Archinect - News

ACSA issues joint statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion censorship in education

2023-09-21T17:39:00-04:00

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has joined its sibling organizations in landscape architecture and planning in opposing the concerted efforts of far-right lawmakers to prevent the inclusion of race and racism topics into curricula in states including Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, South Dakota, and Virginia.

"This united declaration stands as a strong objection to the legislation that silences educators from sharing the histories of the architectural profession. Practitioners, educators, and students must be granted access to the complete narrative. Being privy to only a portion of the story significantly disadvantages us all," Mo Zell, the 2023-24 ACSA President, said in a statement.

"The boards of directors of the three organizations representing university programs and educators in architecture, landscape architecture, and planning — ACSA, CELA, and ACSP, — jointly communicate our opposition to any legislation that prevents educators from teaching and shari...

Acclaimed Canadian landscape architect Claude Cormier has died aged 63

2023-09-18T20:10:00-04:00

Canadian landscape architect Claude Cormier, a deeply admired figure within the country’s design community, passed away on September 15th at the age of 63 following a battle with cancer, the CBC and other outlets reported over the weekend.

The founder of CCxA was behind many of the country’s most beloved public spaces, parks, and memorial designs, including Toronto’s Berczy Park, downtown Montreal’s new The Ring installation, and the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa. A statement from the firm credited him as being a “great visionary who influenced us in surprising and powerful ways, thanks to the creative force and joie de vivre he brought to all our lives.”

The RIng, Montreal. Photo: David Boyer Photographe Inc.

Born and raised in Quebec, Cormier studied at the University of Toronto and Harvard GSD before entering practice in Montreal in 1993. Over the years, Cormier’s work received more than 100 separate awards and honors, including being named to the prestigious Ordre Natio...

Trans and non-binary architects discuss their challenges within the industry

2023-06-16T15:55:00-04:00

So, yes, architecture has a diversity problem, but the tide is beginning to change. Thanks to out-and-proud architects like [Julia] Oderda, emerging trans designers now have possibility models to look to when navigating situations like coming out or transitioning on the job. Some firms are also taking steps to make their workplace more welcoming to trans people, often in collaboration with trans people who already work there.

Architect Julia Oderda, who came out as a transgender woman professionally in 2018, also provided some insights into her struggle in an interview with the NCARB recently, saying, “A lot of what I did to help pave the way for me — and hopefully for others behind me — but also just to address my own anxieties about the process was a lot of overpreparation.”

The narrative that the existence of trans and non-binary people in an office setting is always contentious ought to be challenged, but their lack of visibility and support from colleagues is troubling, spurring the VCBO Architecture principal towards even more action. “That's one of the reasons I've been as open and vocal as I have been,” she says. “I think we need more people who can be found online to help the next generation.”

Architect, organizer, and facilitator A.L. Hu, who teaches at the Columbia GSAPP as an adjunct assistant professor and is the design initiatives manager at Ascendant Neighborhood Development, shared their...

New England's first LGBTQ-friendly senior affordable housing development breaks ground in Boston

2022-06-27T14:12:00-04:00

A Boston development that’s billed as New England’s first LGBTQ-friendly senior affordable housing project broke ground Friday. The Pryde will convert the former William Barton Rogers Middle School in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood into 74 units of mixed-income housing for seniors.

The project is being led by developer Pennrose and local nonprofit LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc. Boston-based architecture firm DiMella Shaffer carried out the facility’s design.

The development will maintain the original 1899 building, which has been vacant since 2015, and its two additions constructed in 1920 and 1934. The design includes multiple spaces for community programming, such as an art room, a classroom, an art gallery, and a multi-purpose room. The project also features a landscaped courtyard, a walking track, and outdoor seating. The exteriors and interiors will be renovated with materials and details in line with the school’s original character.

As noted by LGBTQ Senior Housing, there has always been a need for LGBTQ-friendly housing as seniors of this community are less likely to have children or a family network to support them. Funding for the project includes $3.8 million from the state Department of Housing and Community Development and $4 million from the City of ...

