Archinect - News

Is the architectural design causing serious Wi-Fi issues at Google's new Bay View headquarters?

2024-03-26T17:28:00-04:00

Google has not publicly disclosed the reasons for the Wi-Fi problems, but workers say the 600,000-square-foot building’s swooping, wave-like rooftop swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle. [...] But, a Google spokeswoman acknowledged, "we’ve had Wi-Fi connectivity issues in Bay View." She said Google "made several improvements to address the issue," and the company hoped to have a fix in coming weeks.

The roof of the BIG and Heatherwick Studio-designed Bay View headquarters, which opened in 2022, is a key component of the building’s circular design strategy and features 90,000 "dragonscale" solar panels. Some believe they could be causing the interference.

Related on Archinect: Google's BIG + Heatherwick-designed Bay View HQ campus opens. Photo: Iwan Baan, courtesy of Google

The other culprit would be the building’s internal layout and configuration and the density of routers within it (H/t various Reddiors). Google would not publically address the source of the connectivity issues.

Operations at the company's other new headquarters inside the St. John’s Terminal in Manhattan, which opened in February, however, appear to be running a bit more smoothly.

When Facebook and Instagram went dark, architecture Twitter was there for the laughs

2021-10-05T11:46:00-04:00

In my opinion, remembering what it was like before social media and high-speed internet access is a gift. The early days of social media barely resemble the landscape of how impressionable and profit-driven it is today. Data privacy wasn't considered "a thing," and promoting a product or service back then was influential thanks to television, radio, and print media. However, when social media titans Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down, many came flooding back to Twitter to stay connected. Thanks to this 6-hour social media outage, 'architecture Twitter' was there to express what many of us were thinking.

Social media is defined as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)." Today, this term has become synonymous with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Twitter to name a few...

As more offices and schools work remotely, prepare for strains on online infrastructure

2020-03-17T21:26:00-04:00

The Internet is already demonstrating its indispensable value as the fourth utility. [...] However, this presents strains to online infrastructure as the number of simultaneous online collaborations increases dramatically. Service companies, businesses, and individuals must be prepared for continued strain on private and public networks. [...] Likewise, businesses must evaluate their infrastructure and policies to ensure they can support remote participation, both technically and socially.

Brad Kult, HGA's Director of Technology Design & Planning, gives an overview on the increasingly crucial role of technology in order for businesses and schools to continue operating, amid social-distancing efforts to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Kult offers some helpful reminders for businesses who have had to switch to working remotely online, from ensuring your company's infrastructure is ready to support your team remotely and troubleshoot any technical issues that are bound to arise, to the importance of showing empathy and patience as your team adjusts to working differently. Kult also ponders how this moment in time can be used to rethink the way we work and study, moving forward.

If you want to share with Archinect and the architecture community how your office or school is dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, we want to hear from you!

And if you're looking for some inspiration, don't miss our new feature “Running a Virtual Architecture Practice With Jennifer Kretschm...

Satellites could outnumber all visible stars soon

2019-06-03T14:21:00-04:00

Last month, SpaceX successfully launched 60 500-pound satellites into space. Soon amateur skywatchers started sharing images of those satellites in night skies, igniting an uproar among astronomers who fear that the planned orbiting cluster will wreak havoc on scientific research and trash our view of the cosmos.

“This has the potential to change what a natural sky looks like,” Tyler Nordgren, an astronomer who promotes night skies told The New York Times.

Astronomers and night sky-enthusiasts worry because SpaceX is planning to send potentially thousands of satellites into orbit as part of a new business venture aimed at connecting the entire planet to the internet.

Other technology companies, including Amazon, are also making plans for coming space internet ventures, raising the possibility of a night sky filled with more satellites than visible stars in the very near future.

A binge-worthy YouTube channel about abandoned architecture

2019-01-02T16:21:00-05:00

Are you an architecture buff who has traveling at the top of your list this year? Many travel all over to view and capture beautiful sites on camera. However, what about the places that have been forgotten and abandoned over time? These places, once filled with life and activity, have laid silently, overgrown with remnants of the past. Many would decide to skip on such a place for several reasons. However, two friends decided to take exploration into their own hands and document their journey as The Proper People.

Image © The Proper People

Bryan and Michael of the Proper People used their love for film, photography, and architecture to explore forgotten places that exist all over the world. Beginning in 2014, the avid travelers set out on a journey to explore and photograph their findings. Having made over 135 videos, these architectural cinematographers have developed a rather large fan base thanks to YouTube. With over half a million subscribers, The Proper People, have allowed fo...

