Top 5 Blog Posts for Week of July 22, 2013

July 29, 2013 Amanda Walter

BNIM on a Kansas City Streetcar. Lake|Flato and the Boy Scouts Jamboree. AECOM notes on the Venice Biennale. HOK, biomimicry, and the Mint Museum. Data vs. delight by NBBJ.

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Streetcar in Kansas City. Kansas City has not seen a streetcar since 1957, but BNIM’s proposed “streetcar starter line,” would be a reintroduction of it.

BNIM’s work on the streetcar and light rail expansion will capture the initial momentum set forth by the streetcar for an entire new generation of users. While the region has considered light rail for decades, this project builds upon the foundation of recent success downtown.

Via BNIM Blog

New home for Boy Scouts. Matt Morris of Lake Flato discusses his visit to the new Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve in West Virginia for the 2013 National Scout Jamboree.

The main purpose of the trip was to check out the Scott Visitor Center, which is currently under construction. The center will have a new dance porch that will host exhibits about the site, scouting and West Virginia. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts have taken it over as a “patch trading” hub, a huge pastime in scouting where scouts set up under trees and along trails.

Via The Dogrun

Notes from the Venice Biennale. Daniel Elsea of AECOM writes about attending the vernissage of this year’s Venice Biennale held in June, an opening week of events, openings and parties that bring together the good and the great of the art world.

“For those of us who work in city-making, seeing one of the world’s most iconic cityscapes transformed into a contemporary art gallery – en masse – is a brilliant phenomenon. As it has for many decades, art today twists and turns notions of beauty; if often shocks; it overturns assumptions and it comes in dynamic forms – encompassing not just painting and sculpture, but architecture, video, sound, spoken word and performance, and three-dimensional media. It comments on the human condition today, reflecting anxieties and distorting realities. It requires an open mind.” – Daniel Elsea

Via AECOM’s Connected Cities blog

Museum inspired by biomimicry. Paul Wolford, design director in HOK’s San Francisco office, talks about how biomimicry inspired the vision for the San Francisco Museum at the Mint adaptive reuse project, which will be one of the country’s most environmentally innovative museums.

“When the city was founded in the 19th century, the San Francisco Bay’s edge and marshland area were just a few hundred feet from where the historic Old Mint building sits today. We suggested a design idea that incorporates lessons from the local biome while creating new ways to collect and store water.” – Paul Wolford

Via HOK Life

Future of workplace. NBBJ held its first salon event, Data vs. Delight, in partnership with Bloomberg Beta, to explore the changing dynamics of workplace design with the advent of big data.

Topics discussed included: What role does big data play in workplace design now that there is more of it and it’s easier to process than ever before? What degree do designers, who have typically relied on intuition to create space,a implement the technology into their practice? Is a physical office needed with more new technologies?

Via NBBJ Blog

Top 4 Architecture and Urbanism Blog Posts for Week of June 24, 2013

July 1, 2013 Amanda Walter

062413 Design is a research project. Pattern of blooms receives recognition. Renaissance in the Windy City. Women in engineering. National Zoo uses social media to find missing red panda. Design is a research project.

Peter Hourihan, an architect at Cannon Design, discusses how research opportunities are everywhere in a firm’s design work.

“There are a number of ways that project or design goals can be generated: overall client specific outcomes; design team design strategies; pressing or ongoing research topics; or novel, untested design innovations. Any of these categories can spawn specific large and small scale design goals. They can each become a hypothesis when the designer or team collects data and draws conclusions about the intended or possible outcomes of the design idea.” – Peter Hourihan

Via Cannon Design Blog

Pattern of blooms. OLIN Studio’s Lines in Four Directions in Flowers on the west lawn of the Philadelphia Museum of Art has been recognized by the Public Art Network as part of the group’s Year in Review Program, which honors outstanding, exceptionally creative, or innovative public art works.

OLIN Partner Susan Weiler, who led the design team for Lines in Four Directions in Flowers, said the team “spent months researching the color and flowering cycles of dozens of species and were able to design a system of plantings which ensures that there will always be an even pattern of blooms throughout the spring, summer, and fall.”

Via OLIN Studio Blog

http://www.theolinstudio.com/blog/lines-in-four-directions-in-flowers-recognized-by-the-public-art-network/

Renaissance in the Windy City. David Broz of Gensler talks about how downtown Chicago is going through an urban renaissance as companies are returning, apartment construction is booming, and hotel stays are increasing.

These new urban inhabitants are digital native residents who expect a hybrid urban environment, different than what was previously in downtown Chicago. They expect pedestrian friendly streets, bicycle accommodating traffic lanes, a place to sit in parks and plazas, temporary pop-up-galleries and food trucks.

Via Gensleron Cities

Women in engineering. Emily Jones, architectural technician at Stantec, talks about Techsploration, a program that aims to increase the number of women working in science, trades and technology by promoting careers in these fields to young women in grades nine to twelve throughout Nova Scotia.

Jones, who became involved in the Techsploration program in 2011 while attending school, discusses events she was involved with and how girls are being encouraged to do anything they want to do in the fields of science and technology.

Via Stantec Blog

Innovative Social Media Campaign

Zoo social media swoop. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., turned to social media to find missing red panda named Rusty. The zoo announced Rusty’s disappearance to its thousands of Twitter followers in a tweet at 11:51 a.m, which was retweeted nearly 3,000 times in an hour. Politicians and journalists, including Newt Gingrich, joined the online search. Around 1:15 p.m., a Washingtonian posted a picture on Twitter of Rusty in a patch of weeds in the Adams Morgan district, not far from the 163-acre zoo.

Via The New York Times