The Stonewall Inn historic site is getting a new visitors center

2022-06-24T15:30:00-04:00

The first visitor center within the national park system dedicated to L.G.B.T.Q. history will honor and explore the history of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a galvanizing moment in the fight for equality, the center’s managers announced on Tuesday. The visitor center is being funded with donations, and a groundbreaking ceremony will take place on Friday. The 3,700-square-foot space will include exhibitions, in-person and virtual tours and art displays that examine the uprising and its legacy.

The visitors center will be located at the address adjacent to the bar, which had sat vacant for some time. Plans for an expanded presence at the site, which includes a sculpture installation by George Segal, the bar, and Christopher Park, have been floated around since it was officially declared a national monument by President Obama in 2016. Anne Marie Gothard, president of PRIDE LIVE (the nonprofit behind the visitors center project), shared her hopes with the TIMES that it would garner more interest for similar preservation efforts at LGBTQ historic sites across the country.

“Our goal is to create a place that honors both the bravery and courage of the past five decades of the movement while also motivating the next generation of leaders to take up the fight, because we know that there is more work to be done when it comes to full equality.”

Examining the history and importance of four LGBTQ sites newly listed by the National Trust for Historic Places

2022-06-17T18:13:00-04:00

Preserving spaces are integral to maintaining America's gay communities and keeping the memory of their members' hard work in establishing physical sites of resistance in the face of legal repression, violence, and generational intolerance. Terms like "Gay power" convey the desire for visibility in those spaces that have evolved due to their hard-fought existence. Today they serve as a rallying cry for different scholarly interventions initiated to protect the important story of queer history in the United States.

In honor of the slate of Pride celebrations taking place in June, the National Trust for Historic Preservation continues to expand on the documentary research of these sites. Thanks to the National Park Service's influential 2016 Theme Study that identified several new locations for nomination to join the group's two official heritage designations, four new sites have been added to the list since its original publication.

The cover of the publication LGBTQ America. Design...

BoND’s new Company Gallery space offers a unique showcase for Queer artists and for themselves

2021-12-16T12:33:00-05:00

One of the flashiest openings in the art world this fall came not in the form of a suite of salable oil paintings or an of-the-moment sculptural showcase but rather from a one-time dry goods storage space which has been converted into the new home of New York’s Company Gallery by an upstart duo called BoND.

The duo is formed by Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchwerger, partners in business and in life, who say their design was inspired by several different elements of the history of the city’s Queer arts community for whom Company was founded seven years ago.

Photo: Nick Glimenakis. Image courtesy BoND.

The gallery’s roster features a veritable who’s who of hot young artists like Jonathan Lyndon Chase and Raúl de Nieves and was looking for a space to help inaugurate “a jump to a different chapter” with the help of some highly skilled hands from inside that same community.

Photo: Nick Glimenakis. Image courtesy BoND.

“It was almost like a political discussion a little bit, and I think that we ...

Goff Fest kicks off in Tulsa honoring the life of its late architectural native son

2021-11-04T08:58:00-04:00

The living memory of one of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s biggest drivers of the city’s noteworthy contributions to the visual landscape of 20th-century America is getting its due this weekend in an awesome way.

Goff Fest is about to descend on one of the city’s most important historic landmarks. The Tulsa Club Hotel will host the inaugural edition of a four-day festival honoring the life, work, and legacy of its architect, the late Bruce Goff.

Goff was an architectural prodigy who went on to become one of the Midwest’s most prominent practitioners of Modernism. Most of his extant early buildings were realized in the Tulsa metropolitan area, including the Boston Avenue Methodist Church and Riverside Studio, which are both on the National Register of Historic Places.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by GOFF FEST (@goff_fest)

Organized by Tulsa’s Goff Center of the Continuous Present (GCCP), the festival is the brainchild of Brooklyn-based artist Karl Jones. Jones was...

Los Angeles' LGBTQ community gets much-needed senior housing thanks to a new project from the Ariadne Getty Foundation and KFA

2021-10-08T18:50:00-04:00

In an effort to tackle the effects of America’s ongoing affordable housing crisis on LGBTQ seniors, KFA and Leong Leong are teaming up with the Ariadne Getty Foundation on the design of a five-story apartment complex that will help meet the needs of the greater Los Angeles community.