Internet providers can now profit from your privacy, thanks to the House Republicans

2017-03-28T18:57:00-04:00

Not content to creepily stalk you with tailored ads on Facebook and Google, ISPs can now sell your internet browsing history to third-parties for cash, thanks to the corporately-backed husks that voted for the move in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to The Washington Post:

Congress's joint resolution empowers Internet providers to enter the $83 billion market for online advertising now dominated by Google and Facebook. It is likely to lend momentum to a broader GOP rollback of Obama-era technology policies, and calls into question the fate of other tech regulations such as net neutrality, which was approved in 2015 over strident Republican objections and bans Internet providers from discriminating against websites. And it is a sign that companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon will be treated more permissively at a time when conservatives control all three branches of government.

Bid for a cocktail party at the VDL, a “Hostage Situationist” experience, and more fun items in L.A. Forum's 2016 auction

2016-10-28T15:02:00-04:00

The L.A. Forum for Architecture and Urban Design is hosting a silent online auction as part of their Fall Benefit starting now until November 13. When architecture is involved, the items up for bidding are bound to be an interesting mix — and the more than 80 items in this particular auction don't disappoint.

Bidders can choose from books signed by the likes of Frank Gehry, Barbara Bestor, and Aaron Betsky, unique hand-made accessories, photographs, and one-of-a-kind experiences (Hostage Situationist, anyone?), all ranging from $50 to $1,000 — so no need to worry about million-dollar pricetags here. For starters, here are some items that caught our attention:

All screenshots via L.A. Forum.

Find all the auction items here. More info here.

Original 176 emoji join MoMA's permanent collection

2016-10-26T20:28:00-04:00

Who would have thought that emoji would be revered within the same museum walls that display the paintings of Van Gogh and Picasso? [MoMA] recently added NTT DoCoMo's original set of 176 emoji to their permanent collection as a gift...In early December, MoMA will debut an installation detailing the evolution of emoji and “will present them in a new light (and no doubt inspire a few selfies)”, says Paul Galloway, MoMA Collection Specialist in the Department of Architecture and Design.

Thanks to a licensing agreement between MoMA and NTT DoCoMo, the museum's permanent collection now includes the original 176 emoji that altered digital communication as we know it today. Read more on Bustler.

Tracing the physical infrastructure supporting the internet

2016-08-23T12:54:00-04:00

Whether or not New Yorkers are paying attention, their digital connectivity can sometimes rely on the finer points of a mess of paint on the street. Some of the markings are orange, others yellow or red. Arrows, lines and letters combine to create a cryptic language of symbols and codes. “It’s kind of scrawly and intense,” said the artist and writer Ingrid Burrington. “Living in New York, you’re trained not to look down, so it’s funny how rich and dense these markings can get..."

Ingrid Burrington is the author of a new handbook to the physical infrastructure of the internet in New York, Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure.

For related content, follow these links:

This town's free, public wi-fi is faster than yours

2015-11-06T13:25:00-05:00

Virgin Media has joined forces with Chiltern District Council in the U.K. to blanket Chesham’s high street with super-fast Wi-Fi. The unlimited service is available to all 21,000 residents and businesses in the town as well as visitors [...] The Smart Pavement enables those in the area to ‘streetsurf’ with speeds of up to 166Mbps, which is seven times the average U.K. broadband speed.

More on the internet and civic infrastrucutre:

New website on the deep web encourages architects to leak neighborhood-disrupting building plans

2015-09-09T18:34:00-04:00

“There are a lot of people working in architecture who are very frustrated with what’s happening, but feel like they don’t have a voice to speak out,” said Sarah, another of Concrete Action’s co-founders, who also wished to remain anonymous. “We’re hoping that this is going to give them an avenue to do that without worrying about losing their jobs or getting into trouble.”

Architects who are dismayed by working on projects that tend to harm, not improve, the neighborhoods in which they are sited now have a secure whistleblowing option: U.K.-based Concrete Action allows architects to anonymously submit rent-inflating building plans to the public. The site, which started in response to a slew of development of high-rent projects in low income areas, also helps the concerned citizen crack the often arcane and jargon-heavy city planning process. Architects can use encrypted methods to submit copies of the plans and alert the public to just what developers are coveting, er, planning.

