Archinect - News

London's Camden Highline project gets official planning approval

2023-01-20T11:46:00-05:00

London is getting an attractive new elevated parkway feature after planning approvals were granted for the proposed Camden Highline, the BBC reported on Friday.

Running from Camden Gardens to Royal College Street near the King’s Cross transit hub, the parkway will transform a disused Victorian rail viaduct while adding green space to some of the capital’s traditionally underserved districts. It will also bring projected economic benefits totaling £10.9m ($13.46 million) over the project’s lifetime, and help stitch together the snaking chessboard of different neighborhoods that lie along its 1.2 kilometer (0.75-miles) path.

Piet Oudolf will lead the design, which apparently entails a series of “ecosystems and experiences” made up of three sections culminating in a fully-accessible entry point at York Street to the north. Each section will include a program of features such as a children’s playground, nesting sites, and an outdoor classroom. Construction costs for the first section o...

Publisher to launch Kickstarter campaign to reissue 'The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn'

2021-01-29T12:46:00-05:00

Designers & Books is launching a Kickstarter on February 17 to issue The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn, long out of print, in a new facsimile edition. Created by Richard Saul Wurman, along with printer Eugene Feldman, and first published in 1962 (second edition, 1973). The book features sketches from Kahn's travels and drawings of selected projects, paired with texts from his personal notebooks and unpublished speeches.

1956 study for center city Philadelphia, ink on tracing paper

1957 A.N. Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, definitive study, pencil on tracing paper

This reproduction will be accompanied by an extensive Reader's Guide, which will include new writings by a variety of critics and colleagues as well as personal recollections. Additional visual material will also accompany the work, including many previously unpublished.

1962 Graham Foundation studies for center city Philadelphia, plan diagram, ink

Mikveh Israel Synagogue...

Is the BioVYZER air-filtration protective shield a peek into our future?

2020-05-07T14:36:00-04:00

The patent-pending BioVYZER has already raised $124,341 in funding on Indiegogo which is significantly higher than the original goal of $7,104. The protective shield uses powered air purifying technology through N-95 filtration and offers protection to the users entire face. According to VYZER Technologies, the developer of the offering, the product can filter out 95 percent of particulate matter.

The Iranian American community to gift sculpture by Cecil Balmond to the City of Los Angeles

2017-08-23T14:17:00-04:00

Southern California boasts the largest concentration of Iranians in the world outside Iran, and the county of Los Angeles houses the vast majority. The Fahrang Foundation—a non-religious, non-political, and not-for-profit foundation with a mission to celebrate and promote Iranian art and culture—plans to honor the Iranian community while thanking the City of Los Angeles with a gifted sculpture that will stand at the intersection of Santa Monica Blvd. and Century Park East.

Courtesy of Balmond Studio.

The Freedom Sculpture, as it will be called, has been crowdfunded by over one million people and will serve as the gateway to Beverly Hills where the Iranian community makes up 20% of the population. It has been designed by the Sri Lankan-British designer and engineer Cecil Balmond whom has worked with everyone from Rem Koolhaas to Toyo Ito to Anish Kapoor. The design takes its inspiration from the Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient clay artifact dating back to 539 BCE that is considered the fi...

Up your LEGO-building game with the Nimuno Loops “LEGO-compatible tape”

2017-03-15T21:19:00-04:00

Nimuno Loops might be the missing piece to your LEGO-building needs. Created by industrial designers Anine Kirsten and Max Basler from Cape Town, Nimuno Loops are rolls of LEGO-compatible adhesive tape that turns almost any surface at any angle into a LEGO-building project site. The reusable, bendable tape can be cut with scissors to your desired length, and it works with other major toy-building block systems like Mega Bloks and Kreo.

Screenshots via YouTube.

Image via Indiegogo.

Team Nimuno spent over a year developing the Nimuno Loops, from concept to working prototype. Starting out with an $8,000 goal, Team Nimuno's Indiegogo campaign has amassed $758,399 from over 20,000 backers so far. The funds will help the designers pay for final prototyping and testing of the Loops using different materials and adhesive, the necessary industrial tools for casting the Loops, and shipping and logistics. Backers are expected to receive the tape starting this July.

