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Weekly News Round-Up for August 11, 2014: Monumental politics, smart homes and GSAPP's new dean

2014-08-18T12:53:00-04:00

Friday, August 15

Farewell to the Old Okura: The famous Hotel Okura, built in the 1960s in a distinctive fusion of modern and traditional Japanese styles, is closing in response to prohibitive earthquake retrofits and larger, newer hotels in the area.
Samsung Acquires SmartThings, A Fast-Growing Home Automation Startup: SmartThings, an aggregator for all "smart" internet-connected devices in the home, cost Samsung an estimated $200 million —chump change in comparison to Google's $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest.

Thursday, August 14

One ridesharing app to rule them all: Ridescout moves into the competitive world of rideshare: Ridescout aggregates hundreds of ridesharing services to compare trips, and will now include "carpool" options that can help users share trips. The announcement comes after last week's news that Uber and Lyft are now both offering carpooling services.
Revisiting the American Folk Art Museum controversy, through comics: A thoughtful and diplomatic look at AFAM's his...

Samsung Acquires SmartThings, A Fast-Growing Home Automation Startup

2014-08-15T12:07:00-04:00

Samsung is making a big push into being the center of the smart home today with its acquisition of SmartThings, which allows people to sync up their connected gadgets onto a single smartphone app and hardware hub.

Looks like Samsung is trying to catch up with Apple's upcoming HomeKit.

Corporate Design: An Energizer Versus an Eyesore

2014-04-14T15:37:00-04:00

The rivalry between the South Korean tech giants Samsung and LG isn't just played out over sales of smartphones and curved television screens. Both companies are building new American headquarters, Samsung in north San Jose, Calif.; LG in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. And on this score, the contest isn't close. Buildings are corporate symbols and advertisements, after all. Samsung comes across as a good citizen here; LG as a lousy neighbor.

NBBJ to design embedded outdoor spaces for Samsung's Silcon Valley facility

2013-01-28T15:22:00-05:00

Steve Jobs talked about his connection to the outdoors. So we said, 'Let's take that approach. Let's make sure every employee has access to the outdoors within one floor.' So we took a series of two-story buildings and stacked them on top of each other, and put gardens in between them.