Enlisting the Internet of Things against California's historic drought

2015-07-02T20:58:00-04:00

[...] the drought is a gusher for a growing number of tech startups in the emerging world of the Internet of Things, the buzzy term for the trend of connecting devices and data in the physical realm to the Internet. Getting more sensors into the environment will help thousands of farms, businesses and cities figure out where water is going and how it can be diverted for the most efficient use. Agriculture is the area most ripe for collecting more and higher-quality data.

China's New Weapon to Censor the Internet

2015-04-13T15:53:00-04:00

[The Great Cannon] allows China to intercept foreign web traffic as it flows to Chinese websites, inject malicious code and repurpose the traffic as Beijing sees fit. The system was used, they said, to intercept web and advertising traffic intended for Baidu — China’s biggest search engine company — and fire it at GitHub, a popular site for programmers, and GreatFire.org, a nonprofit that runs mirror images of sites that are blocked inside China.

The Internet and the Future of Loneliness

2015-04-02T15:37:00-04:00

...the promise of the internet is contact. It seems to offer an antidote to loneliness, trumping even the most utopian urban environment by enabling strangers to develop relationships along shared lines of interest, no matter how shy or isolated they might be in their own physical lives. But proximity, as city dwellers know, does not necessarily mean intimacy. Access to other people is not by itself enough to dispel the gloom of internal isolation. Loneliness can be most acute in a crowd. -Laing

Beyond the Grid's vision to make a Lower Manhattan neighborhood more resilient

2014-12-18T13:58:00-05:00

While independent communications infrastructure, renewable energy, and resilient heating and power systems may all be major priorities in contemporary urban development, the three aren’t typically incorporated into the same project. Beyond The Grid — an ambitious plan underway in the Two Bridges neighborhood of Lower Manhattan — does just that. And the fact that the proposal has been created in this neighborhood is no accident.

'Internet Slowdown' Campaign Aims to Raise Awareness of Threats to Net Neutrality

2014-09-10T13:16:00-04:00

The “loading” icons appearing today on popular websites such as Reddit and Netflix don't really mean those sites are slowing down. Instead, they are there as a symbol... to raise awareness about a [FCC] plan that would effectively end net neutrality, the foundational Internet principle that dictates all traffic must be treated equally by service providers — whether it's from a blog, a start-up or an established Web giant such as Facebook.

The campaign is called Internet Slowdown. Find out more here.

The Five Benefits of Getting the Right Domain Name

2014-09-08T11:00:00-04:00

Did you know that great domain names are the easiest way for customers to find you online? You can help your visitors find you by using a domain name that is short and memorable. This year the architectural community got its very own domain name extension with .ARCHI, a dedicated domain name extension launched in June, which has quickly become the go-to extension used by the architectural community.

Choosing the right .ARCHI domain name is very important and can lead to significant increases in traffic to your website. It’s not hard to begin using a .ARCHI domain name for an existing website or a new project and here are five benefits you’ll see if you make the switch.

1. Easy-to-Remember Domain Names
A good domain name will be easy to remember, making your website easy to find. It’s not easy to find short memorable domain names anymore, since over 128 million .com and .net names are currently already taken. .ARCHI is a totally blank-canvas domain space so if you register one today you...

Map Plots the World's Internet Devices

2014-09-02T17:17:00-04:00

A map showing the location of every single device connected to the Internet. The image was created by John Matherly, founder of Shodan, a search engine for connected devices. He pinged every device online, then mapped the location of the ones that responded [...]

Sorry, Your Phone Is Blocked In This Coffee Bar

2014-07-14T14:22:00-04:00

Artist Julien F. Thomas and architecture office Hughes Condon Marler have designed a coffee bar in Vancouver that disconnects you from all wireless networks once you’re inside. The Faraday Café in Vancouver got its name from the Faraday Cage, a material shield around the bar’s interior that was built by the designers to block all electromagnetic signals. By creating a place without any digital connections the owners [...] hope to restore non-digital, social interaction between people.

Net Neutrality lives on in Santa Monica, California

2014-04-30T18:40:00-04:00

[Santa Monica will] be able to offer its residents real net neutrality, which the [FCC] is working on rolling back for just about everyone else in the US. [...] Santa Monica has cleverly and quietly been installing its own network of city-owned fiber-optic cables for years, and they intend to keep the net neutral. [...] Santa Monica has also made about $5 million providing internet service and leasing out the cables to other providers, and their competition has driven down rates.

