Italian “starchitect” Renzo Piano is partnering with San Francisco’s Chong Partners Architecture to compose a new score of architectural jazz in Golden Gate Park.

Il progetto in questione, con un budget di circa 500 milioni di dollari provenienti sia da fondi pubblici sia da elargizioni private, è la riqualificazione e l’ampliamento della California Academy of Sciences, il cui completamento è previsto per il 2008, e prevede l’utilizzo di materiali e soluzioni progettuali e tecnologiche ecocompatibili, inclusa una copertura che possa “ospitare” la piccola fauna locale (farfalle, uccelli ed api da miele) e produzione di energia dal sole, così da poter ridurre il consumo di energia del 50% rispetto a quanto prescritto dall’apposita legislazione californiana.

(Zaha Hadid, fotografata da Luke Hayes)

Una mostra retrospettiva dell’opera di Zaha Hadid apre oggi a Londra, presso il Design Museum, per continuare fino al 25 novembre 2007.

Qui il link al blog della mostra.

Tutto questo accade mentre qui a Roma, a dieci anni dall’esito per il concorso del MAXXI, la realizzazione del progetto dell’architetto iracheno è ancora a due terzi…

Architorture is a documentary that captures five diverse students in a single studio at one university throughout the entirety of their thesis project. The film will convey a mere sliver of time, wholly representative of the experience to create a student’s paramount work. The footage will illustrate the range of emotions and process of this extremely intense period at the conclusion of an academic career. It is our goal for the documentary to possess educational, entertaining, realistic and inspiring qualities in response to the dynamic world these students cross.

Progressivamente verranno messi online (via YouTube) dei corti di ricerca: per ora sono disponibili Release, un corto sull’emissione di diossido di carbonio, e il trailer di Cultivated, un documentario sulla professione del progettista del paesaggio.

Peter Popham, The Independent, su Mr.Nice (Walter Veltroni) e la sua gestione urbanistica di Roma:

Italy’s new emperor is being fitted with a fine new suit of clothes. For the past five years, Walter Veltroni has been a dynamic, hyperactive mayor of Rome. Yesterday he prepared himself for a leap to the highest level in Italian politics, offering himself as leader of the new Democratic Party which is predicted to become the biggest power in the land. If everything goes according to plan, he could become Italy’s next prime minister.

Yet it takes a willing suspension of disbelief; a happy surrender to the flood of hype, to see Veltroni’s years in charge of Rome as a success.

This week, with few exceptions, Italy’s media have swallowed their doubts and come out in praise of the man who may soon head Italy’s new centrist party. High-profile critics - including a prominent lawyer who six months ago lobbied to get his complaints against Veltroni into the foreign press - were suddenly unavailable. A professor at Rome’s top university who recently published a damning book on his policies refused to be interviewed. “It’s a very delicate moment,” he wailed. “There’s a campaign of denigration under way against anyone who speaks out against him.”

Ordinary Romans, however, have no such inhibitions. “Look at the state of the roads!” exclaimed a taxi driver, bouncing along the Via del Teatro di Marcello, the stunning stretch between Veltroni’s office in Michelangelo’s Campidoglio and the Campus Maximus. >>