The development will sit adjacent to the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s newly-opened Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood and will be able to provide 98 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments to those in dire need of housing. A total of 72 of the apartments will be made available through a lottery system, while the remainder will be set aside for those experiencing chronic homelessness and require assistance through municipal or countywide grant programs.

Image © Jim Simmons/The Ariadne Getty Foundation

“The lack of affordable housing in this country is at an all-time high and presents even greater hardships for the LGBTQ community given the many biases which continue to exist. It’s an even greater probl...

RAMSA is tapped for the New-York Historical Society's American LGBTQ+ Museum expansion

2021-07-02T20:13:00-04:00

Images of a regal new expansion effort at the New-York Historical Society have been released, showcasing the addition of the new American LGBTQ+ Museum to the 216-year-old institution’s Central Park campus.

The Historical Society has chosen RAMSA to lead the $140 million expansion effort, adding space for the new entity, which was granted a museum charter just two short years ago after being established by activists in 2017.

With nearly 70,000 square feet of new space, the museum comes along with new galleries for the Historical Society and added classroom space for the institution’s ongoing academic partnerships with CUNY and the public school system. A new storage area will also allow the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library to house its collection completely onsite for the first time.

An adjacent 10,000-square-foot vacant lot owned by the Historical Society since 1937 will host the expansion. The new museum will be hosted on the fourth floor of the expanded space featuring two galle...

The Pulse Nightclub site is now officially a National Memorial

2021-06-29T08:00:00-04:00

President Biden formally signed H.R. 49 into law this weekend, officially recognizing the now-vacant site of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting as a national memorial in a historic move that clears the way for a new permanent monument in Orlando.

The bill, named to honor the tragedy’s 49 victims, designates the club’s former space as an official unit under protection of the National Park Service along with 36 other planned and completed national memorials that include the Washington Monument and Pearl Harbor.

“May no other president ever have to sign for a monument like this,” Biden said at the Oval Office ceremony.

Winning design for the proposed memorial campus. Image credit: Coldefy & Associés with RDAI/onePULSE Foundation.

A team of designers including Orland-based HHCP was announced before the pandemic as the winners of a two-pronged memorial design competition hosted by the onePULSE Foundation. Their design would feature a spiraling flower-like museum and garden space that is...

Allianz Arena will not display rainbow colors in support of LGBTQ activists following a controversial UEFA ruling

2021-06-22T21:01:00-04:00

UEFA has rejected a call from activists to convert the Allianz Arena in Munich into a rainbow-covered light scheme in unison with protests ahead of Germany’s final European Championship group game with Hungary that it is slated to host on Wednesday.

The city council’s proposal was rejected by Europe’s governing soccer body after a ruling cited the effort’s political motivations as the reasoning behind the denial.

Activists are looking to shed light on the recent passage of a bill they say is meant to target LGBTQ education in Hungary’s public school system. The Herzog and de Meuron-designed stadium would have joined other Bundesliga pitches across the country in a show of solidarity that will now be expressed by fans inside the stadium, at Town Hall, and on the city’s nearby Olympiaturm as support for the protest grows.

Aerial photo of Allianz Arena. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons user Chumwa.

“We in Munich certainly won’t let ourselves be discouraged from sending a clear signal to...

LGBTQ-focused preservation takes off in Indianapolis

2019-06-07T09:19:00-04:00

The IHPC said it would use a comprehensive study performed by Indiana Landmarks in 2016 that identified 104 historic properties with LGBTQ significance. The historic preservation group’s criteria in compiling the list included civil rights, arts, health, businesses, residences, events, organizations, and name affiliations.

The move to imbed consideration of LGBTQ sites of historical significance in future planning efforts makes Indianapolis a pioneer for LGBTQ preservation in the country.

The city is currently working to update all of its 17 historic area plans and will now move to include the recommendations from the Indiana Landmarks study into those efforts.

