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Buildings Speak: NPR special will explore the impacts of women on American architecture for International Women’s Day

2024-03-06T13:57:00-05:00

For this year's International Women’s Day on March 8, NPR is airing a special one-hour documentary produced with help from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF). The piece aims to shed light on the overlooked contributions of women in architecture to an American mass audience for the first time.

Narrated by the great Oscar-winning actor and producer Frances McDormand, ‘Buildings Speak: Stories of Pioneering Women Architects’ is a collaboration with producers The Kitchen Sisters. The special draws three of the figures (Julia Morgan, Amaza Lee Meredith, and Natalie de Blois) featured in the BWAF’s unmissable New Angle: Voice podcast series, the third season of which also premiers on International Women’s Day with a special focus on the architecture of the 1970s.

Tizziana Baldenebro, the new executive director of the BWAF, commented: “They are trailblazers, groundbreakers, skyscraper visionaries — women who changed the skyline and the built environment that surrounds us tod...

What will become of retired coal-fired power plants? A new "playbook" outlines a plan

2019-07-05T18:35:00-04:00

Nearly 300 coal-fired power plants have been "retired" since 2010, according to the Sierra Club. It's a trend that continues despite President Trump's support for coal. That has left many communities worried that those now-idled places will simply be mothballed.

In an NPR segment, which aired in May, Jeff Brady discusses the Department of Community and Economic Development's plans to reuse and redevelop retired coal plants. Plans of action are listed in a "playbook" that outlines the attributes of listed coal plants and the pros and cons of each site. Through these assessments, it will help the Department realize what types of business would be an appropriate fit to relocate there. With the increased number of coal plants shutting down opportunities for coal cities will change for the better thanks to plans of introducing new businesses to the area by promoting these unused sites.

Examples of the playbook in action are happening now in the small Pennsylvania town of Shamokin Dam. The coal-fired plant in town provided power for over six-decades before it was shut down in 2014. However, with the Department's new plans for redevelopment, the once forgotten site is teeming with activity. In the segment Brady shares, "Environmental groups cheer...

Considering the downsides of Smart Home technologies

2017-08-17T14:52:00-04:00

Essey is an engineer at Uber and an early adopter of the Internet of things. He can control his lights with his Amazon Echo or an array of touchpad sensors he has installed throughout the home. Sensors tell him when there's water in the basement or a leak under the sink. While Essey's setup might sound a little like science fiction, it's a prototype of the future. Some critics are worried these devices won't be secure and that companies will use them to spy on us to make money.

As the Internet of things becomes more ingrained in our daily lives, some people are turning ordinary homes into smart homes. One way of doing that is by integrating smart appliances (dishwasher, fridges, microwaves, toasters, etc). That strategy, however, can be expensive and not very efficient, since most of the devices are costly and often are not smart enough to communicate with each other, especially if produced by different manufacturers.

The other way is to get sensors, and put them on everything you want to monitor. "But then those get really unwieldy and you've got all these things sticking around and they look ugly and socially obtrusive," Gierad Laput, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University says. Laput and his team, in fact, built such a sensor. When plugged into the wall, the 2-inch-square circuit board senses about a dozen different facets of its environment: vibrations, sounds, light color and so on. The sensor communicates wirelessly with a computer, which inte...

Looking into the White House's “much longer history” of slave labor

2016-07-28T15:17:00-04:00

I think it was a wonderful moment in American history. I thought what Michelle Obama was attempting to do was to draw that link to show that it isn't just what's going on in the White House now and isn't it great that there's a black family there, but there's a much longer history that needs to be appreciated... [It was] just grueling, grueling kind of work. And nobody was really willing ... to do it. So slave labor played a massive role in getting this city built.

During her speech at the DNC on Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama alluded to the White House's history of slave labor during the 1790s. NPR interviews Clarence Lusane, chairperson of Howard University's political science department and author of “The Black History of the White House”, who gives his two cents on the historically significant topic.

Diana Agrest gets profiled as one of NPR's "50 Great Teachers"

2015-04-22T13:36:00-04:00

Architecture is both expansive and specific, artistic and technical. Agrest says that even after teaching and practicing the discipline for over 40 years, she still marvels at how much there is to learn. 'Architecture is really difficult. I realized that only very recently,' she says. 'It's like music. You can enjoy it but — to know it — it's a different story.' Another bit of wisdom she shares with her students: The career of an architect blossoms late.

Now at 70 years old, Diana Agrest reflects on some of her teaching and design approaches in her illustrious career, with those approaches having influenced both former and current students and fellow educators alike.

Mueller, Texas: a new urbanism shot at utopia

2015-02-13T20:32:00-05:00

Mueller is the product of the "new-urbanism" concept: the idea that a built environment can create meaningful community. Planners minimize the supremacy of the automobile and shape the environment around pedestrians. [...] One of the criticisms of new urbanism is that its communities look too much like a movie set — too quaint, too utopic. Yet Mueller feels real, with its ample greenways, eclectic yard art and Craftsman-style homes built with lots of native limestone.

The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever

2014-05-20T18:44:00-04:00

Just in time for graduation, NPR has hand-picked 300 of the best commencement speeches, searchable by name, school, date or theme.

The monuments to Qatar's phenomenal growth

2013-12-27T14:24:00-05:00

"are the skyscrapers that tower over the Corniche, Doha's Waterside Drive, and it's an amazing skyline...There's a building that looks like a great blue cylinder whose top...It looks like Darth Vader helmet at the top of it...a building that looks like a big pickle with a toothpick stuck out of the top and another that's kind of like a vase on a potter's wheel...it looks as if it was a huge architectural competition and everybody won and everybody got to design a building." - Robert Siegel

In a piece about Qatar's National Food Security Program, Robert Siegel examines the challenges and opportunities of food and water security in the Gulf nation. While visiting Doha to speak with Fatah al-Attiya, director of the program, Mr. Siegel reflects on the wealth/success/growth for which Qatar and the other Gulf states have become synonymous in recent decade.

Ezra Stoller, The Photographer Who Made Architects Famous

2013-03-01T14:10:00-05:00

The task is to capture the intention behind someone else's design — to distill the philosophy of a building into a single, digestible image that transcends explanation. It's not easy, but when it's done well it looks effortless... "I'm not interested in art photography," Ezra Stoller once said in an interview. "I'm interested in architecture as it is, to look at and enjoy. But what I do is a job of work, that is what it is."

NPR talks to McGill professor about China's architectural knock-off of Zaha's Wangjing Soho

2013-01-04T13:07:00-05:00

China is also the land of the knock-off: knock-off designer handbags, knock-off blockbuster movies on DVDs, etc. But now, it seems the knock-off has gone off the charts in terms of proportion: entire buildings.

As we have previously mentioned, Zaha Hadid is the latest victim of piracy in China, with a upcoming copy of her Wangjing Soho complex... scheduled to be completed before the original. NPR explores this issue with McGill architecture prof Avi Friedman.