Archinect - News

The battle against planned obsolescence takes a step forward in Europe

2019-10-01T13:00:00-04:00

It's no secret that planned obsolescence makes the world go 'round. We've all been there: You buy a big-ticket item that seems to work great until, that is, the product is no longer under warranty. Soon after, it breaks. Lo and behold, repairing the item is prohibitively expensive, it might even cost nearly as much to fix as buying a whole new item. What are you going to do?

Aside from making for a frustrating consumer experience, the practice generates an incredible amount of waste, especially with regards to consumer electronics and home appliances.

Legislators in Europe have had enough and are working to make planned obsolescence in household appliances a thing of the past. According to a recent article from BBC News, "From 2021, firms will have to make appliances longer-lasting, and they will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years. The rules apply to lighting, washing machines, dishwashers and fridges."

The move is expected to help reign in carbon dioxide emi...

Are college campuses becoming the new malls of the 21st century?

2019-08-07T09:07:00-04:00

Chain retailers have their eyes on a new type of mall — your university. While higher education may once have been associated with the ivory tower — a secluded place of rigorous study — now companies like Target, Trader Joe’s, Urban Outfitters, and Publix are opening stores on or near college campuses, chasing students who are setting up shopping habits that could last a lifetime.

In an insightful Buzzfeed News article, Leticia Miranda explains why a large number of college campuses are becoming the new rulers of chain retailers. Although college is typically a time for young adults to pursue a higher level of academia, another type of "skill" may be unraveling, the need to shop. Institutions, specifically in the U.S., are keeping tabs on this trend and are learning to capitalize on transforming their campuses and surrounding areas into retail hubs.

Buzzfeed spoke with the executive vice president of the retail brokerage firm Metro Commercial Kathy Sawin. According to Sawin, "It gives the colleges a competitive edge when they have a vibrant retail strip or area around their campus." Several retail chains are targeting this demographic and stocking their stores with college essentials that will keep each new incoming class satisfied.

Image © Target | corporate.target.com

Tim Eklund VP of Target's small-format stores told Buzzfeed, "We're offering an experience...

Reviving Main Street, but now it's highbrow

2019-02-21T13:38:00-05:00

Wealthy individuals like Mr. Resnick, well-funded nonprofits and even corporations...have begun buying deserted American main streets, hoping to reinvent them with a fresh aesthetic. The people behind these ventures frequently install their friends and acquaintances in storefronts, while attempting to preserve (or exploit, depending whom you ask) local history. The practice is rarely free of conflict, even when developers have the best intentions.

In Mountain Dale NY, Butch Resnick now owns most of the previously vacant buildings and has hired a "town curator". Jennifer Miller digs into this and other recent examples, including in Monson Maine, Wardensville, W.Va, Cerro Gordo CA, of combining artists, rural-small-town nostalgia and tastemaking to create the perfect blend of artisanal, hipster consumerism scaled down from the lifestyle center to the town.

Stefan Al on why the shopping mall isn't dying

2017-03-24T19:41:00-04:00

...it is not the mall that is declining, but suburbia. The mall, meanwhile, is becoming urban. In fact, a new breed of shopping centre is integrating so seamlessly into its urban surroundings that it can be difficult to draw any line between city and mall whatsoever. On both sides of the Pacific, the mall is not “dead”. It has simply transformed...[but] “While the idea of the shopping mall becoming ‘urban’ has a certain appeal, the net effect is to turn the city into a shopping mall.”

Stefan Al, author of Mall City: Hong Kong's Dreamworlds of Consumption, writes about how shopping malls in places such as New York, Melbourne, and Hong Kong are increasingly blending into the cities themselves — transforming into “a new breed of shopping centre”, Al writes.

A history of department stores

2015-03-30T13:59:00-04:00

With their brilliant use of electric lighting – something Mendelsohn had learned from the look of American city streets at night – bold architectural graphics and photogenic forms, the Schocken stores were admired by a new generation of European architects and castigated by the Nazis, who came to power in 1933

Jonathan Glancey examines how from Victorian London to Soviet-era Moscow, they have changed the way we shop and have shaped global culture.

Alicia Eler's ode to Jon Jerde and the mall as "part of the American experience"

2015-02-23T13:49:00-05:00

I love the mall as much as I love the urban walking experience, museums and movie theaters. Today the stripmall is not just a part of my everyday life in Los Angeles [...] it is also a memory from my own suburban adolescence growing up in Illinois. Jon Jerde, the LA architect both celebrated and loathed for his role in spreading shopping malls across US suburbia, died this month. Some might scoff at his life’s achievement. I am not one of them.

Previously: Jon Jerde, founder and chairman of The Jerde Partnership, has died

Of Dirt and Cleanliness – (Clean India Campaign)

2014-10-07T12:00:00-04:00

"In all modern cultures, cleaning up merely involves moving “dirt” from one place to another. Five decades ago, cleaning up may have been easier. It would have meant restoring the predominantly organic and compostable discards in the waste stream to its rightful place – namely, the soil – and facilitating its transformation into manure. Over the past two decades, India has transformed from a sleepy nation living in its villages to an economic powerhouse with an urban population bursting at its seams. We can, as Modi did in the UN General Assembly, invoke our ancient culture to claim that Indians have a special relationship with and reverence for nature. But that does not take away from the fact that Indians or Americans, Hindus or Muslims, we are all worshippers of the same homogenising religion of consumerism. We are what our garbage is. Our garbage which once bore no resemblance to American garbage is increasingly peppered with the same brand names, the same indestructible materi...

Editor's Picks #380

2014-08-13T20:11:00-04:00

For the latest edition of Student Works: Justine Testado spoke with project architect, Duncan Baker-Brown, about The Waste House, designed/built by faculty and students from the Faculty of Arts and City College Brighton & Hove.

Olaf Design Ninja_ did some quick math "The numbers tell quite the story...an average of 8 people per work week day for the 15 month project duration. Compared to an equivalent wood frame house in the US that could be an entire subdivision. This should tell you how far industry has to go to do the right thing".

Plus, elementary school librarian, Jennette Neville, shared her top 15 recommendations of architecture books for young children.

News

The NYT published a letter To the Editor: Less Ego in Architects by Peggy Deamer, a partner in Deamer Architects and professor at the Yale School of Architecture. Editors saw an opportunity to start a Sunday Dialogue, and a week later published responses and a rejoinders. davvid had a thought "Architecture firms are alrea...

The 9/11 Gift Shop Sells Tacky Tchotchkes Because We'll Buy Them

2014-05-27T17:51:00-04:00

By most measures, the museum, designed by Davis Brody Bond and Snøhetta, has met the difficult challenge of telling the emotionally charged story of 9/11 at Ground Zero. The gift shop, however, has detracted from the achievement, with tabloids and blogs lambasting the “darkness” hoodies, toy firetrucks, “survivor tree” earrings, and 9/11 cheese plate for sale in the gift shop.

Who Shapes Cities and for Whom?

2014-03-03T12:41:00-05:00

The commercialisation of the urban landscape has resulted in the privatisation of public space. As city centres have become tributes to consumption, private interests have permeated these spaces. They have become awash with pseudo-public consumer spaces which belong to corporations rather than the citizenry. Although these places hold the semblance of being “public”, they are owned by corporate interests and are therefore under private control and not accountable to the public.

From The New Left Project's series on The Contemporary City.