Archinect - News

The corner office's long era of dominance is over. Make way for the new 'Workplace Power Symbols' says The Atlantic

2024-05-21T17:43:00-04:00

Many modern companies “have as many conference rooms as there are executives,” [Kay] Sargent said, and it’s become a “dirty little secret” that conference rooms are the new corner offices. [...] When a high-ranking executive parks themselves in a big conference room or spreads their stuff across the long table in the office coffee shop, no one is going to tell them to leave.

The influence that Google exerted over office design in the 2000s has been credited with starting the movement toward a post-COVID reality in which the private spaces within offices now occupy only 45% of the total footprint. (H/t CoStar.com from January)

Still, The Atlantic’s Michael Waters writes: “We may one day return to an older layout of explicit hierarchy: [Lenny] Beaudoin, the CBRE designer, told me that he recently worked with a bank that decided to reinstall corner offices for a group of senior leaders, hoping it would bring them back to the office. But even if recent changes prove lasting, with space designed to be up for grabs, there won’t be any illusions about who has the power to grab it.”

Tate Modern resolves viewing platform privacy dispute with Neo Bankside residents

2023-10-23T13:48:00-04:00

The Tate Modern in London has announced its compliance with the UK High Court’s February ruling regarding a privacy case that involved its 10th-floor viewing gallery and five residents of the adjacent Neo Bankside apartments.

The museum will now restrict visitors' access to the platform, which was constructed in 2016 as part of a Herzog & de Meuron-led $318 million Blavatnik Building expansion. The remedy will help the Tate avoid paying any monetary damages, as was the will of the plaintiffs. Their decision puts an end to a saga that has touched on Inner London’s class conflicts over housing and could potentially carry future ramifications in regards to design and the public realm, according to Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright and other observers.

Natasha Rees, a senior partner at the law firm Forsters, which represented the five Neo Bankside residents, said: “An award of damages was never our clients’ aim and they are grateful for the Tate’s recent willingness, instead, to agree t...

UK Supreme Court rules in favor of residents in Tate Modern viewing platform case

2023-02-02T17:04:00-05:00

The owners of luxury flats opposite Tate Modern’s viewing gallery face an unacceptable level of intrusion that prevents them enjoying their homes, the supreme court has ruled. In a majority judgment, the court determined that the flat owners faced a “constant visual intrusion” that interfered with the “ordinary use and enjoyment” of their properties, extending the law of privacy to include overlooking – albeit only in extreme cases.

The suit was initiated by a quintet of residents of the RSHP-designed apartment tower in 2017, offering Oliver Wainwright (another) chance to comment on the class tensions which lie at the heart of many high-profile Greater London housing kerfuffles. It was later dismissed by a lower court judge before heading to the UK’s Supreme Court in August 2021. This week’s ruling did not however provide a remedy to fix the headaches caused by the 2016 Herzog & de Meuron extension with either a partition or any other kind of privacy shield.

Some speculate that the court’s decision may preface a torrent of pro-tenant privacy cases. In issuing his opinion, Justice George Leggatt wrote: “It is not difficult to imagine how oppressive living in such circumstances would feel for any ordinary person — much like being on display in a zoo.”

Forensic Architecture is now combating an Israeli spyware giant with the help of Edward Snowden

2021-07-12T15:11:00-04:00

Two giants of activism have acquired a new target in their ongoing fight for online privacy rights in the digital age.

Forensic Architecture is pairing with Edward Snowden to take on an Israeli spyware company called NSO Group that has been behind hacks of journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists across the globe since its founding in 2010.

Courtesy of Forensic Architecture.

Decrying a campaign of “digital violence” resulting from a spyware product authored by the company called Pegasus, Forensic Architecture, which has targeted NSO in the past, is once again taking aim in the form of an open-source investigation meant to raise awareness of the ongoing abuses that have been allowed to continue despite a slate of legal challenges.

The group’s lead researcher Shourideh Molavi pointed to the psychological toll taken by hacking victims as the reason behind the group’s condemnation of Pegasus and other similar technologies it charges as having an outsized role in a system of “sta...