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for February 2016

2016-02-29T20:27:00-05:00

Have a look at some of the crowdfunding campaigns that caught our attention for this month's list, including a few furniture picks for the end of Archinect's Furniture February. You can also check out Archinect's curated Kickstarter page for more of our previous favorites.

BIG Oakland coworking space for the building industry

No, this isn't from Bjarke Ingels. The Building Industry Gathering - Oakland is an initiative that's determined to bring about the city's first coworking space that is specially equipped for those working in the AEC industry.

Frankfurter Bank

This furniture piece nods to Max Stoelker's Frankfurter Stuhl chair that he first designed in the 1930s. A longtime fan of the iconic chair, designer Thomas Hirschmann had the idea to "connect" two Frankfurter Stuhl chairs to form this fun, versatile bench.

SNAP: Design Your Own Furniture

Made in an array of colors, SNAP by Be-elastic is an easy furniture assembly system that can just as easily spruce up your everyday spaces. I...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for January 2016

2016-01-29T21:02:00-05:00

It's been awhile since our last Kickstarter round-up, so here's our first list of 2016! Take a gander at some of the crowdfunded projects that caught our eye this month for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

Ghetto Biennale Catalogue

Created by Haitian art collective Atis Rezistans, The Ghetto Biennale is a cross-cultural arts event that takes place every two years in Port-au-Prince. Now, the Biennale crew is set to publish their first catalog that chronicles the first four events. The publication will "be an important addition to critical resources exploring the scholarship and art history of transculturalism, and hopefully lead to a deeper understanding of marginality in the art world."

Microscape

Have the entire Manhattan skyline (or a chunk of it) right on your desk with these awesome Microscapes. These 1:5000 city replicas are 3D-printed from up-to-date aerial scan data, so that means buildings still under construction or in planning can be included. More cities will be added so...

Vote on which 3D concrete puzzles of cities & places to model next

2015-11-04T15:12:00-05:00

First, there was a competition: specifically, the What-To-Print-In-3D? design contest, in which Planbureau studio won a Makerbot Replicator 2 capable of printing 100 micron resolution samples for the molds of their LOGIPLACES 3D concrete puzzles. So far, they've created 16 to 36 piece puzzles of San Francisco, Budapest, the Grand Canyon and Zermatt in the Alps.

Now, the firm has taken to Indiegogo to start an entire line of printed puzzles to, according to a press release, "create a product that can be completely custom-made to represent any chosen place, one with a great memory, someone’s hometown or a company’s headquarters and its surroundings." Contributors to the new campaign (which needs to raise $15,000 by mid-December) will be able to cast their vote on which place they'd like to see modeled next.

MMYST: a crowd-funded, human-animal hybrid building by François Roche and Camille Lacadee of New-Territories/M4

2015-09-30T16:14:00-04:00

"What we propose here is a different format for making architecture," Camille Lacadee states in a deadpan tone, "with multiple clients, multiple users, backers, lovers, following a bottom-up mode of exchanges and desire." A robotic arm extends into the frame and offers her a bowl of bird's nest soup, which she takes. "Oh it's hot!"

Alongside François Roche, Lacadee heads the ever-mutating, radically-experimental architecture studio currently-known-as New-Territories / M4. For their new project MMYST, or "mke_Me_yungR_sheltR_tmptation," they've launched a Kickstarter campaign that includes what is likely one of the most wonderfully strange videos that's ever been on the crowd-funding website.

According to the campaign description, MMYST would comprise a 140 sqm (1500 ft²) "experimental hybrid building" to be shared by humans and swiftlets, a species of bird that makes unique nests out of saliva that are prized for their culinary applications.

Sited on an outcropping of cooled-lava in th...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for September 2015

2015-09-28T10:34:00-04:00

It's already time for the next Kickstart This list! Check below to see what sorts of crowdfunding projects made it onto the September round-up for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

On a different note, the former Kickstarter Inc. announced its reincorporation as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) — which may sound a bit contradictory. According to Kickstarter, PBCs are "for-profit companies that are obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders", and more companies are expected to make the switch in the coming years. Will that include architecture firms? Considering that many architects and designers use Kickstarter, how much will the PBC ideology influence the industry?

