Weekly Roundup for Week of June 4

Endangered sites. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its 2012 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

NTHP has produced the annual list for 25 years, drawing attention to more than 230 sites—including buildings, landscapes, and entire communities—that risk destruction or significant damage. The 2012 sites are:

- Bridges of Yosemite Valley, California - Ellis Island hospital complex; New York Harbor, New York and New Jersey - Historic U.S. post office buildings - Joe Frazier’s Gym; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Malcolm X — Ella Little-Collins House; Boston, Massachusetts - Princeton Battlefield; Princeton, New Jersey - Sweet Auburn Historic District; Atlanta, Georgia - Terminal Island; Port of Los Angeles, California - Texas courthouses - Elkhorn Ranch; Billings County, North Dakota - Village of Zoar, Ohio

Via Architectural Record

Related: Preservation Nation and The Cultural Landscape Foundation

 

Design venture. A team of 6th grade entrepreneurs / venture capitalists have formed a strategic alliance with Lake | Flato to work on the design of some major new civic architecture that is being called a "game changer" for the AEC industry.

The projects on the drawing boards were conceived and masterminded by the 6th graders with design consulting services performed by Lake | Flato. The projects include a rotating restaurant up in a tree with toboggan slides and ice skating rink, a subterranean river walk with a medieval weapons gallery, a mobile cooking school and cupcake shop made of train cars, and a chocolate mining facility and associated defensive fortifications on Ganymede (7th moon of Jupiter).

Via: The Dogrun

 

Buckminster Fuller Winner. The Buckminster Fuller Institute, which annually awards a $100,000 prize to support the ongoing development and implementation of a strategy that has a significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing issues, has announced a winner for the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

“The Living Building Challenge” seeks to lead the charge toward a holistic standard that could yield an entirely new level of integration between building systems, transportation, technology, natural resources, and community. If widely adopted, this approach would significantly enhance the level of broad-based social collaboration throughout the design and building process and beyond, dramatically reducing the destructiveness of current construction, boost the livability, health, and resilience of communities.

Via Arch Daily

Related: "Bucky" via TraceSF

 

A Canopy as Social Cathedral. Architecture review on an angular glass canopy designed by Preston Scott Cohen that covers 11,000 square feet of North End Way, a pedestrian alley in Battery Park City.

Part of what makes this a notable public space is the quality of construction: the granite sidewalk, the lighting, the stainless-steel and glass storefronts, the street furniture. Goldman Sachs, whose headquarters at 200 West Street backs onto North End Way, owns and developed the arcade, which is zoned for public use. But it’s the canopy, which Goldman also commissioned, that formally elevates what is really just a gap between two buildings into something almost as inspired as the nave of a great Gothic cathedral. – Michael Kimmelman

Via New York Times