Privacy lawsuit against Tate Modern's viewing platform goes to Supreme Court

2021-04-27T15:32:00-04:00

Residents of a luxury development on London’s South Bank who lost a legal battle to close part of the tenth-floor viewing platform at Tate Modern are now taking their case to the UK Supreme Court. Owners of four flats in the Neo Bankside block located alongside the gallery, previously claimed in court that “hundreds of thousands of visitors” to Tate Modern were looking into their homes from the viewing space located in its Blavatnik building.

After losing their legal case to close parts of the public viewing terrace at the neighboring Tate Modern extension, some residents of the luxurious Neo Bankside glass condo development in London are now taking their fight to the UK's Supreme Court, reports The Art Newspaper.

Previously on Archinect: Glass tower residents lose 'invasion of privacy' case against Tate Modern

Glass tower residents lose 'invasion of privacy' case against Tate Modern

2019-02-12T13:42:00-05:00

Residents of flats overlooked by the Tate Modern have lost their high court bid to stop “hundreds of thousands of visitors” looking into their homes from the art gallery’s viewing platform. [...] the board of trustees of the Tate Gallery said the platform provided “a unique, free, 360-degree view of London” and argue that the claimants could simply “draw the blinds”.

The judge presiding over the highly publicized case dismissed the residents' demands that parts of the 10th-floor public viewing terrace in the Tate Modern's Herzog & de Meuron-designed extension be closed off to prevent visitors from peeking through the floor-to-ceiling windows into the ritzy Neo Bankside apartments (planned by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners) next door.

Those who live in glass houses should have a sense of humor. Photo: zoer/Flickr

Recognizing the fact that the residents were “occupying a particularly sensitive property which they are operating in a way which has increased the sensitivity,” the judge recommended net curtains as a reasonable privacy solution.

“Colonizing Experiment in Surveillance Capitalism”: Privacy Expert Resigns From Google-Backed Smart City Project Over Surveillance Concerns

2018-10-26T12:28:00-04:00

A privacy expert tasked with protecting personal data within a Google-backed smart city project has resigned as her pro-privacy guidelines would largely be ignored by participants. “I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance,” Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy commissioner of Ontario, wrote in a resignation letter to Google sister company Sidewalk Labs.

Smart phones, smart cars, smart cities, but smart for who?

From Search Engines to Sidewalks?

2018-01-10T12:22:00-05:00

Yet what has drawn the most concern and curiosity with regards to Quayside is a uniquely 21st-century feature: a data-harvesting, wifi-beaming “digital layer” that would underpin each proposed facet of Quayside life. According to Sidewalk Labs, this would provide “a single unified source of information about what is going on”—to an astonishing level of detail—as well as a centralized platform for efficiently managing it all.

While tech companies struggle to discover the new way to get a glimpse into our daily habits—attempting to discover how and where we spend our time and money—Alphabet might have just brought the ‘Truman Show’ approach to marketing.

With Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet, announcing its first ever Urban Development in Toronto earlier this year, it is no surprise that tech companies have switched gears and begun to see the city itself as a device, rather than just the thing in your hand. Tech giants are beginning to turn architecture into a tool for data collection and that data is then becoming the perspective in which the Architecture is critiqued. What does that spell for the discipline at large?

Beyond our discipline, if every decision is based on its ability to produce more data, how does that impact privacy and freedom of choice? What would the pop-up ad equivalent become if it is capable of leaving the digital screen and becoming an urban phenomenon and where would the ...

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...

Data-collecting benches are making their way into cities

2017-07-17T16:47:00-04:00

A pair of USB ports on a console on the front of the bench provides juice from the solar panel mounted at lap level between the seats. Who wouldn’t want to hang out at a bench like this? It certainly catches the eye of passersby. What these kids might not realize, however, is that this bench is watching them back.

"Smart" benches are spreading—recently a series of them, manufactured by Soofa, was installed in a tiny neighborhood park next to I-77 on the north end of Charlotte, North Carolina with the intent of the neighborhood's analysis and redevelopment.