Frank Lloyd Wright's Call Building Model

Driven by Frank Lloyd Wright's Organic principles, non-profit group Organic Architecture and Design Archives, Inc. is raising funds to construct an exact full-size replica of FLW's iconic San Francisco Call Building model. The group is...

London Mayor Boris Johnson pledges £285,000 to crowdfunding projects

2015-09-18T07:38:00-04:00

This week, he signed over £285,000 of his £9m High Street Fund, created in March, to projects which will "re-energise the capital's high streets"...the mayor's office is donating to these projects through Spacehive, a civic crowdfunding website through which campaigners can raise money from the public to fund their community schemes.

From a proposed revitalization project known as the "Peckham Coal Line" that, much like New York City's High Line, would transform abandoned coal sidings into a foliage-rich walkway for pedestrians and cyclists, to a public library in an alley known as a "Literalley," designers and dreamers alike are being encouraged to enter their high street improving projects into a bid to be awarded money from Mayor Johnson. His favorite projects will receive up to £20,000 each.

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for July + August 2015

2015-08-17T14:16:00-04:00

Time for the next Kickstart this! list. Check out what sorts of crowdfunding projects made it onto the July and August round-up for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

BIG's STEAM RING GENERATOR FOR WORLD'S CLEANEST POWER PLANT

Bjarke Ingels and Jakob Lange set up a Kickstarter to build the final prototype of BIG's steam ring generator, as part of the upcoming power plant in Copenhagen that is slated for completion in 2017. Once built, the generator will puff out a steam ring for every ton of CO2 burned in the plant.

49 Cities: 3rd Edition deluxe reprint

Out of print since 2010, WorkAC principals Dan Wood and Amale Andraos are bringing back "49 Cities", a unique reference guide that "embrace[s] scale and common sense combined with delirious imagination as tools to reinvent the city." The new edition includes interviews between Amale Andraos, Da...

Follow the yellow wooden road into Rotterdam's new Luchtsingel pedestrian park

2015-07-14T19:46:00-04:00

Rotterdam recently welcomed The Luchtsingel, a communal endeavor to spruce up the long-neglected Hofplein neighborhood in the heart of the city. Locally based architecture practice Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS) devised The Luchtsingel in 2011. The focal point of the emerging "three-dimensional cityscape" is a nearly 400-meter wooden pedestrian bridge that was largely built from crowdsourced funds, accompanied by a network of refurbished public spaces.

"Based on the idea of Permanent Temporality, the Luchtsingel introduces a new way of [city-making]. This means using the city's evolutionary character and existing forms as a starting point. Therefore, we have developed new instruments for design, financing, and planning," said ZUS partner Elma van Boxel in a statement.

The project gained traction when ZUS set up the "I Make Rotterdam" crowdfunding campaign for the bridge. The campaign sold over 8,000 boards painted in a hard-to-ignore shade of yellow inscribed with the supporter's name...

Two days left to kickstart the full-length comic zine of Fairy Tales 2nd-prize winner "Beautifully Banal"

2015-07-13T19:07:00-04:00

After winning second place in Blank Space's 2015 Fairy Tales Architecture Competition, University of Illinois at Chicago graduate students Alexander Culler and Danny Travis took things one step further to publish their submission, "Beautifully Banal", into a full-length architectural comic zine. The duo initiated a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month that received speedy support, reaching their $1,000 goal in just two days. Now with 52 hours to go, the campaign has garnered $3,578.

Culler and Travis set up the campaign in an effort to bring a light-hearted story that readers both within and outside of the architectural community can appreciate. Derived from the universal notion of finding one's place in the world, the three-part narrative follows Phineas the fly's journey through three major architectural programs: Residential, Commercial, and Industrial.

Readers encounter various architectural drawing conventions at different scales like plans, sections, axonometrics, elevations,...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for June 2015

2015-06-30T20:48:00-04:00

Another month has flown by, so that means it's time for the latest Kickstart This! list. Check out what sorts of crowdfunding projects made it onto the June 2015 round-up for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

Build a BEACH in D.C.

