Good morning, architects. Basketball fans in ARCHITECT's home of Washington, D.C., rejoiced last night over the first season win for the Washington Wizards, which brings the team's record to a stunning, but not-quite-record-setting, 1-12 start. Dismal. But if any team in professional basketball has more soul-searching to do, it's the Golden State Warriors, who are mulling a new arena bySnøhetta and AECOM. As the San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic John King reports, the team is moving rapidly to secure an arena in San Francisco in 2017, before its contract in Oakland expires. Patience, says King, noting that the renderings being ushered before City Hall are merely sketches. "[T]he Warriors need to understand that impartial studies might find there's a more appropriate location for an arena than the television-friendly setting they desire," King writes. "At the very least, the team might need to spend an extra year in Oakland while the overall package is polished for the lasting benefit of the city."
OPEN SPACE, CLOSING SPACE. Speaking of Snøhetta, construction on that firm's expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will result in the museum temporarily closing its doors in summer 2013. Curators Julian Myers and Joanna Szupinska, a.k.a. grupa o.k., is writing a series on SFMOMA's Open Space blog that will explore what the museum will do, or can do, while the shop is closed. The post does not indicate that the curators are thinking about ways that architects can help to accommodate SFMOMA's expanded mission, which leads to the question: Why not?
ARCHITIZER GOES LONG. C.J. Hughes reports on the epidemic of unpaid architecture internships for Architizer. Read the story, but also read into the story: Is this a sign of more reported features for Architizer under the Jenna McKnight administration?
THE COMPETITION. For The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright posts four videos from four architects—Richard Rogers, Hon. FAIA; Zaha Hadid, Hon. FAIA; Rem Koolhaas, Hon. FAIA; and Norman Foster, Hon. FAIA—who are competing to build a tower on Park Avenue in New York. None of the videos works. But no matter: Stay for Wainwright's writing, as he has apparently won the award for architecture writer of the year (bestowed by... someone).
ASDF. Allison Arieff (@aarieff) of The New York Timestickles with this tweet: "Amphibianarc should be forced to live in their own monstrosities of architecture." The design in question can only be described as Ridley-Scott-ism.
... AND REMAINDERS. Watch a lecture by Keller Easterling and Erica Robles-Anderson on architecture and computation ... A shake-up is under way for Southern University's school of architecture ... The invisible-ish and ridiculous-ish Latent Skyscraper ... More SHoPping for Atlantic Yards ... "Ecological homogenization" in landscapes from Phoenix to Minneapolis ... Larry Speck on Italy and interiors ... Lofty thoughts on classical architecture and classical music ... BIG vs. OMA vs. Miami corruption.
