Design New Haven has a great new post here, summarizing new works of architecture in New Haven:

With major new commissions such as the Yale School of Management New Campus (Sir Norman Foster), College Square (Robert A.M. Stern), 55 Park Street (Svigals + Partners and Behnisch Architects), Yale-New Haven Hospital’s new 500,000 square-foot Cancer Hospital (SBRA), 360 State (Becker + Becker), University Health Services (Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam) and Gateway Community College (Perkins + Will) — and many others — currently in design or construction, the image of Downtown New Haven will be changing for years to come. Can New Haven sustain its longstanding reputation as a place for some of the nation’s most groundbreaking architecture and design?

Also, check out their coverage on the streetcar proposal for downtown New Haven, here.

-Chris

The World Digital Library, a free, multilingual collection of primary materials from around the world, of which Yale is a primary contributor, was launched yesterday.

The World Digital Library, which was officially inaugurated Tuesday at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has started small, with about 1,200 documents and their explanations from scholars in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian. But it is designed to accommodate an unlimited number of such texts, charts and illustrations from as many countries and libraries as want to contribute.

World Digital Library putting human history a click away Edward Cody Chicago Tribune 4/22/09

More from the YDN here.

-Chris

Is your favorite Library closed during Spring break? Check out this directory of Wi-Fi access points from PCWorld Magazine. Search by address, city, state, country, airport or zip code to find free wireless service.

Posted by Chris

Think it’s impossible to find free books online? Think again. There are tons of online libraries that provide fiction, nonfiction and reference books at no charge. Here is a list of the best 25 places to read free books online.

Posted by Chris

The Paul Rudolph Foundation was established in 2002 by a group of friends, colleagues and former associates with the intent to further the preservation, knowledge and understanding of the work of one of the important late modernist architects and educators Paul M. Rudolph (1918-1997).

Check out the blog maintained by the Paul Rudolph Foundation here. One of the best things I found on the blog was this flickr group dedicated to Rudolph’s work. A particularly good set of pics, of the Bass residence in Fort Worth (seen below), can be found here.

Posted by Chris

Above: Five Franklin Place, New York

Check out more new architecture and design at Kanye West’s Blog.

Posted by Chris

The Library Café is a weekly program of table talk with scholars, artists, publishers and librarians about books, ideas, and the formation and circulation of knowledge. It is hosted by Thomas Hill, and can be heard on WVKR FM 91.3 Tuesday afternoons between 12:00 Noon and 1:00 p.m. ET (16.00-17.00 GMT) during the academic year.

Posted by Chris

Bryon Thompson

Very good, comprehensive article in Metropolis Magazine last month on the greening of American Universities.

Carbon Neutral U Andrew Blum Metropolis Magazine 2/20/08

Infrastructure is hot—hotter arguably than research or teaching about sustainability. It is as if the ivory tower has looked out to the world and seen a choking planet, and its first response is to look inward again at its own activities—building designs, power plants, and transportation systems.

“Ivy Plus” refers to an existing loose confederation of the nation’s top schools: the old Ivy sports league plus Johns Hopkins, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Chicago. As sustainability increasingly became a topic of conversation among the institutions’ leadership, Levin convened the group last year to shape a shared sustainability agenda.

A couple recent articles on the relative importance of LEED rankings here and here.

Plus, check out this great blog that covers all things sustainable and collegiate.

Posted by Chris

“The Foster + Partners and URS team has won an international competition to build the first private spaceport in the world – The New Mexico Spaceport Authority Building. The sinuous shape of the building in the landscape and its interior spaces seek to capture the drama and mystery of space flight itself, articulating the thrill of space travel for the first space tourists.”

Some characteristic Foster buildings:
30 St Mary Axe, “The Gherkin”
London’s City Hall
51 Lime Street
Canary Wharf tube station

For some interesting reading check out Yale’s Avalon Project, an extensive online resource for documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, where you’ll find the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.

Posted by Chris

A model of female anatomy by an anonymous artist. David Yoder for the New York Times

“Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art,” a new exhibit, recently opened at the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. Rather than examine a specific artist or historical era, Artempo includes objects and works of art spanning centuries and groups them conceptually. The exhibit’s website includes a wealth of information… in case you can’t make it to Venice before October.

“It examines the relationship between art, time, and the power of display representing a breadth of cultures and periods and featuring over 300 objects ranging from rare archaeological materials to contemporary installation.”

Read a review by Roberta Smith of the New York Times. Be sure to check out the exhibit slide show, too.

Posted by: Ian M.

NOT POEMS
by Adele Aldridge

Posted by: Tanya

From the CLUI exhibit Loop Feedback Loop:
The Big Picture of Traffic Control In Los Angeles

The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) is, “Dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.”

Additionally, “The organization was founded in 1994, and since that time it has produced over 30 exhibits on land use themes and regions, for public institutions all over the United States, as well as overseas. Public tours have been conducted in several states, and over ten books have been published by the CLUI. CLUI Archive photographs illustrate journals, popular magazines, and books by other publishers, and have been used in non-CLUI exhibitions, and acquired by art collectors.”

The site also includes The CLUI Land Use Database, “an on-line computer database of unusual and exemplary sites throughout the United States. It is a free public resource, designed to educate and inform the public about the function and form of the National landscape, a terrestrial system that has been altered to accommodate the complex demands of our society.”

See a list of CLUI exhibitions here.

Posted by: Ian M.

From the website: ” The London Book Project is a free book exchange on a massive scale. Using the London Underground as a high speed distribution network, we aim to bring real literature to London’s commuters.

Over the next two weeks we’ll be distributing thousands of second hand books across the tube and we want YOU to get involved. If you see one of our books, please pick it up! Then read it and replace with any book of your choice. Let’s make the tube a giant, free library!”

BBC News Day in pictures: “Passengers in Moscow travelling on a metro view what is said to be the first underground mobile arts exhibition, called Watercolour, devoted to the Year of the Child.”

Check out a massive collection of Moscow metro photos here and a great resource for metro art and architecture in general here.

Posted by Chris

Moscow 1967

America 1939-43

World War I

Plus, resources for colorizing photos here and here.

Posted by Chris