The National Building Museum teamed up with Brooklyn-based practice Snarkitecture to bring a life-sized indoor "BEACH" installation — decked out in Snarkitecture's signature monochrome white — inside the NBM's Great Hall, set to open on July 4.

the studio residency at the land

Frankfurt-based architects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller are garnering support for the design of a table-top structure that will ultimately evolve into the permanent space for a communally engaged artist residency. The structure is being built for a northern Thailand initiative founded by artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Lertchaiprasert.

The Lowline: New Solar Technology to Build an Underground Park

If NYC can get a High Line, why not a Lowline? As its name suggests, the Lowlin...

Make Music NY crowdfunds upcoming youth archi-music show "Concerto for Buildings"

2015-06-11T09:04:00-04:00

The architecturally and musically inclined can join in on Make Music New York festivities this year with a special orchestral performance called "Concerto for Buildings" on Sunday, June 21. Make Music New York is a one-day music fest on the first day of summer that boasts more than 1,000 free concerts, which all take place throughout NYC's five borroughs.

For its ninth year, MMNY set up an Indiegogo campaign with a flexible goal of $7,000 to reel in further support for Concerto for Buildings. The musical showcase stars two NYC youth orchestra ensembles, Face The Music and Mantra Youth Percussion, and four composers: Paula Matthusen (winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize), Scott Wollshleger, Daniel Goode, and Face the Music student-composer Elijah Valongo. Surrounded by SoHo's historic cast-iron buildings, the performers will play their hearts out as they take advantage of the structures' percussive qualities, thus transforming them into a complementary musical backdrop.

Funds from the In...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for May 2015

2015-05-29T20:52:00-04:00

Take a gander at the latest roundup of Kickstarter and crowdfunding projects for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page! Here are our picks for May 2015:

20 years of neurotitan gallery in Haus Schwarzenberg, Berlin

Berlin's Haus Schwarzenberg is prepping to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their non-commercial urban art gallery NEUROTITAN with special exhibitions, performances, and festivals featuring a stellar line-up of contemporary artists. Haus Schwarzenberg is hoping to secure enough funding to ensure they can book all the artists to participate in the events.

Make Léonie Geisendorf's Villa Delin available for everyone!

The historic Villa Delin is on the market. Designed by Polish-born Swedish architect Léonie Geisendorf and built between 1966-1970, the house is a brutalist beauty in a well-to-do residential district in Djursholm, Sweden. Although this Kickstarter didn't work out, it opens up an alternative option of having the house preserved as a public museum that is accessible f...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for April 2015

2015-04-28T12:44:00-04:00

Another month has gone by, so that means it's time for the latest Kickstart this! list. Check out what sorts of crowdfunding projects made it onto the April round-up for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

The Urban Death Project: Laying Our Loved Ones to Rest

The Urban Death Project presents a sustainable burial process that uses decomposition to transform deceased bodies into soil. In a more spiritual sense, the project allows those laid to rest to eventually grow into a new form of life like a tree, bush, or maybe a field.

Thames Baths - a new, beautiful lido for the River Thames

The Thames Baths by Studio Octopi would add a self-filtering open-air swimming pool to London's River Thames in ideally two years, instead of 10. The lido would add a communal, recreational space in the river for both swimmers and non-swimmers.

FLATLAND

Design and publishing studio Epilogue plans on recreating Edwin A. Abbott's 1884 classic, Flatland -- but with extra perks. Aside the book's on-trend minima...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for March 2015

2015-03-27T20:12:00-04:00

Time for the latest Kickstarter picks for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page. Check out what sorts of crowdfunding projects made it onto this month's list...

Organic Growth. Summer Pavilion on Governors Island 2015

Izaskun Chinchilla Architects was chosen as one of the winners in the 2015 ‘City of Dreams’ Pavilion competition to have their proposal "Organic Growth" constructed on Governors Island, NY. Dubbed by the firm as "NY's biggest bike bouquet", the proposed 95 sq.m. canopy puts space-filling waste materials to crafty use.

Billion Oyster Pavilion

Another winning City of Dreams Pavilion design by BanG Studios. All the materials in the Billion Oyster Pavilion would be used by the New York Harbor School to rebuild oyster habitats in NY's waterways.

