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theatlantic:

Why Apple’s New Campus Is Bad for Urban America

If you care about cities, about walkable communities, about healing the crappy environment thrust upon us for the last four decades in the form of suburban sprawl, then get a refund on that new iPad 3. Take your iPhone back, too. Because its manufacturer is betting that the company is cool enough to get away with violating even the most basic tenets of smart growth and walkability in the sprawling, car-dependent design of its new headquarters.

Don’t let them collect on that bet.

While communities all up and down the Silicon Valley are trying to repair sprawl by replacing it with smart growth, Apple is actually taking a site that is now parking lots and low-rise boxes and making it worse for the community. Yes, it will be iconic, assuming you think a building shaped like a whitewall motorcycle tire is iconic, but it will reduce current street connectivity, seal off potential walking routes and essentially turn its back on its community. With a parking garage designed to hold over ten thousand cars, by the way.

Read more.

victimeyes:

a collaboration between frontoffice, Francois Blanciak, and Alan Burden (Structured Environment)

After decades of government-backed de-centralization urban life is again being promoted in Tokyo, and residential mid-rise and high-rise towers have as a consequence begun to populate the city in large numbers.

Collectively the additions form a new normal urban typology that embraces height but unexpectedly denies the surrounding urban landscape in favour of an interior life. Not surprisingly a side effect of this approach is the lack of livable outdoor space in the city centre.  Balconies are common but purely technical, included primarily as outdoor service zones to be filled with mechanical equipment and the accessories of the emergency escape system. Even the most modest tables and chairs fight for space. For those who wish to have some degree of open outdoor space there is little choice but to leave the city centre and settle into a family home in the suburbs.

The ha tower proposes a hybrid model for urban life that embraces the city, pulling it in the heart of the units, while still offering large open spaces that otherwise are only available on the urban fringe. Located in Higashi-Azabu, within walking distance of a cluster of rail lines, Shiba Park, and the iconic Tokyo Tower, the corner site is small, covering only 130 square meters and is constrained by a floor area ratio that limits construction to 8 floors.

(from archinect.com)

archimaps:

Map of Toulon in 1840, France

archiveofaffinities: Le Corbusier, Project for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1929-1930 

archiveofaffinities: Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx, Residence of the Vice President, Brasilia, Brazil, 1975 

betonbabe: THE EGGERS PARTNERSHIP, STRATASYSTEM, 1969

archiveofaffinities:

Kisho Kurokawa, Agricultural City, Plan, First Version, 1960 

archimaps: Aerial view of the ruins of Timgad, Algeria

archiveofaffinities:

O.M. Ungers, Residenial Blocks on Commercial Premises, 1976 

archiveofaffinities:

Leon Krier, Revision of the Cerda Block, 22m x 22m, The Underground Parking, Barcelona, Spain, 1976 

archiveofaffinities:

Aldo Rossi, Piazza, Competition Design, Sannazzaro de’ Burgondi, Italy, 1967 

archimaps:

Albrecht Dürer’s ideal city concept in 1527

archimaps:

Otto Wagner’s projected plan for District XXII, Vienna