Indianapolis aims to complete the planning updates by 2023.

The 'Stonewall Forever' augmented reality monument celebrates 50 years of LGBTQ Pride history

2019-06-05T17:31:00-04:00

The Stonewall Riots in June 1969 set forth the fight for LGBTQ rights that continues today. To honor the last five decades of its lasting impact, the LGBT Community Center of NYC teamed up with the National Park Service, with support from Google, to create an interactive, augmented reality monument called “Stonewall Forever”, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of Stonewall and aims to preserve LGBTQ history and amplify voices from the community.

"We hope that this effort lifts up a broad array of voices and creates a connection to Stonewall's legacy for people everywhere,” the Stonewall Forever website states.

The rainbow “living monument” lets users scroll through scores of videos, a documentary film, historic photos, audio, and text that tell the ever-growing, multi-faceted story of the LGBTQ community. Also, anyone anywhere can add their own images and text to the monument.

In 2017, Google.org — the tech giant's philanthropic arm — granted $1 million to the LGBT Community Ce...

Supreme Court: Transgender students can use bathroom of choice

2019-05-31T13:28:00-04:00

The Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a lower court’s ruling that said transgender students in an eastern Pennsylvania school district can use locker rooms and restrooms that match their gender identity.

The United States Supreme Court declined to review a previous decision from the Third Circuit Court in Doe v. Boyertown School District that had upheld the school district's policy of allowing transgender students to use their bathroom of choice.

View of a gender-neutral bathroom at the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco. Image: Wikimedia user Ted Eytan

The Supreme Court has yet to hear a case that directly addresses the rights of transgender individuals.

HUD planning to allow anti-trans discrimination in homeless shelters

2019-05-24T14:51:00-04:00

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is moving to allow federally-funded homeless shelters to deny people admission based on their gender identity.

A proposed HUD rule will allow federally-funded shelters to establish policies “consistent with state and local law” with regards to how shelters “consider an individual’s sex” when they are being admitted by facilities where people are placed into same-sex or gender-segregated accommodations. The ruling will also allow shelters to use a range of factors in making gender determinations, including “privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs, any relevant considerations under civil rights and nondiscrimination authorities, the individual’s sex as reflected in official government documents, as well as the gender which a person identifies with.”

According to LGBTQ advocates, the proposed rule will effectively gut the Obama-era Equal Access Rule, a 2012 directive that sought to “ensure core [HUD] pr...

Queer Spaces, Intersections, LGBT Historic Sites: Urban Omnibus launches new series

2018-02-22T14:32:00-05:00

As designers and urbanists engage with LGBTQ+ identity, what role do gender and sexuality play in the preservation, design, and management of urban space today? [...] Marginalization means invisibility, both in history and space. New efforts seek to reclaim and preserve queer histories inscribed in sites across the city.

Urban Omnibus, a publication of the Architectural League of New York, recently launched its new series Intersections: Surfacing (guest-edited by Jacob R. Moore), allowing a more informed look at issues of gender and sexuality in the context of design & urban history.

Winning design for NYC’s first official LGBTQ monument is revealed

2017-06-28T17:55:00-04:00

After the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left 49 people dead, Governor Cuomo formed the LGBT Memorial Commission to honor the fight for equal rights and remember victims of hate, intolerance and violence. A request for designs for the new memorial went out in October. It is to be built in Hudson River Park near the waterfront piers that have played a key role in the city’s history as both a meeting place and a haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

Designed by a Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist, Anthony Goicolea, the LGBTQ monument consists of nine boulders, some bisected with glass that acts as a prism and can emit a subtle rainbow. Meant to be communicative, usable and complimentary to the landscape, the design was inspired by sites like Stonehenge and Easter Island as well as burial mounds and African stone circles.

“It feels like there are certain shapes and patterns that are encoded in our DNA as humans that transcend any particular culture and speak to how we are unified in the larger scheme,” said the artist. “I wanted to create a space that feels familiar, even though it is new.”