The Federal Communications Commission recently proposed that internet service providers (like Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable) should be able to charge companies extra for faster service -- so for example, Netflix could pay AT&T more to ensure faster download speeds for its viewers. This would violate net neutrality, the concept that aims to ensure that every companies' data on the internet is treated (and delivered) equally. Under the FCC's proposal, larger companies would be able to make their content more accessible to users, handicapping smaller companies from the get-go.

But what if your internet service provider wasn't AT&T or Verizon, but your own city? Should city governments hold the reins of internet service, and ultimately net neutrality? It's not only a question of download speeds for the user, but of how local governments could use internet traffic data to change their city. If the internet were treated like a local utility, then perhaps city governments could more ...

The Psychology of Online Comments

2013-10-25T15:59:00-04:00

the nastier the comments, the more polarized readers became about the contents of the article, a phenomenon they dubbed the “nasty effect.” But the nasty effect isn’t new, or unique to the Internet. Psychologists have long worried about the difference between face-to-face communication and more removed ways of talking—the letter, the telegraph, the phone. Without the traditional trappings of personal communication, like non-verbal cues, context, and tone, comments can become overly impersonal...

Google X developing online city-building platform, "Genie"

2013-10-16T19:56:00-04:00

[Genie is] a platform with online-based planning applications to help architects and engineers in the design process, especially for skyscrapers and large buildings. The platform includes planning tools of expert architects and engineers and advance analytics and simulation tools. Genie standardizes and automates the design and construction processes with unlimited design options, enabling an architect to preserve the building's uniqueness in the urban environment.

Infrastructural Tourism

2013-07-02T17:00:00-04:00

One of the most gratifying bits of feedback I ever received from one of my Ranger projects came from a 60-something woman who’d attended a campfire program on freeway landscapes in Los Angeles. Months later, she told me that she never looked at a freeway in the same way. Who knows what this kind of change in perception might ultimately lead to?

For decades intrepid tourists have been journeying to the monumental dams of the American West to marvel at the infrastructures of hydroelectric power. These days they're just as likely to be on a field trip to trace the pathways of the Internet, or the footprint of communication satellites, or the transport of nuclear waste. On Places, Shannon Mattern reviews diverse works by environmental artists and media scholars, all seeking "to understand the material and immaterial workings of interconnected infrastructural systems."

Sears to convert defunct department stores into data centers

2013-05-24T14:51:00-04:00

Sears Holdings, the 120-year old retailer (which now includes Kmart), plans to start converting its struggling and defunct department stores into data centers, Data Center Knowledge reported today. A new unit of the company, Ubiquity Critical Environments, will lead the charge. Thanks to Walmart, specialty shops, an economic downturn and—the sweet irony—online shopping, department stores are heading toward extinction, and Sears is feeling the pain particularly hard.

What is the future of the library?

2013-05-16T18:36:00-04:00

For the first time since Henri Labrouste (1801-1875), currently the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, formulated the conception of the new, democratic library, the central library is fighting for survival. The relevance of these gloriously inflated book boxes is being questioned in an age that looks to the Internet for its intellectual resources.

The physical architecture of the Internet Archive

2013-05-08T15:08:00-04:00

This film was shot in October last year when the Internet Archive celebrated a landmark --10 petabytes of stored media. Tour the space, which still looks more like a church than a library and see where millions of books are digitized and stored in a facility in Richmond, CA.

Goldberger on Architectural Criticism in the Age of Twitter

2012-11-29T14:56:00-05:00

Goldberger addressed the disappearance of journalistic hegemony and the advent of electronic media. While mainstream publications with an ongoing commitment to architecture criticism continue to possess a degree of authority, they are struggling to make themselves heard in this noise. It is clear to Goldberger that “the playing field may be level, but the players are not equal.”

Manuel Castells on the rise of alternative economic cultures

2012-11-12T11:45:00-05:00

We live in a culture of not virtual reality, but real virtuality because our virtuality - meaning the internet networks - are a fundamental part of our reality. All the studies on the internet show that people who are more social on the internet are also more social face-to-face.

Did YouTube Kill Performance Art?

2011-08-19T15:57:57-04:00

The ubiquity of digital spectacles and curiosities today is one reason performance art has had its thunder stolen.

Where the World’s Data Is Stored

2011-07-19T15:43:39-04:00

The world’s largest data center sits in Gothic revival splendor just a couple of miles south of Chicago’s downtown Loop in a former R. R. Donnelly printing plant. I happened to walk past the center a year ago and was impressed by the scale of the building and the serenity of the setting...

[Via Mozy]