2015 CGarchitect Visualization Conference

CGarchitect.com/CGSchool's Jeff Mottle and CGSchool business partner Brian Zajac teamed up to create the first annual CGarchitect 3D Architectural Visualization Conference. Out of an ambitious fund...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for February 2015

2015-02-27T19:31:00-05:00

It's already time for the next round-up of Kickstarter and crowdfunding projects for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page. Check out this month's list right below.

BOOKNITURE- Furniture Hidden in a Book

Designed by Hong Kong-based MIKE/PLATEAUS, BOOKNITURE is a sleek Origami Structure "book" that unfolds like an accordion into a clever portable piece of furniture. The Kickstarter, which has already far surpassed its initial goal, will help fund necessary tools for mass production.

re Brut: Brutalist Architecture Re-Imagined

As a winning design in a student studio seminar course/competition, the "re Brut" pavilion reinterprets the Brutalist architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kickstarter funds would support the pavilion's realization for the UIC School of Architecture's annual Year End Show (Y.E.S.)

Obelisk: Volume I: On Art, Architecture, & Antiquities

OBELISK Vol. 1 contains 36 articles and interviews from the Obelisk quarterly journal. Most of the articles in the 240-...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for January 2015

2015-01-30T13:26:00-05:00

Our first Kickstarter list of 2015! Here you'll find our latest selections of crowdfunding campaigns that piqued our interest for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

Parabola Chair

After two years of development and 15 full-sized prototypes, designer Carlo Aiello's Parabola Chair recently won the prestigious 2014 Red Dot Design Award. Aiello's Kickstarter campaign could help bring the chair to a wider market.

MODUS: The Ultimate 11-in-1 Portable Sketching Tool

The MODUS combines multiple essential drawing tasks into one nifty portable tool. It has the exact dimensions of a credit card, so it can slip right into a wallet. It's also made of 6061 Aluminum that can prevent RFID theft.

Life-size Animated Film

London-based animated filmmaking team Daisy Jacobs and Chris Wilder are crowdsourcing funds in hopes to bring their next film project together, where 2D painted characters interact with real-world 3D objects. You can check out the trailer of the team's last life-size animated film, "The...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for November 2014 + December 2014

2014-12-26T15:48:00-05:00

In the blink of an eye, another year has passed. Check out our last 2014 list of interesting crowdfunding campaigns for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page.

Brave the Storm - Aguantar La Tempestad

As annual typhoons continue to rage in the Philippines, the "Brave the Storm" project has been working to bring to affected communities an improved withstanding aerodynamic shelter based on traditional bamboo building techniques.

ARCHITECTURE | EMBRACING ART

This collaborative project by architects Hee Jun Sim and Su Jeong Park of Archiworks with Dutch artist Karel Stoop features a rotunda-shaped outdoor pavilion (to be designed by Sim and Park) whose inner walls will showcase Stoop's abstract paintings. If all runs smoothly, the pavilion is expected to be open to the public in May 2016.

Project GREGORY

In the search for alternative solutions to alleviate homelessness, Project Gregory thought of creating living spaces behind billboard advertisements. The creators are currently designing a resid...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for September + October 2014

2014-10-26T13:28:00-04:00

We have our latest selection of crowdfunding campaigns from Kickstarter that piqued our interest. In our September and October 2014 picks for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page, you'll find floating objects, more 3D-printing gadgets, sea-plastic furniture, and some stylish everyday products.

Floating Sauna

It was smooth sailing for Seattle-based goCstudio's "wa_sauna" campaign, which aims to bring their wood-fired floating sauna project to life by next summer. Right now, the studio is working to have the first wa_sauna be built and is searching for the best locations for its 2015 launch.