LA's Donut Time, the LGBTQ landmark in “Tangerine”, is now permanently closed

2016-06-29T18:29:00-04:00

Anyone who's seen the iPhone-shot feature Tangerine or cruised by the doughnut shop at night knows that Donut Time wasn't just another of Los Angeles' dozens of purveyors of sweet, glazed pastries. Much more significant than that, it had long served as a haven for sex workers — many of them transgender women — who make a living on the streets nearby. "I didn't think it would ever go away. It's really sad," [Tangerine director Sean] Baker says. "I think the film caught an end to an era."

According to LAist, Donut Time's closure may be related to a massive mixed-use development proposed for that stretch along Santa Monica Boulevard, where (of course) gentrification is on the rise. It's not yet known if anything will replace Donut Time.

Stonewall Inn formally declared as national monument

2016-06-24T15:10:00-04:00

On Friday, President Obama formally [declared] the Greenwich Village bar and its surrounding area the Stonewall National Monument, and creating the first National Park Service unit dedicated to the gay rights movement. According to the White House, the monument designation will consist of 7.7 acres, protecting the tavern, Christopher Park across the street, and several other streets and sidewalks where spontaneous protests were held for equal rights in 1969.

The enduring significance of gay bars in American cities

2016-06-16T15:09:00-04:00

The moment a space like [a gay bar] disappears, a sense of identity goes with it. “When you don’t have those spaces, you lose the ability to see yourself," [...] "...we also need to continue to modify it in a way so everybody has access, so we’re not doing the same thing that the mainstream population is doing to us and isolating ourselves in certain spaces due to access.”

Related on Archinect:

Kickstart this! Façadomy: a new journal that looks at gender and identity through architecture

2016-05-05T20:41:00-04:00

Façadomy is new publication that looks at contemporary identity through the lenses of art and architecture. Façadomy's inaugural issue, Gender Talents explores the landscape of self-determined gender. It builds off the work of progressive sexologist Esben Esther P. Benestad, who has observed seven distinct genders in their practice as a therapist in Norway. Three prominent voices in contemporary art and architecture reflect on these seven themes...

Conversations around gender and identity – long excluded from the "gentleman's profession" of architecture – are seeping more and more into architectural discourse.

For example, the AIA announced recently that they would cancel their conference in North Carolina because of the passage of HB2, a bill widely described as transphobic, exclusionary, and bigoted. And, while the number of women in architecture remains low (with a high dropout rate post-college), and the way female architects are treated remains poor (if not violent and illegal), at least the conversation seems to have picked up in recent years.

But there's so much more to be said about the relationship between architecture and identity-formation than can fit into a crisis management-oriented footnote. The built environment both mirrors societal norms about identity and reinforces them. It's the ground on which we learn, perform, enforce, resist, or trouble gender norms.

Enter Façadomy, a new publication that looks squarely a...

Obama administration to designate Stonewall as America's first LGBT memorial

2016-05-05T18:41:00-04:00

New York's iconic Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay rights movement took root, will become the first national monument honoring the history of gays and lesbians in the U.S. under a proposal President Barack Obama is preparing to approve. Designating the small swath of land will mark a major act of national recognition for gay rights advocates and their struggles over the last half-century.

Originally built as stables in the 1840s, the Stonewall Inn was the site of historic riots after police raided the LGBT bar on June 28, 1969. While such raids were then common, that night the bar-goers fought back – in the process helping to catalyze the LGBT liberation movement.

The news was timed to coincide with LGBT Pride month, which is held in June each year in commemoration of Stonewall. While the article specifies the monument as honoring the history of gays and lesbians, it's important to note the pivotal role transgender individuals played in the uprising.

According to AP, the Obama administration is considering including nearby Christopher Park in the historic designation.

In related news:

...

North Carolina loses AIA conference due to anti-LGBT HB2 bill passage

2016-05-04T13:51:00-04:00

Wilmington officials say the cancellation of an architect business conference due to HB2 will cost the city nearly $1 million. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced Monday it will nix its three-day conference scheduled for later this fall at the Wilmington Convention Center. AIA officials cited the passage of HB2 as the reason for the cancellation.

