Quick Clicks> Carchitecture, Cats, Litter, Blight
Herzog & de Meuron's Miami Beach parking garage (Courtesy joevare/flickr)
[ Quick Clicks> A guided tour of interesting links from across the web. And beyond. ]
Carchitecture. What happens when you hire Herzog & de Meuron to design your parking garage? People suddenly begin to push out the cars. That seems to be the case in Miami Beach according to a NY Times article on the upscale soirees and and tourists that have become common place in the uncommon structure.
Quick Clicks> Coffee, Immobility, Engagement, Hipsters
Historic JFG Coffee sign in Knoxville, TN (Courtesy Knox Heritage)
[ Quick Clicks is AN's guided tour of interesting links from around the web. ]
Coffee Break. A fourteen-foot tall neon sign that has been removed from the Knoxville, TN skyline after 50 years is undergoing restoration but needs a new home. Preservation magazine has the story and Knox Heritage has more info on their sign restoration program.
Quick Clicks> View, Fix, Crash, Don′t Crash
View from rooftop of planned Brooklyn Bridge Park restaurant (via Curbed)
[ Quick Clicks: A regular guided tour of interesting links from around the web. ]
What a view. Curbed uncovered a few renderings of the planned restaurant at Brooklyn Bridge Park including the view from its rooftop terrace (Hey, where’d the Beekman 8 Spruce Tower run off to?). There’s currently an RFP out until January 25 for a restaurant operator to fill the already partially-built concrete and wood structure.
Quick Clicks> Lost, Super, Speed, Parking
Hotel Grand Prospect rendering (Courtesy Curbed)
Parking Slope. A parking lot in Park Slope, Brooklyn could soon sprout an 11-story, 166-room hotel designed by Doban Architecture (pictured above). Curbed stopped by a community meeting last Thursday and reports Hotel Grand Prospect has extended the neighborhood an olive branch in the form of a 400-car parking garage which has won over some community members. The project is still in its early phases and traffic and environmental studies have yet to be completed. (More at Curbed.)
Quick Clicks: Ruination, Context, Issues, Movement, Resolutions
Obelisk in Central Park (Courtesy Thom Watson/Flickr)
[ Quick Clicks> A hand-selected tour of links from around the world. ]
Ruination. Mayor Bloomberg received an angry letter in the mail last week from Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. According to the NY Times, Hawass is threatening to take back the circa-1500 B.C. monument if the city doesn’t properly care for the inscribed hieroglyphics. Heavily eroded, the obelisk was a gifted to the United States in 1869 to celebrate the completion of the Suez Canal.
Quick Clicks: Failing Schools, Hangover, Beekman Boos, Grand Piano
Renzo Piano's London Shard (Courtesy Sellar Property Group)
Failing schools. Fast Company isn’t pulling any punches with a title like “American Design Schools are a Mess, and Produce Weak Graduates.” Designer Gadi Amit laments in his lengthy critique, “I’m finding that the impressive academic credentials of most students don’t add up to the basic skills I require in a junior designer. Simply put, the design education system today is failing many aspiring young students.” [ Fast Company ]
Hangover. It’s difficult to imagine how such a thing could happen, but an architect working for the US government in Japan managed to rack up a tab of $36,890 at a Tokyo bar. (If you’re curious, that’s 3,011 shots!) The bill is the result of a drum-based bar-competition, and architect Kaz Miura now holds a title previously held by bankers and movie stars. [ The Australian via UnBeige ]
Booing Beekman. James Gardner delivers a scathing review of Frank Gehry’s yet-to-be-completed 8 Sprice Street née Beekman Tower in Lower Manhattan. Opening with a question, Gardner asks why the tower is “so thoroughly sad and unimpressive.” Ouch. And it doesn’t get much better further in. At the root of it, the problem seems to be that the tower is rather conventional despite its curvaceous titanium skin. [ The Real Deal ]
Grand Piano. Renzo Piano’s London skyscraper dubbed the Shard (rendered at top) has topped out, or at least its central concrete core. Standing over 1,000 feet tall, the Shard will be the tallest tower in the UK and the tallest commercial tower in Europe. (And, if you recall, Renzo Piano is pretty tall himself.) Construction started in early 2009 and the tower is expected to be complete by the summer of 2012. [ BD Online ]
Daily Clicks: Top Ten, Exhibitionist, Streetcars, Saving Trees
Stephan Sagmeister's new web site. (Courtesy Sagmeister.com)
We’re starting up a new regular feature here on the AN Blog we’re tentatively calling Daily Clicks. For your perusal, a quick selection of architecture and design stories from around the web.
The year’s best. The Chicago Tribune‘s Blair Kamin looks beyond the doom and gloom that was 2010 to find the top ten architectural bright spots. Among his picks? The opening of the Burj Khalifa and a pollution-eating park in Chicago, and [ City Scapes ]
Cincy Streetcar. Cincinnati is one step closer to a new streetcar system, after the Ohio Department of Transportation unanimously recommended $35 million for construction of the system’s first phase, which is expected to open in 2013. [ Urban Cincy ]
Don’t hit print! A new file format, the WWF (after the World Wildlife Fund, of course), aims at saving a few trees as we send around PDFs through e.mail. If you’d like to prohibit your PDFs from being printed, there’s a free software download. [ Core 77 ]
Office Exhibitionism. Artist Stephan Sagmeister has a new web site. Now, you can sit and stare at a live feed from a web cam inside his New York studio to make sure everyone’s working. On this late Friday afternoon, orange balloons were strewn across the floor, leaving us regretting we’d missed the party. [ Creative Review ]
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