Archinect - Features

Can Trump’s anti-immigrant border wall be built without immigrant labor?

2017-02-25T13:05:00-05:00

Border agents don’t want an opaque, precast concrete wall. Financially, the wall is unlikely to be built without immigrant labor. And historically, large-scale border walls don’t keep people out as much as signal that an empire is caving in. Here’s why Donald Trump’s proposed U.S./Mexico border wall isn’t just a moral failure, but a practical one.

Trump's Travel Ban: Architects and Educators Respond

2017-02-03T13:40:00-05:00

Last Friday, President Trump issued a highly controversial executive order that temporarily bans citizens and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. According to an attorney for the government, 100,000 visas have been revoked already. Almost immediately after it was announced, architects and architecture schools decried the order. Some made reference to the fact that notable architects, like the late Dame Zaha Hadid, would not be allowed to enter the United States according to the restrictions. Universities felt an immediate effect, as faculty members and students were stranded abroad, unable to return to their classes.

Deans List Special: How Architecture School Leaders are Responding to Trump

2016-12-06T12:11:00-05:00

As seen in the recent #NotMyAIA shake-up, the election of Donald Trump provoked a heated response within the architecture community. Many architects felt that now, more than ever, they had to voice their concerns over the president-elect's policies that threatened their professional values—chief among them, the leveraging of architecture to perpetuate xenophobic rhetoric, through one of Trump's loudest campaign promises, the U.S./Mexico border wall.

Many in architecture schools also felt the responsibility to organize and speak out, perhaps especially because of their position to influence the next generation of architects. Since the election, we've been reaching out to academic leaders from across the U.S. to hear how they were handling Trump's presidency—and what they were telling their students. We've gathered their responses here.

Architecture 2030's Ed Mazria outlines an environmentally-responsible plan for the architecture and design industries

2016-11-21T13:17:00-05:00

A Sleeping Giant Awakens
The election of Donald Trump, and a hastily composed (and later retracted) post-election statement by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), has galvanized the U.S. design community. After much soul-searching prompted by anxiety and anger, architects and our allied design and planning professionals have articulated a vibrant vision for themselves and their profession.

Architects Respond to the AIA’s Statement in Support of President-Elect Donald Trump

2016-11-14T14:42:00-05:00

The AIA’s formal statement, and follow-up, in response to Donald J. Trump’s election has elicited outrage within the architecture community. Architects, AIA-members and not, feel that the organization has failed to represent their interests, choosing instead to cooperate with what many equate to a fascist regime, and in so doing has compromised the entire profession. Architects have taken to social media to air their concerns and organize their own responses—we’ll be updating this piece with more statements as the issue evolves, and collecting them all over here. Share your thoughts with us by submitting to the news here.

Archinect’s 2016 US Presidential Election Guide: How Trump and Clinton Stand on the Issues Architects Care about Most

2016-11-01T12:11:00-04:00

With the U.S. election just a week away, most Americans have likely made up their mind. But for any potential undecided Archinecters out there (do you exist? am I speaking to the void?), we’ve compiled a handy guide to where each candidate stands on some of the issues closest to an architect’s heart: housing, infrastructure, and the environment.

Ways of Seeing in the Anthropocene: Review of "The Geological Imagination" and "The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform"

2015-12-03T16:51:00-05:00

Jim Inhofe, the senior Senator from Oklahoma, resumed chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in early 2015, following an eight year hiatus. Shortly after, he stood on the Senate floor holding a snowball sealed in a plastic bag. "In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record,” Inhofe began, taking the snowball out of the bag and chucking it across the room. “You know what this is?”