The folks at a company called Cube Cities have made some interesting videos that illustrate the growth of some big cities – so you can watch a flat city without structures “grow” buildings and become a metropolis. With bold colored boxes representing the heights of buildings that sprang up over time, you can see the […]
Oh it is so frustrating that we don’t live in Hong Kong, and that it is so far away. In Hong Kong, an architectural design firm, called James Cybertecture Firm offers a very interesting program for kids to learn about the built environment and buildings. No, we have not attended the class nor have our […]
A small museum, called the Betts House, in Cincinnati has a focus on buildings and construction. The museum hosts exhibits and programs on architecture, historic preservation, building trades and materials, and construction technologies, all in the oldest brick structure in that Ohio city. They have their own exhibits, including one about a huge earthquake in […]
Prentiss Women’s Hospital has been around since 1974, designed by a famous Chicago architect named Bertrand Goldberg. I bet Bert did not figure that his building would not last forever – or even for a century when it was constructed. He is no longer alive and his building will soon be dead too, when it […]
Ah, we wish we had been in London to see this exhibit, called Horrorgami. Artist Marc Hagan-Currey had a serious interest in horror movies. So he channeled this interest into his art. He takes a single piece of paper and simply by cutting, folding and scoring it, he makes replicas of haunted houses from horror […]
You probably have not heard of her – Louise Blanchard Bethune – was the first professional woman architect in the United States. Way back in 1881, Louise opened an architecture firm with her husband. She worked on many buildings – and not just small homes or interiors, but big industrial buildings and important structures like […]
Hey, have you ever seen a bridge like this? It is not like a drawbridge that hinges on one side and is pulled up with chains, It is not like the bridges that span the Chicago River, which pivot on each side and open in the center…it is a truly rolling bridge. And it makes […]
Sometimes we try to figure out how some architects dream up solutions to problem. Like this one. A college in Chicago, called IIT, Illinois Institute of Technology, hired an architect to design a new building. This building would house the student activity center, where college students might eat something and hang out. No problem, right? […]
Chicago used to have the tallest building – the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) and we were so proud of it. It was designed as a bundle of square tubes, each a different height, and it was a landmark for the Windy City. New York has always felt that way about the Empire […]
A gigantic building is rising in Shanghai China. It is called the Shanghai Tower and it is 121 floors and 2,073 feet tall. It is not going to be the tallest in the world, but perhaps the greenest and tallest. Or is it tallest greenest. Whatever. We thought that the fact that it will have […]