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The State of California has announced a new wave of grants through its Earthquake Soft-Story (ESS) program that will offer homeowners small $13,000 grants to be used in seismic retrofits. The grants apply to qualified homeowners in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles and could be a... View full entry
In the interest of improving building performance standards industry-wide, Phius (the group that developed the first Passive House international standards in 2015), has announced a new standard for retrofits called REVIVE 2024. According to Phius, the four components of the new REVIVE... View full entry
Organizing at the community level and putting pressure on politicians can go a long way, but it’s not enough. Architects have to start seeing themselves as political actors with high stakes in the same way communities and unions do. Architects are workers and they depend on work.
The fight for climate justice, resiliency, and workers’ and tenants’ rights are only going to get harder in an era of political decay, cronyism, and systemic crisis.
— The Nation
The fight over congestion pricing and residential building retrofits in New York City are just a couple of the many flashpoints architects should involve themselves in heavily in order to better advocate for the profession, critic Kate Wagner writes. Rightly, she states, “The field’s most... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects has issued an update on the EHDD-led campaign to redesign its Washington, D.C., headquarters. The organization this week announced a new initiative aimed at bringing different community members together to better professional practice and advance discourse... View full entry
The LA Times recently debuted a useful map of seismic retrofit projects in major sections of the city months after official updates to the building code were enacted to address risks posed to soft-story and non-ductile concrete structures before 2033. The map was made by surveying available... View full entry
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have unveiled a “first-of-its-kind AI model” that can help policymakers identify and prioritize houses for retrofitting and other decarbonizing measures. The deep learning model, trained by researchers from the university’s Department of... View full entry
Urban farms and communal spaces are among the ideas for repurposing car park floors in Melbourne’s skyscrapers in the future, when it is predicted that residents will rely more on driverless and shared electric cars.
The architects of Melbourne’s tallest building, Australia 108, have created designs envisioning the transformation of the building’s 10 levels of car parking into space for a vertical farm, beehives, water collection and storage, pet care, podcast studios, co-working and education.
— The Age
Downtown Melbourne's potential future scenario of widely-available self-driving cars has developers rethinking millions of square feet worth of parking garages, and vertical farms are seen as a solution (along with housing, retail, and dining options). An amendment to its planning rules that would... View full entry
The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation has just announced the third cycle of its Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI), representing a total of $2.7 million in funding to 48 different visual arts organizations across the country for 2023. Along with the announcement of this year’s awardees, the FCI... View full entry
International architectural and design consultancy SPARK, alongside ARUP, has brought an eye-catching, youth-focused mall and education hub to the heart of Singapore’s Selegie Arts District. Situated between the adjacent School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA) and several long-standing shopping... View full entry
A number of prominent architects had previously voiced their support for retrofitting the century-old store ahead of the inquiry, which began last October at the bequest of Secretary Michael Gove. Gove cited a concern for neighboring landmarks in the vicinity as part of his decision to strike... View full entry
3XN GXN, alongside property development company British Land, has announced that they are leading the redevelopment of London’s Euston Tower. Built in 1970, the commercial high-rise was viewed as a cutting-edge office space. However, changing tenancy needs have seen a gradual reduction in its... View full entry
Famous historic sites, low-income apartments and Twitter's headquarters all appear on a previously unpublished draft list of 3,407 concrete buildings in San Francisco that may be at high risk of collapse in a major earthquake, according to a copy of a city government document obtained by NBC News through a public records request. — NBC News
The city says the list is still a “preliminary draft inventory” of at-risk concrete structures, some of which were built after 2000, according to NBC. Who will actually pay for the mass retrofits still hasn’t been hammered out yet, leaving many to speculate as to its near-term feasibility... View full entry
In the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, Los Angeles County has identified some 33 important structures it says are the most at risk during a major seismic event of that magnitude. Last week, the Board of Supervisors published a list of at-risk properties owned by... View full entry
Retrofitting the UK’s historical buildings, from Georgian townhouses to the mills and factories that kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, could generate £35bn of economic output a year, create jobs and play a crucial role in achieving climate targets, research has found.
The organisations behind the report are calling on the government to work with industry to [...] advice into a national retrofit strategy, as the UK only has half the skilled workers needed to retrofit all old buildings.
— The Guardian
The report from a consortium that includes the National Trust, Historic England, and property group Grosvenor also outlined Britain’s need for 105,000 additional skilled workers to help meet the country’s lagging 2050 net zero decarbonization goals. By that time, the retrofitting market is... View full entry
London-based [Y/N] Studio has just released photos of its new Bradbury Works retrofit commercial project in the Dalston neighborhood of the city's Hackney borough. Located in Gillett Square, the scheme refurbished existing workspaces in a Victorian-era brick masonry building while adding... View full entry