Carvey: The 3D carving machine for the maker in all of us

Created by the Inventables, Carvey is a 3D-carving machine that let you make quality objects out of wood, metal, plastic and other materials in three steps: create your design on Easel (Carvey's software program), pick your material, and click carve. At this point, the Kickstarter has raised over $500K -- and it still has about three weeks left...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for August 2014

2014-08-29T18:47:00-04:00

Take a gander at our latest roundup of Kickstarter and crowdfunding projects for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page! Here are our picks for August 2014:

Space Rites: Interactive Installation & Performance Series

After the success of their musical architecture Dithyrambalina campaign, New Orleans Airlift is working with sound artist Taylor Lee Shepherd and the Lower 9th Ward community in an interactive art installation at the deconsecrated St. Maurice Church. As performers and visitors sing, dance, and speak, Shepherd's reclaimed-TV oscilloscopes will translate the sounds into responsive visuals in the church. Funds will support materials for artwork production and pay the musical performers.

Dirty Furniture Magazine

Dirty Furniture is a new indie biannual design magazine founded and edited by an experienced group of design writers consisting of Pete Maxwell, Anna Bates, and Elizabeth Glickfeld. Each issue focuses on a piece of furniture as its theme and uses it to explore and provoke ...

Help Preserve Frank Lloyd Wright's Spring House

2014-08-25T11:51:00-04:00

Help save one of America’s architectural gems; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Spring House in Tallahassee, Florida. We at the Spring House Institute are trying to raise money through a crowdfunding campaign to acquire the House from the original owners - the Lewis'. The house was recently listed on the “11 Most Endangered Historic Places in America” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Please visit this website for more information and a short history of the house. Help us save this unique and beautiful home. If every Architect in the United States gave us $1 the campaign would be finished in a day.

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for July 2014

2014-07-31T17:14:00-04:00

Time for this month's Kickstarter picks! Potato salad-making aside, check out our latest selection of crowdsourced fundraisers right below for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page that are surely worth a look.

ClassAct: Active School

actLAB NYC's ClassAct: Active School is on a mission to rebuild low-cost classrooms in the rural Filipino communities still struggling to recover from Super Typhoon Haiyan and the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that devastated the region in October 2013. actLAB is looking to crowdsource funding to have their classroom prototypes built for the students to use.

Architecture Lobby presents San Precario Exhibition

Based in the repurposed Weigh Station venue in Callicoon, NY, North School Studio and The Architecture Lobby set a stretch goal to improve the San Precario exhibition's design and content. The exhibition is dedicated to San Precario, a faux "patron saint" figure created in Italy in 2004 to raise awareness of precarious worker issues and unstable architectur...

Kickstart this! Archinect's Kickstarter picks for June 2014

2014-06-30T14:07:00-04:00

Take a gander at our latest roundup of Kickstarter and crowdfunding projects for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page! Here are our picks for June 2014:

Sydney Opera House Architectural Model Kit

Marcus Bree of Brisbane-based Little Building Co. continues to showcase his talent in crafting exquisite 3D model kits of architectural icons with his Sydney Opera House Architectural Model Kit. After gaining approval and support from Jan Utzon (who is the son of the Opera House's architect Jørn Utzon), Bree set up a Kickstarter to fund the first 1,000 kits and other major production and marketing costs.

Circus for Construction: WWStorefront Official Selection

The Spectacle Syndicate's Circus for Construction is "a traveling event space for collecting, constructing, and exhibiting works of art and architecture". This traveling design circus -- which needs to actually be built -- has plans to stop by various cities on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and host a variety of fun local public events for th...

We built this city: the smartest urban crowdfunding projects

2014-04-28T13:46:00-04:00

From pedestrian bridges to city centre waterslides, sculpture parks to public pianos, here are some of the smartest and wackiest crowdfunded projects for urban improvement

Crowdfunding for investors may soon get easier

2014-01-21T13:11:00-05:00

[...] developer Ben Miller says, until now, it’s been impossible for local people to invest in development right across the street. “Who owns your environment? You don’t know,” he says. “Who’s building your environment, who’s building your city? Not you.” Miller is co-founder of the group Fundrise, which has started selling shares of private real estate projects to the public online. [...] First they bought 1351 H Street with private capital, then crowdfunded about a third of it.

Crowdfunding Startups Let You Be Your City's Urban Planner

2012-10-14T15:46:00-04:00

These two concepts — crowdfunding and urban improvement — have been married by several recently launched startups, both in the U.S. and abroad. These civic crowdfunding startups tap local communities and businesses to raise money for community centers and urban beautification, giving citizens a sense of ownership and a stake in the future of their cities.