Being a bigot isn't just ridiculous—it's costly! Supposedly pro-business Republican senators in North Carolina have managed to drive away Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and now the AIA thanks to their passage of HB2, which Towelroad describes as a bill that "bans all local LGBT rights ordinances in the state" while introducing "some of the most draconian anti-trans 'bathroom regulations' in the U.S." Talk about pissing it all away...

For more on the fight for equality:

Mapping transgender-friendly bathrooms in hostile North Carolina

2016-03-31T14:56:00-04:00

For most, the act of going to the bathroom is an unremarkable part of their daily routines. However, for transgender people, fear of harassment makes this small decision a tough obstacle. In North Carolina a recent law has been introduced requiring people to only use bathrooms that match the gender they were assigned at birth. Web designer Emily Waggoner was "devastated" by the new legislation, and decided to do something to help those in need of a safe location to use non-gendered bathrooms.

Waggoner, who grew up in North Carolina although currently lives with her partner in Boston, worried about the safety of her transgender friends back home after the state passed this new, and highly controversial, legislation.

While purporting to be in the interest of "safety," such legislation greatly increases the risk of violence for members of the transgender (and gender non-conforming) community, with little-to-no evidence (or legitimate evidence) that it makes any other group safer. In the vast majority of cases of violence involving the transgender community, trans individuals are the victims – not the other way around.

Even without specific legislation like this, transgender people face much greater risks of physical and sexual violence than those faced by cisgendered individuals. More than one in four trans people have been assaulted in their lifetime – and the rates increase when looking at trans women and trans people of color.

Using Google Maps, Waggoner has created a tool ...

As "gayborhoods" gentrify, LGBTQ people move into conservative America

2016-03-10T20:03:00-05:00

Despite skewing Democrat, LGBT people are flocking to red states. It’s a sign that cities in the center of the country are becoming more accepting, but it’s also an indication that traditional LGBT safe havens are prohibitively expensive. ConsumerAffairs.com analyzed U.S. Census data and Gallup polling information to model the movement of the LGBT community from 1990 to 2014. The overall trend is striking.

"In 1990, the LGBT population was concentrated in coastal metropolitan areas and other safe havens—cities like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Atlanta. By 2014, LGBT hot spots cropped up in some seemingly unlikely places: Salt Lake City, Louisville, Norfolk, Indianapolis, and other red state cities."

ConsumerAffairs collected an impressive body of research on the demographic patterns of the LGBTQ community, which you can check out here. For more LGBTQ-related coverage, take a look at these links:

Toilets for everyone: the politics of inclusive design

2015-11-05T13:31:00-05:00

With the issues of serving openly in the military and same-sex marriage now largely resolved, the fight for all-gender restrooms has emerged as the latest civil rights issue in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (L.G.B.T.) community — particularly the “T” part. Schools and universities (...), museums (...), restaurants (...) and even the White House (...) are recasting the traditional men’s/women’s room, resulting in a dizzying range of (often creative) signage and vocabulary.

U.S. LGBTQ preservation group pushes to preserve more heritage sites at the national level

2015-06-26T20:14:00-04:00

'Recently, people were more worried about preserving their jobs, not preserving their history...Now a new generation is aware there was a history that came before them...Not a lot of our history has been preserved. People without a history can be erased.' — Mark Meinke, co-founder of the Rainbow Heritage Network

History was made today in American civil rights with the Supreme Court ruling that legalizes same-sex marriage across all 50 states. The ruling is a major push toward marriage equality in the U.S., but like several historically marginalized communities, one giant obstacle that the LGBTQ community continues to face is cultural preservation and protection, in addition to spreading the awareness of that historical legacy both externally and internally.

You win some and unfortunately lose some in the unpredictable nature of preserving heritage sites, but proactivity is key. One such group is the Rainbow Heritage Network, a developing coalition of over 400 preservationists and gay rights activists who advocate for the protection of LGBTQ heritage sites in the U.S. as one of their primary missions. Reportedly established only this past January, the group is working to gain more traction in their long-term efforts to protect LGBTQ sites on a local, state and federal level.

For starters, Rain...