Archinect - News

RAMSA designs the Virginia General Assembly building for the new century of democratic governance

2024-07-05T15:42:00-04:00

The first purpose-built space for the Virginia General Assembly, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in collaboration with Glavé & Holmes Architecture, has debuted in Richmond’s Capitol Square.

The 14-story, 414,000-square-foot facility serves the modern needs of what is the oldest continually meeting legislative body in the United States while enabling better public participation in the legislative process.

Image credit: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

Addressing Thomas Jefferson and Charles-Louis Clérisseau’s Virginia State Capitol from 1785 at the northwest corner of the square, the project anchors its full-block site and consolidates a spate of smaller buildings ranging from 1912 to 1965.

Image credit: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

A central ten-story masonry-clad tower rising from a four-story podium dominates the composition, which features the preserved historic facades from the 112-year-old Life Insurance Company of Virginia building.

Image credit: Francis Dzikowski/OTTO

The publicly acc...

Four adaptive reuse projects by 3North: Your Next Employer?

2023-12-11T14:07:00-05:00

Following last week’s visit to New York-based Architecture Research Office, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to Richmond, VA this week to explore the work of 3North.

From their studios in both Richmond and San Francisco, the firm has built a portfolio across twenty years along a principle that “great design only happens when multiple disciplines collaborate without walls or silos.” As a result, the studio contains a mixture of architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and graphic designers, working on projects spanning hospitality, cultural, multifamily, corporate, and single-family residential.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for a Technical Director to join their Richmond office. For candidates interested in applying for the position, or anybody interested in learning about the firm’s output, we have rounded up four adaptive reuse projects by 3North that exemplify the studio’s ethos.

American Civil War Museum. Image courtesy: 3North...

Mayors across U.S. voice their struggles in tackling housing crisis and homelessness

2023-01-20T12:29:00-05:00

Mayors across a variety of American towns and cities have used the U.S. Conference of Mayors to voice concerns about their ability to address the dual crises of housing affordability and homelessness. As reported by Politico, specific struggles shared by mayors include attracting investors, housing density, and racial disparities.

“At the end of the day, as mayors, people aren’t looking to their senators to solve homelessness,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed told the conference in Washington, D.C. “They’re not looking to their state legislators to solve homelessness. They’re looking to their mayor.”

Meanwhile, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney warned that “parasitic” investors, who either undervalue or abandon properties, exclusively operate short-term rentals, flip homes, or price individual families out of the housing market, are having a detrimental impact across the city, including in low-income an...

Steven Holl Architects releases short video spotlighting VCU Institute for Contemporary Art

2019-01-03T16:11:00-05:00

Steven Holl Architects recently released a short video by Milkbox NY that highlights the VCU Institute for Contemporary Art that opened last April in Richmond. Hear Steven Holl and Chris McVoy talk more about the ICA's dynamic design, while artists and VCUarts faculty and alumni comment on the building's impact on the local community over the last nine months. You can watch the 6-minute feature below.

Infrastructure is not neutral; case studies of communities decimated by highways

2018-02-22T15:06:00-05:00

Making the case that infrastructure itself can be exclusionary is hardly straightforward. Many of the worst decisions in US planning were made decades ago to intentionally disenfranchise, marginalise and separate communities; policies such as redlining and “blight clearing” are well-documented embarrassments. But many decisions that segregated communities were unintentional. The stop sign and one-way street might seem benign, but they shape our lives in ways we sometimes don’t even realise.

Through focusing in on 5 case studies where communities have been obliterated by infrastructure decisions, the direct impact of highways and walls take on greater levels of meaning and urgency. The power of city planning also comes into greater consideration presently as the US takes on a massive infrastructure revitalization project.

"Too big to replace, too expensive to tear down", Miller emphasizes the importance of digging into the history of our country's development in order to understand past injustices, prevent future abuse, and address current issues as they stand right now.

An in depth look focuses on Detroit’s 8 Mile and historical Black Bottom neighborhoods, West Oakland in California, West Baltimore, and Jackson Ward in Richmond, Virginia. Arresting images of overlapping interstates where communities used to be reveal a truth many of us drive on in our everyday lives.

Please read Johnny Miller's full piece on how infrastructure decisions impact communities and are dir...

FARM-X shares its modular vertical farming approach, pilot project nears completion

2015-03-18T19:44:00-04:00

The vertical-farming movement continues to grow with the recent unveiling of FARM-X's modular vertical-farming concept, which the Oakland, CA-based organization developed with Zurich-based Conceptual Devices founder Antonio Scarponi and an agronomy team led by University of Bologna Professor Giorgio GianquintoI. In the most idealistic sense, the FARM-X model would maximize production of fresh food up to 5 tons per day, can be applied anywhere as one means to sustainably revive unused urban spaces, and would create more jobs to develop a "green collar workforce" of urban agricultural farmers.

FARM-X aims to construct 10,000 sq.m. (approx.110,000 sq.ft.) of total vertical farm space throughout Oakland over the next decade. For starters, a pilot run of the project is near completion nearby in Richmond, CA.

Read on for more project details that we received:

"Food has historically been grown in areas of low real-estate interest, far from densely populated settlements normally described as '...

How America is failing to preserve its historic slave markets

2015-02-13T14:36:00-05:00

It’s easy enough to blame economic forces for the postwar destruction of slave markets, but not for the persistent concealment of their history. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the South has no shortage of memorials to the Lost Cause, while memorials to the slave trade remain few and far between. [...] After the Civil War, Johnson says, “the price of moving forward for the white United States was the forgetting of slavery.”

A City Invokes Seizure Laws to Save Homes

2013-07-30T10:44:00-04:00

“We’re not willing to back down on this.They can put forward as much pressure as they would like but I’m very committed to this program and I’m very committed to the well-being of our neighborhoods.” - Gayle McLaughlin, Richmond’s mayor

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

The power of eminent domain has traditionally worked against homeowners, who can be forced to sell their property to make way for a new highway or shopping mall. But now the working-class city of Richmond, Calif., hopes to use the same legal tool to help people stay right where they are.

Scarcely touched by the nation’s housing recovery and tired of waiting for federal help, Richmond is about to become the first city in the nation to try eminent domain as a way to stop foreclosures.

Archinect - News

RAMSA designs the Virginia General Assembly building for the new century of democratic governance

Four adaptive reuse projects by 3North: Your Next Employer?

Mayors across U.S. voice their struggles in tackling housing crisis and homelessness

Steven Holl Architects releases short video spotlighting VCU Institute for Contemporary​ Art

Infrastructure is not neutral; case studies of communities decimated by highways

FARM-X shares its modular vertical farming approach, pilot project nears completion

How America is failing to preserve its historic slave markets

A City Invokes Seizure Laws to Save Homes

Steven Holl Architects releases short video spotlighting VCU Institute for Contemporary Art