [...]

I remember visiting Chandigarh and being saddened by the level of security at the Capitol Complex. Le Corbusier’s sculptural buildings were sandbagged and protected heavily with machine-gun toting security guards. The vast expanse of the central plaza between the Assembly Building and the High Court was interrupted by a barb wire fence that looked not [...]

openhousenewyork (OHNY) will present the 4th Annual OHNY Weekend, America’s largest architecture and design event, October 7 & 8, 2006. Presented by Target, OHNY Weekend provides the public with free access to more than 180 sites of architecture and design significance throughout all five boroughs, including many that are normally closed to the public, as [...]

One of the big challenges was to establish a natural gathering place for architecture students that would also unite the disparate elements around it, from the 19th-century rustic style of Sibley Hall to the early-20th-century industrial style of Rand Hall. Rather than create a showy building thrusting upward or sprawling outward, Mr. Koolhaas said, he [...]

I love the quirky homes on the West coast. The cities on the west coast have a unique sense of character which although can be weird at time is mostly refreshing from the sameness that we encounter in the American urban wasteland. Seattle Dream Homes, a real estate resource network showcases unique home designs and [...]

Pretty cool animation walkthrough of the famous Kaufmann house or as popularly known, Falling Water by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Although this animation doesn’t compare to the real thing which I did couple of years back, it can be the next best thing. However, don’t expect someone to jump out and start shooting. If you [...]

After reviewing subway logos last week, we turn our attention to actual subway structures which can be a work of art in itself. There is surely something about bagging a public transit terminal design contract that makes architects go whoopie! They tend to stretch their imaginations, work in collaboration with artists and structural engineers, and [...]

Wouldn’t you kill for a view like that? Well, except you don’t have to. A company of architecture of Barcelona and a group of aircraft engineers of Florida (EUA) are developing a prototype of room of space hotel, baptized like Galactic Suite, so that the tourists and astronauts who are decided to travel to the [...]

An awesome panoramic picture [via] (click to view larger version) of one of my favorite buildings, The Guggenheim Museum at New York.