Soofa, founded in 2014 by three graduates of MIT Media Lab, is one of a handful of companies designing data-collecting street furniture. Their solar-powered benches register Wi-Fi enabled devices within 150 feet of them, sending data back to an office building in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the sensors can't access personal information from your phone, they pick up and remember your devices' MAC address. The technology allows cities and urban planners to count users of various public spaces, identifying when and for how long they're visited, and potentially optimizing their design.

"The line between collecting data for a valid public purpose and the unreasonable surveillance of private citizens can be tough to tease out. Beyond c...

Will luxury apartment owners shut down the Tate's viewing platform?

2017-04-25T13:55:00-04:00

Good walls make good neighbours – but not, it seems, when they are made entirely of glass. Five residents of the multi-million-pound Neo Bankside towers, which loom behind Tate Modern like a crystalline bar chart of inflated land values, have filed a legal claim against the museum to have part of its viewing platform shut down. They claim that its 10th-floor public terrace has put their homes into a state of “near constant surveillance”.

In an apparent case of art interfering with life, the owners of the apartments next to the Tate Modern's viewing platform are trying to legally erect some kind of visual barrier between them and the visitors of the museum (although the exotic technology of curtains has apparently not yet made it to the U.K.). This attempt at transforming the viewing platform into just a platform is raising ire for several good reasons, chiefly because it places the comfort of a few above the aesthetic pleasure of potentially millions. On the plus side, it has also caused Oliver Wainwright to write a highly enjoyable piece delving into barely restrained class tension and London's swollen luxury real estate market.

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.

Working in zero privacy: new monitoring technology tracks every motion and word

2017-02-28T17:35:00-05:00

Although it's not shocking that companies like Gensler have automated on/off sensors in their lighting grid to save energy when no one's in the office, it's slightly less comforting to realize that many companies are now using sensors to monitor when employees are at their desks, if they're talking with their fellow co-workers, and how long they're in the bathroom. (Makes one harken for the days when workers were judged by what they actually produced, as opposed to their process of production.) As Marketplace reports, one of the new privacy-free devices is called "Humanyze":

They’re in a badge you wear around [your] neck, kind of like an ID badge. And they measure this thing called “latency” to see how often people are interacting with their co-workers. Which, to me, sounds like a little bit much. But they claim the data is anonymized, and they don’t record exactly what you’re saying, or at least they don’t share that with your employer.... The Boston Consulting Group is using it to...

Private Session: whistleblowing architects and bank robbing bandits on Archinect Sessions #71

2016-07-07T13:53:00-04:00

Wrapping up our special editorial theme for June 2016, Privacy, Archinect writers Julia Ingalls and Nicholas Korody join us on the podcast this week to discuss two of their recent features—Julia's piece on banking security with input from a reformed robber, and Nicholas' interview with the architecture firm that moonlights as a government whistleblower, posting hundreds of secret documents online.

Listen to episode 71 of Archinect Sessions, "Private Session":

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button below the logo to automatically download new episodes.
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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

Nextdoor, "the private social network for your neighborhood"

NSA exploring data collection from Internet of Things, including biomedical devices

2016-06-14T18:29:00-04:00

The National Security Agency is researching opportunities to collect foreign intelligence — including the possibility of exploiting internet-connected biomedical devices like pacemakers, according to a senior official. [...] When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things — billions of interconnected devices — would be “a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza,” [Richard Ledgett, the NSA’s deputy director] replied, “Both.”

For more on the world of the Internet of Things, check out these links:

This month, Archinect's coverage includes a special thematic focus, Privacy. Have projects that grapple with how city data and other new modes of urbanism have changed our notion of privacy? Submit to our open call by Sunday, June 19.

Kentucky students defend shared living spaces over "innovative" new dorms

2016-04-27T13:28:00-04:00

with the rise of these innovative areas, traditional-style dorms, characterized by shared bathrooms and two or more students living with one another in a single space, are becoming less frequent on campus, and will soon be discontinued altogether. [...] living in a traditional-style dorm is important, especially for first-year students, because the living arrangements allow for greater communication between residents that may not necessarily occur in the newer dorms.

