Tag Archives: architecture

San Francisco’s CBS News affiliate reports: Construction on a fix for San Francisco’s leaning Millennium Tower came to a stop in late August because the fix was actually making the tower sink even more. Now it appears some of that damage could have been avoided. “Millennium Partners wanted to get the thing wrapped up,” said Robert Pyke, a geotechnical engineer …

CNN reports: The White House has ousted several members of a prestigious arts commission in the nation’s capital, the latest move in the Biden administration’s purge of Trump-era appointees from government agencies and boards. Justin Shubow [photo], who was appointed in 2018 and later elected chairman, received a letter from the White House on Monday requesting he resign from the …

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily reports: Shoppers fled Shenzhen’s 71-storey Saige Plaza after the building wobbled on Tuesday afternoon, with the city’s authorities confirming no earthquake and storm had been detected. Dozens of videos circulating on China’s microblogging platform Weibo showed swinging antennas at the top of the building at around 1 p.m., as people ran onto the street in panic …

NPR reports: Late Wednesday, President Biden revoked a controversial executive order former President Trump signed in December called “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” The announcement from The White House was included in an executive order that revoked a number of Trump’s actions as president. Biden’s executive order instructs the director of the Office of Management and Budget and any related …

Bloomberg News reports: President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday making classical architecture the preferred style for federal buildings in Washington, a White House official said Monday. The presidential action stops short of mandating that all new federal buildings are built in a classical style, saying merely that they must be “beautiful.” Under the order, a “Council for …

The New York Times reports: Should every new government building in the nation’s capital be created in the same style as the White House? A draft of an executive order called “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” would establish a classical style, inspired by Greek and Roman architecture, as the default for federal buildings in Washington and many throughout the country, …

The New York Times reports: I. M. Pei, the China-born American architect who began his long career working for a New York real-estate developer and ended it as one of the most revered architects in the world, has died. He was 102. His son Li Chung Pei said on Thursday that his father had died overnight. Mr. Pei was probably …

Via Bloomberg: Downtown Manhattan got a new architectural landmark on Thursday. Was it worth it? Well, that’s a more complicated story. Architect Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center Transportation Hub opened with an afternoon ceremony to a trickle of commuters and a flood of controversy. (“Functionally vapid,” a “boondoggle” that “wows rather than elevates” have been some of the harsher critiques.) …

In fact, it’s for attractive ladies. Cosmo mocks: According to Huanqiu.com, the very large glass shoe you see above is actually a new church built in Chiayi, Taiwan, for the purpose of bringing all the women to the congregation’s yard. Really — the church was built with “particularly attractive” tourists in mind and will open for the Lunar New Year …

I first reported on One Vanderbilt last September, when developers revealed that it will be 200 feet taller than the Empire State, 400 feet taller than the one-block-away Chrysler, and 600 feet taller than its almost-abutting Met Life neighbor. Today we get a new promo video for the tower, which upon completion will briefly become Gotham’s third-tallest building behind One …

New Yorkers might think we’re getting our own Tower Of Pisa, but as Gothamist explains, it’s supposed to lean like that. They write: A new building is going up near a long-empty land parcel near the East River in Midtown, and it looks a little …sideways. Lest you think this sloped structure is the product of some Jägerbombed architect, it …

The comments over at Friendly Atheist are hilarious and I’m sure you’ll do just as well. Hemant Mehta writes: I hear if you’re especially nice to it, it might grow even taller. (Yeah, yeah, it’s just a building. I’m very immature. As if you weren’t thinking the same damn thing. I suppose it could be worse.) Here’s what really made …

Mashable has published a photo essay which looks back at the original Penn Station. In 1910, when New York City transportation terminal Pennsylvania Station opened, it was widely praised for its majestic architecture. Designed in the Beaux-Arts style, it featured pink granite construction and a stately colonnade on the exterior.The main waiting room, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla, …

Vogue reports: In case you didn’t have enough proof that Beyoncé is slowly taking over the world, Australia just approved plans to build a 68-story skyscraper in the shape of the singer’s famously curvaceous figure. While there have been plenty of oddly shaped structures that have gone up in the past—such as these constructions in the form of a robot, …

Via Architecture  Daily: Designed as seven unique building stacked on top of each other, the stepped 2 WTC tower will rise 1,340 feet – a height that would make it Manhattan’s third-tallest building if built today. 21st Century Fox and News Corp will occupy the 80-plus story building’s lower half. The upper portion of the building will be leased by …

1.2M views already. The observation deck opened this week. (Tipped by JMG reader Ray)

Via the Guardian: Four helipads will cluster around one of the largest domes in the world, like sideplates awaiting the unveiling of a momentous main course, which will be jacked up 45 storeys into the sky above the deserts of Mecca. It is the crowning feature of the holy city’s crowning glory, the superlative summit of what will be the …

New York Yimby has some new details about midtown’s coming Nordstrom Tower, which is now under construction. Permits for the tower have continued to shift slightly in recent months, but the documents YIMBY previously obtained indicated the building would have a roof height of 1,479 feet and a pinnacle height of 1,775 feet, which would make it the tallest residential …

Via the New York Times: An imposingly realistic vision of the old 1 World Trade Center, the ultimately doomed north tower, will begin appearing next month in a most unlikely place: the five special elevators servicing the observatory atop the new 1 World Trade Center. From the moment the doors close until they reopen 47 seconds later on the 102nd …

Via the Huffington Post: Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka are giving Architectural Digest readers some major real estate envy, showing off their five-story Manhattan townhouse in the magazine’s March issue. The couple, who tied the knot in Italy last September, told the magazine that they began searching for a New York abode once Harris’ stint on “How I Met …