Good morning, architects. Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation revisits the Museum Tower/Nasher Sculpture Garden situation for the Huffington Post. If you'll recall, one of these buildings does not like the other: Glare from the Museum Tower is burning parts of the Nasher. Birnbaum talks with Nasher landscape architect Peter Walker, who couldn't be angrier about the situation if officials from the Museum Tower were occupying the Nasher with tents. Straight away, he describes the intense reflected light from the Museum Tower as an "attack on the garden and on the building and on the art." A James Turrell skyspace, Tending (Blue), has been declared destroyed; Walker comes pretty damn close to saying that his contribution to the Renzo Piano–designed Nasher is ruined, too. The Dallas Morning News promptly picked up on the story, though the paper doesn't a stance on the standoff.
GENIUS REVIEW. Chris Jones, theater critic for the Chicago Tribune, writes up the new plans by Studio Gang for the Writers' Theatre (pictured) on Chicago's North Shore. It's a fresh take: Jones, who is of course focused on the building's program, compares the design of the theater to other theaters in the city. "The fascinating Gang renderings make one thing clear: Nothing quite like this has been built on the North Shore, and it's likely to change the architectural and cultural face of Glencoe," he writes. "The building alone, it seems reasonable to predict, would attract cultural tourists."
EXPIRED PARKING. The Guardian digs into the Car Project, a preservation research project on buildings associated with cars launched by English Heritage. Cool slideshow—one of the projects is a piece of Googie architecture that I wouldn't expect to see in England—but the Car Project itself does not appear to be a new initiative. This English Heritage page describes Trinity Square Car Park as "[d]ue for demolition in 2008"; the Brutalist car park by Owen Luder Partnership was in fact demolished in 2010. Points for "carchitecture" anyway, I guess.
LONE STAR, MULTI-FAMILY. Want to get in on the wave of new housing projects? Get to Texas already, says The Wall Street Journal. Five of the ten areas projecting the strongest growth in new household starts for the next five years are in Texas: Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. It's that Texas miracle, y'all.
STRONGHOLD BONEYARD.Tiny-house fever finds the nation's capital. The Washington Post reports that the Boneyard Studios development in the Stronghold neighborhood of Northeast D.C. features homes some 200 square feet in size. "Boneyard"? "Stronghold"? That is too much swagger for such little homes.
...AND REMAINDERS. Five firms shortlisted for a project in Lexington, Ky., that will apparently surface an underground creek... Starz cancels Boss, a Kelsey Grammar vehicle that apparently appreciated architecture... The Architect of the Capitol (@uscapitol) live-tweeted the arrival of the Capitol's Christmas tree... Farshid Moussavi's Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland passes the winter test... F*ck yeah, it's F*ck Yeah Brutalism!
