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Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti expresses his hopes for Philadelphia and the 'false choice' for cities

2021-03-12T19:11:00-05:00

The problem we have across the United States is we’ve been given a false choice for the future of our cities. We’ve been told that our cities are one of two things: the failing bankrupt, crime-ridden cities of the 1970s, or the bourgeois, gentrified cities of more recent history. And that’s our choice. If we want a tax base, then we need chain stores and gentrification. Otherwise, we have no tax base and cities become a horror story.

On March 11, architect Vishaan Chakrabarti presented a virtual panel for the Industry Intersections: Art, Design + Development, hosted by the Arts + Business Council in Philadelphia. Along with guest panelists, Lindsey Scannapieco (co-founder of Scout), Sven Schroeter (Director of Interior Architecture at KSS Architects), and Rachel Zimmerman (Executive Director of InLiquid) where the connection between design, real estate, and economic recovery for Philadelphia's creative community are discussed. Before Chakrabarti's virtual panel, he spoke with WHYY's PlanPhilly, Ariella Cohen.

During their discussion, he explained his "faith in density," city growth and renewal post-pandemic, and his confidence in Schuylkill Yards. Regarding the 'false choice' of cities and Philadelphia, he correlates it to the "full-scale withdrawal of the federal government from urban policy and public housing [...] cities don't have the wherewithal to resist the pressures of gentrification" without support fr...

Norman Foster on the impact of pandemics on our cities

2020-09-24T13:23:00-04:00

Predicting the future of cities is risky, especially if one heeds the words of the American baseball legend, Yogi Berra, that “the future ain’t what it used to be”. In the period since the start of the pandemic it might seem as if everything is different, but in the long term, I would suggest that rather than changing anything, it has merely hastened and magnified trends that were already apparent before the virus struck.

In his opinion piece for The Guardian, architect Norman Foster ponders how current and past pandemics have influenced and will continue to shape the infrastructure, and subsequently culture, of our cities. Foster briefly touches on a number of trendy topics, including electric vehicles, ride sharing, drone delivery, remote work, and urban farming.

USC Architecture launches program to find built solutions for future pandemics

2020-06-15T18:56:00-04:00

The University of Southern California School of Architecture has announced the launch of the HLW Project Héroe Research Initiative, an "interdisciplinary task force comprised of architects, consultants, medical experts, contractors, and USC Architecture students and recent graduates that aims to find a built solution to prevent future COVID-19-like outbreaks."

The effort is led by USC Architecture alumnus David Swartz and is being developed in collaboration with architects HLW and the USC Keck School of Medicine. According to a press release published by the school, Project Héroe will study how "COVID-19 can help identify infrastructures that will thwart future pandemics and allow people to interact unhindered by social distancing."

Previously on Archinect: "#OperationPPE puts architects to work 3d-printing protective equipment for frontline medical workers." Photo courtesy of USC Architecture Operation PPE.

Describing the project, Swartz writes, “My goal with this project is the h...

Rem on post-pandemic architecture

2020-05-15T13:00:00-04:00

“Our entire profession is geared toward the values and demands and needs of human beings,” [...] “But all over the world, these huge mechanical entities are now appearing. They are typically enormous, typically rectangular, typically hermetic.” [...] “We need to conceive of architecture that accommodates machines and robots, maybe as a priority,” Koolhaas says. “And that then investigates how robots and human rights might coexist in a single building.”

Rem Koolhaas his thoughts on how architecture as a discipline might change in the post-COVID-19 era, as social distancing, automation, and anti-urban attitudes begin to take hold.

Koolhaas tells TIME's Belinda Luscombe, “It would be opportunistic if I said either, I told you so, or, basically, You can now tell that [cities] are actually really dangerous environments to live in,” adding, “I think that it’s simply slightly reinforcing the argument that it’s incredibly important to begin to look not necessarily away from cities but at the neglect of the countryside.”

Making the case for more density, not less

2020-05-12T13:42:00-04:00

The further threat is that the pandemic becomes a rallying cry to maintain our sprawling fortress neighborhoods designed to foster exclusion rather than inclusion. We have an obligation to ignore the short-term reactionary impulse to blame density for the spread of the coronavirus and instead use this opportunity to rethink the policies that impede the construction of new housing, at more price levels, in the places where housing is most needed.

Writing in an Op-Ed published by The New York Times, Carol Galante, professor in affordable housing and urban policy and faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley, makes the case for reinvigorating American approaches to affordable housing and urban density in a post-pandemic world.

Galante argues that instead of viewing density as an condition that fuels the spread of disease, the close proximity of goods, services, and people created by urban life, if guided by economic diversity, can actually help societies make it through troubled times.

Galante writes, "This pandemic is reminding us that we need communities where teachers, child- and elder-care workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, construction workers, baristas, tech executives and engineers all share in the prosperity and the comfort of an affordable home."