Archinect - News

Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens

2017-10-27T11:24:00-04:00

allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step

"For instance, people with low ratings will have slower internet speeds; restricted access to restaurants, nightclubs or golf courses; and the removal of the right to travel freely abroad with, I quote, "restrictive control on consumption within holiday areas or travel businesses". Scores will influence a person's rental applications, their ability to get insurance or a loan and even social-security benefits. Citizens with low scores will not be hired by certain employers and will be forbidden from obtaining some jobs, including in the civil service, journalism and legal fields, where of course you must be deemed trustworthy. Low-rating citizens will also be restricted when it comes to enrolling themselves or their children in high-paying private schools. I am not fabricating this list of punishments. It's the reality Chinese citizens will face. As the government document states, the social credit system will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it har...

Deborah Sussman, designer, has died at age 83

2014-08-20T14:23:00-04:00

We are very sad to learn of the passing of amazing designer Deborah Sussman, who died this morning after a battle with cancer." — @DesignObserver

Designer Deborah Sussman passed away this morning at age 83.

Perhaps best known for her environmental and graphic design for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Sussman began her career working as an office designer for Charles and Ray Eames in the 1950s. She founded her own firm in 1968, and created Sussman/Prejza & Co. along with her husband, architect and urban planner Paul Prejza, in 1980.

Her distinctively colorful and intrepid graphical work brought character to Disney World, the city of Santa Monica, CA, and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.

View a selection of Sussman's graphical and environmental work in the gallery below.

Project 1984: What About the Possibility of a Kynical Architecture?

2012-08-24T12:11:00-04:00

For an architect, in the instant that he has undivided attention of a patron with the power to realize his designs, literally nothing else matters; not a fire alarm, not even an earthquake; there is nothing else to talk about but architecture.

-Dejan Sudjic, The Edifice Complex

The fully developed ability to say No is also the only valid background for Yes, and only through both does real freedom [begin] to take form.

-Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

City
Four towers rise above the city like muscular trunks in a grass field. Their scale obliterates any possible question about the intentionality of their disproportionate size. The exaggerated disparity between them and the urban fabric could not have been accidental. The towers were unquestionably built to be the main focus, the sole object of attention. They are by lengths the most important buildings in the city. The towers deliver an explicit message of datum and order. Visible from any point in the ci...