Related on Archinect:

The Birth and Death of Privacy: 3000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images

2015-12-14T11:35:00-05:00

“Privacy may actually be an anomaly” ~ Vinton Cerf, Co-creator of the military’s early Internet prototype and Google executive.

Privacy, as we understand it, is only about 150 years old.
Humans do have an instinctual desire for privacy. However, for 3,000 years, cultures have nearly always prioritized convenience and wealth over privacy.
Section II will show how cutting edge health technology will force people to choose between an early, costly death and a world without any semblance of privacy. Given historical trends, the most likely outcome is that we will forgo privacy and return to our traditional, transparent existence.

Internal Walls (c. 1500 AD): Most homes didn't have walls separating the rooms until the development of the brick chimney, which needed support beams.

Source: Housing Culture: Traditional Architecture In An English Landscape (p. 78).

“A profound change in the very blueprint of the living space” ~ historian Sarti Raffaella, on the introduction of the chimney.

Read on t...

The next battleground for personal privacy: gyms?

2015-12-03T14:23:00-05:00

“In the last 20 years, maybe 25 years, there’s a huge cultural shift in people that ultimately affects gyms,” said Bryan Dunkelberger, a founding principal of S3 Design, which has worked for clients like Equinox and the Sports Club/ LA. [...] And the millennials, these are the special children. They expect all the amenities... Privacy, they expect.” [...] “It’s funny, they’re more socially open with everything — Facebook, social media — yet more private in their personal space”

Ai Weiwei, Jacob Appelbaum and the dissident experience

2015-04-28T20:20:00-04:00

It’s a Thursday morning in Beijing, and the world’s most famous living artist, Ai Weiwei, is sitting with one of the world’s most controversial technologists, Jacob Appelbaum, in the second-floor lobby of the East Hotel. [...] On a whim, Ai suggests that they call Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living for the last two years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. [...] Ai and Assange talk for several minutes about the mundanities of the dissident life.

Street view: a virtual tour across Russia by remote camera

2014-11-21T14:53:00-05:00

The idea for Yandex. Street Photographer came to Daniill Maksyokov on a Friday night, while he was surfing the internet [...] “In Yandex.Maps there’s an analogue of Google Street View called Panoramas but it only has views of Russian cities and some former-Soviet countries [...]” say Maksyokov. “What’s more, faces, labels, registration numbers of vehicles and other personal data are not blurred … As a result you have a complete sense of presence and can see everything from a fresh perspective.”

Europe will let its citizens edit Google search results for their names

2014-05-13T17:05:00-04:00

The European Court of Justice said Google must remove links in search results when requested by individuals, such as the Spanish man who brought a case against the search engine in order to remove links to a 1998 newspaper article about the sale of property to settle his debts. The court said that the “initially lawful processing of accurate data” could, over time, become “inadequate,” “irrelevant,” or “excessive” in the eyes of the people who feature in the material.

The Power of Sticker Shock

2014-02-20T15:41:00-05:00

The idea of wrapping a house in giant graphic stickers, like the ones used for ads on city buses, appealed to Eric Chu the moment his architect suggested it. [...] Applying colorful, blown-up photos to the exterior glass walls — allowing daytime views out, but not in — was the unconventional solution proposed by Mr. Chu’s architect, Whitney Sander, who runs Sander Architects with his wife, Catherine Holliss.

Harness Robocop social-networking ability with Highlight app

2013-12-12T15:31:00-05:00

The newest version of [Highlight], available for iPhone and Android, uses every sensor, signal, and stream it can get its hands on to passively figure out what you’re doing, and it intelligently scans users nearby to figure out who you might be interested in. It’s not necessarily about people you know but people you could know. And that makes it both way cooler and way creepier than Facebook could ever dream of being.

Google Street View gets (even more) personal

2013-12-10T14:44:00-05:00

Google's Street View is slowly covering more and more of the world's surface, but it still has holes. Now though, you can help fill them—and all you need is an Android phone or DSLR. Google has just launched a new Street View feature which allows any user to recreate the usual Street View experience by stringing together photo spheres along paths which they define.

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

2012-03-19T18:30:00-04:00

... thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol. Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards.