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A stop-motion time lapse of an infamous housing project in Chicago coming down. Not only is it heartening to see terrible housing like this demolished, it also gives a neat insight into the structural reality of that building, as they chip away at the core before finally bringing the whole thing down.

Human Transit has a cool post up on transit theory and grids. Of course, no one gets the chance to design a city around a transit grid, but some cities are arranged for transit better than others. Click the grid above for the article.

Letters of Note spotlights an amazing letter from Frank Lloyd Wright to Aline Saarinen concerning the eternal friction between creative designers and practical clients, in this case the Guggenheim Museum. The letterhead is particularly striking.

Via Gizmodo, a pointer to Google Earth for a view of the Boneyard, an aircraft mothballing facility in Arizona.  These facilities are astonishing, especially for we New Englanders.

Described as a “Three-Dimensional Business Card” [a concept that we at Stack can understand], this house in Berlin is an elegant and refined piece of modern architecture that nonetheless manages to stay architecturally “near” its neighborhood in Berlin.  As designers and builders, we’re especially gratified by the “picture wall” of everyone who worked on the house–from laborers to architect.

Click through the images for the source article.

Norway is building the world's largest wind turbine, a solid 533 feet high (inhabitat).

San Francisco might soon legislate plug-in stations for cars in its building code. (NY Times)

The history of Charlotte, NC, animated by paper.

The Infrastructurist comes through with a cool way to visualize commuting. I wonder what Providence's diagram would look like!

On a raw February afternoon, Stack and Distill Studio welcomed approximately 50 members of the Providence chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute for a tour of the Box Office site.

Architect Joe Haskett and Stack principal Josh Brandt emphasized the integrated design, energy-efficiency, and technical construction challenges involved.

Stack principal and project manager Josh Brandt leading the tour.

The event was followed by a dinner at Cuban Revolution, just a few blocks from the site. Later this week, we will welcome a group from the American Institute of Architects.

Dwell parody site Unhappy Hipsters. The caption for this one: "Daddy was making them watch yet another documentary on the impact of Bauhaus on American architecture."

A Dutch company wants to make shipping containers collapsible so they can be shipped more efficiently.

Always go for the gusto.

The newest green wundermaterial: mycelia. MushROOMS, get it?

Time lapse of the week: Washington and its teddy bears, buried by snow.

Green wundermaterial 2: Aerogel insulation. 99% air. R values of 10.3 per inch.

Click the images for the source article.

East Side Access project 100 ft below Grand Central Terminal (WNYC)

The Ford Assembly Building, Richmond, California, renovated by Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects (ArchRecord)

Stack often uses sprayfoam insulation. Meet metal foam.

Our Lady of the Rocks, Montenegro. (BLDG Blog)

Energy-generating glazing (CASE)

At Stack, we’re all about construction, but every once in a while it’s nice to check out the other side of the coin: choreographed destruction, set to opera. (Virginia DOT)

Another “best architecture of the decade” list, with intriguing choices like the Large Hadron Collider and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (mammoth.us)

GOOD Magazine explores what makes a city bicycle friendly, with some accidental insights into the nature of all good design: “Each element should help us understand the system on a grand scale, give the user the right amount of appropriately timed information, and be very deliberate and unobtrusive.”

An Albany, NY, grocery store becomes one of the first in the nation to be powered by a fuel cell. Tax credits to UTC, the manufacturer, helped the new technology make sense. (Green Inc.)

Out of Denmark, the 2006 Samso Energy Academy by Arkitema. Samso’s commitment to renewable energy was profiled in a 2008 New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert, and demonstrates how sustainability is an integrated challenge: it demands infrastructure and architecture working together.

Finally, the blog of a small Providence furniture designer–it’s the presence of so many small and innovative providers that makes Providence an interesting place to work. (bilt furniture)

(link)

Window washers in Washington, D.C. (credit: lucycc.tumblr.com)

First and foremost, two links on the architectural and building science implications of the earthquake in Haiti: The Infrastructurist on why so many buildings collapsed, when the destructive-but-not-catastrophic 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in CA was the same magnitude. Next, Architecture for Humanity lays out a plan for how to rebuild sensibly and equitably.

California becomes the first state in the Union to include green building principles in its building code as part of an ambitious environmental agenda.

A very cool Dutch artists’ studio that looks like a pile of logs. (Thomas Mayer Archive)

Finally, from the almost-frivolous file: an architect gets a year-long fellowship to study and work in a German castle called “Schloss Solitude” and comes up with…“a self-consuming barbecue pavilion” (BLDG Blog)