ICYMI, Niall Patrick Walsh spoke with Liam Young as part of the Archinect In-Depth: Artificial Intelligence series.
Liam offered a reality check "AI is a dangerous distraction from the pressing issues defining our generation. The world is on fire and we are worried about whether AI is going to write the first draft of our screenplays. The scale of climate catastrophe enveloping us right now is crazy…We need radical, systemic, planetary change, but in our popular cultural visions of the future, everything that operates at that scale is dystopian."
Donna Sink commented "This is such an amazing interview and Liam you are doing such poignant and difficult work! Gait detection terrifies me; it’s part of why I love wide-legged pants and big gauzy shirts".
archanonymous penned a ChatGPTish paean in response to Adjaye Associates' 130 William debut. Then news broke and as Gregory Walker summed up "adjaye's own actions here…are speaking as to the severity of the allegations and an admittance that what he did was at the very least morally (if not criminally) wrong."
Over in the forums, dominiond started a thread for folks to weigh in. monosierra highlighted a related and important aspect "Besides the sexual harassment, it's also disappointing to read about how poorly run his firm is - low pay (no surprises there), terrible cashflow management, zero internal controls".
WBUR reported on the $80+ million operation to repair and renew Boston City Hall. jimblake lamented "The
ONLY value of this building is as a sculpture so to obscure any clear
view for the pedestrian is to ruin a world-class work of art. Leave the plaza as a plaza. We need great spaces." jsarhitekt and others also decried all the activation and new programming.
Snøhetta's U.S. office voted to not unionize. flatroof wasn’t surprised "70% union card rate is not good enough tbh, 80% at minimum is needed to ensure the best chances at a vote. There is severe attrition between calling for a vote and the actual vote with all the heavy anti-union busting."
Chipperfield, Johnston Marklee and Weiss/Manfredi seemed to be the crowd favorites for to overhaul of Dallas Museum of Art.
A groundbreaking ceremony marked the official start of work on the LAX Midfield Satellite Concourse South project. citizen wasn’t impressed "LAX has become…Any critical master planning of the whole for coherent orientation, wayfinding, and circulation (nevermind architectural composition) seems to take a backseat at best, or follow way behind at worst."
NCARB released its twelfth annual data report, NCARB by the Numbers. Non Sequitur couldn’t hold back "Damn...ya'll are doing something wrong. 3y post m.arch is typical for us dirty communists up north."
Alex Bozikovic reviews the new RPBW and NORR-designed Ontario Court of Justice project. Will Galloway was particularly struck by Alex's point "that even when the architect is as involved as they are in this case they still dont have the power to do important things correctly…My opinion as a recent resident/visitor to Toronto is that the 1960s city hall is a big part of the problem…Piano's building does the opposite and has a reasonable and nice street presence, and thankfully a little bit of color".
R.I.P. longtime SCI-Arc faculty member Robert Mangurian. Orhan Ayyüce felt it "A real loss for the architectural community…Robert had a lot of depth in him and around him."
Ricardo Rebolledo recently worked on "El Cafetal II... apartment renovation".
Jerusalem Design Week, the flagship project of Hansen House, wrapped its 12th edition ‘Lies & Falsehoods’ earlier this summer.
Acelab raised $5.3M in new funding to expand their product specification platform.
Looking for work?
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) named Mo Zell as its 2023-2024 president.
On July 31st of this year, Deborah Ascher Barnstone started as the Head of the School of Architecture, Design, and Planning at University of Sydney's School of Architecture, Design and Planning
Want a new position in higher-ed but not academia?
Consider applying to be UCF's next Space Utilization Coordinator III. Or maybe a Project Architect involved in facility planning at the College of Southern Nevada
Chad Miller wanted to talk Geothermal Heat Pumps, have you used them "Did you use horizontal or vertical pipe layouts?" Wood Guy has priced them out once or twice but they’ve never penciled out. Also he offered a correction, what is being discussed is a "ground source heat pump" not a geothermal system. However, his impression was the numbers being quoted just for initial drilling/testing seemed high. justavisual’s has used them in Europe and perhaps more relevant for OP JLC-1 "used it in one house about 6 years ago, as a mitigation resource for snowmelt (in lieu of fees, the system is supposed to pay for itself in a number of years). The one problem we had was the drill tapping an aquifer and a water leak that lasted about a year, it was complicated because the state got involved since it's underground water, not easy to plug. In the end I think it's working fine, this is at 8500 ft with 6 months of snow on the ground."
With the ongoing end-times, exodus over at Twitter/X, Donna Sink started a thread for folks looking to connect/reminisce about "common ArchitectureTwitter themes" or reveal their other identities. amarchy commented "Hi DonnaSink! I followed you on Twitter. I also left the site after seeing the big X. End of an era. Sad." Meanwhile JawkneeMusic attempted a similar thing for any ‘Nector who is also a Redditor.
Finally, over at Thread Central Non Sequitur kicked off a brief discussion about accessibility, gender and bathroom design. They’ve noticed an uptick in "requests from clients over the last few months regarding gender-neutral…washrooms…many clients (such as gov agencies) are using the already mandated universal washrooms to satisfy their gender neutral objectives. While I applaud the initiative for inclusivity, they are also asking to remove the conventional man/woman figure for these facilities, which, like it or not, is required by code. Reason being is our code aims to identify facilites to visually impaired first and foremost with internationally recognized tactile symbols...Anyone else bumping into similar issues?" betonbrut answered "This is more and more common in public buildings I have worked on here in Washington State. I haven't run into any issues code related" while a lot of bowling_ball’s "projects are going to individual, gender neutral water closets with shared sinks" which most seemed to agree was the ideal/gold-standard.
When Marc Augé, the anthropologist, passed away at the age of 87, Verso shared his introduction to the second edition of Non-Places.
Therein he writes "It is at this point that the paradox is solved. In one sense architecture is an expression of the system. It is sometimes a form of caricature…But the spectacular splendour of some architectural achievements is undeniable too…large-scale contemporary urban architecture reproduces in reverse the relation with time expressed by the spectacle of ruins…From this point of view, the demand in which world-class architects (American, Italian, French, Dutch and others) are held in numerous cities on every continent and the aspiration of emergent countries to wield nuclear technology emerge from the same logic."
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