Florida Tech: Hot off the back of their big reveal for Uber’s HQ in San Francisco, SHoP Architects have announced another proposal for the world of technology, unveiling plans for an entire district in Miami for innovative businesses — their collaboration with West 8 has been dubbed “Florida’s Silicon Valley.”
Monumental Madness: Numerous critics have questioned the wisdom of city authorities in Mecca, where plans have been revealed for the largest hotel on earth. The Abraj Kudai will include 10,000 luxury rooms, 70 restaurants, five stories devoted to the Saudi royal family, and four helicopter landing pads. Many fear that architecture of significant historic value will be bulldozed to make way for it, as was the case with the nearby Makkah Royal Clock Tower.
L: Love locks on the Pont des Arts in Paris, via Daily Hype Online; R: Patrick Seguin with Prouvé’s prefab panels, via the Wall Street Journal.
No Love Lost: Paris has determined that a storied piece of infrastructure needs to shed some deadweight — symbolic though they may be, the padlocks that lovers have shackled to the Pont des Arts are to be removed in an attempt to preserve the bridge. While the news might leave many a little heartbroken, Deputy Mayor Bruno Julliard reassures us that Paris is still “the capital of love and romance.”
Prefab Perfection: While one Parisian icon is taken away, another is being given a new lease on life: panels from Jean Prouvé’s pioneering prefabricated houses are now on display at the 2015 Milan Expo. The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Medford spent some time with gallerist Patrick Seguin, who has long championed the midcentury architect’s beautifully detailed work admired around the world for its “humanism, sober elegance and innovative design.”
L: The Googleplex by BIG and Heatherwick Studio © Google; R: Norman Foster in his London studio, via Louisiana Channel.
Tech Turnaround?: It looks like Google CEO Larry Page has made the most of StreetView. Plans for the imperiled Googleplex — that colossal, canopied campus designed by BIG and Thomas Heatherwick — have been revived this week, with the tech giant announcing its intention to relocate the project after LinkedIn was awarded three quarters of the original site.
Octo-Champ: A fresh-faced Norman Foster turned 80 years old this week, proving that the stress of the architectural profession doesn’t age everyone as fast as you might expect. If you have 40 minutes to spare, the Louisiana Channel has produced an excellent — if somewhat discursive — video in which Foster muses on machines, modernism, and the marvels of manufacturing. (Hat-tip to ArchDaily).
If Streets Could Tweet …: Self-driving cars and battery-charging streets are still years (if not decades) away, but P4 Ogilvy&Mather has a rather more guerrilla approach to a smart city at street level. In a recent campaign, the ad agency deployed a kind of IRL Tweet button in potholes around the capital city, which sent an automated complaint to authorities via Twitter every time a car drove over it. Needless to say, the potholes soon started to disappear … (Via Fast Co. Create).
