Archinect - News

A new LA Times map shows 6,000 structures in need of seismic retrofit across Los Angeles

2023-12-18T12:17:00-05:00

The LA Times recently debuted a useful map of seismic retrofit projects in major sections of the city months after official updates to the building code were enacted to address risks posed to soft-story and non-ductile concrete structures before 2033.

The map was made by surveying available records from Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. More than 6,000 of the 16,000 buildings in the dataset are categorized as still requiring retrofits, including many homes and offices built before 1996.

Clusters of buildings in Pasadena’s Old Town and near the California Institute of Technology, most sections of Downtown LA and its nearby constituents (Koreatown, Jefferson Park, and Pico-Union), and a large swath of Hollywood between Beverly Hills and La Brea Avenue contain the majority of what has yet to receive seismic retrofits. The year ahead should see a decisive turnaround, as 60% of the yet-to-be-retrofitted soft-story buildings in the city are mandated to be completed ...

New map highlights architectural contributions of LA’s Black community

2022-02-03T17:34:00-05:00

The “Black History Is LA History” map includes the Calvary Baptist Church of Pacoima, which was founded in 1955 by civil rights activists Rev. Hillery T. and Rosa L. Broadus, who moved from Arkansas to the San Fernando Valley. The two were involved in the local fair housing movement and helped organize the NAACP’s San Fernando Valley chapter.

The map, launched by Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin, highlights key infrastructure like the Paul Revere Williams-designed Theme Building at LAX as well as cultural landmarks like Watts Towers Arts Center and the restored Crenshaw Wall.

The focus on sites that are publicly-owned and designated by Los Angeles as Historic-Cultural Monuments means that the list is not entirely exhaustive, according to the Controller’s office. Notably missing are some key flashpoints in the racist history of development schemes within the city such as the disputed Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan Beach. Other absences include almost all of the myriad Williams buildings that have managed to avoid demolition, Norma Merrick Sklarek’s contribution to the beautiful blue Pacific Design Center building in West Hollywood, and several contemporary designs like BASE Architecture’s new Dollarhide Community Center in Crenshaw.

A new map offers a unique historical exploration of Berlin's eclectic subway architecture

2021-10-05T14:47:00-04:00

Blue Crow Media’s latest update to a series of influential design maps uses 50 select sites along the U-Bahn, Berlin’s invisible lifeline, as a means of looking into the social and economic impacts of architecture in 20th-century Berlin.

Courtesy Blue Crow Media

Featuring photography from Nigel Green, architectural historian Verena Pfeiffer-Kloss’s two-sided, bilingual guide offers a lurid investigation into significant design elements of the network using examples from 1902 to 2009.

Courtesy Blue Crow Media

More than half of the current system was designed by Swedish architect Alfred Grenander before his death in 1931. His Art Noveau inspiration gave way to modernism in the years that followed.

Stations by Rainer Gerhard Rümmler served as an integral part of post-war Berlin’s unique and often eclectic mix of architecture.

The map celebrates their and other contributions while encouraging readers to observe the deta...

Map tracks construction projects halted due to coronavirus

2020-03-19T19:22:00-04:00

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh’s announcement earlier this week halting all but essential construction work in the city has left contractors in other areas of the country wondering if their jurisdictions will also order a temporary stop to their projects. [...] other areas are under orders that ban nonessential services, causing some construction leaders to wonder whether their work is considered essential or not.

With the growing coronavirus pandemic calling for frequently adjusted federal, state, and local orders, a fair amount of uncertainty has gripped the US construction industry.

While Boston has completely shut down all nonessential construction activity for at least the next two weeks, contractors in six San Francisco Bay area counties that are now under shelter-in-place order are allowed to continue working on all types of housing projects, according to Construction Dive. To keep track of halted projects and areas that have been shut down, the site has created this handy map:

Read also:

This tool instantly draws all of the streets in any city

2020-01-24T15:13:00-05:00

City Roads, an online tool developed by software engineer Andrei Kashcha, allows users to search any city and instantly receive back only the streets by pulling data from OpenStreetMap. Simply search, click, and enjoy the beauty of urban planning. You can print your city of choice on a mug for purchase, save it as a .png file or even as a vector file.

Here are a couple of US cities generated from the online tool:

And here are some outside of the US:

Archinect Outpost to host Concrete Los Angeles Map event 2/14

2019-02-11T18:53:00-05:00

Join us this Thursday from 6-8pm for an event celebrating the newly published Concrete Los Angeles Map by Blue Crow Media. The map is available for sale here, and can be picked up and purchased during the event.

Detail of Concrete Los Angeles Map

Discover L.A.’s finest examples of concrete-built architecture, from early Modernism and Brutalism to contemporary builds. This two-sided guide, curated by Deane Madsen and with original photography by Jason Woods, features over fifty structures by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, John Lautner, Charles Luckman, Harold Williams, A. Quincy Jones, William Pereira, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Detail of Concrete Los Angeles Map. Photos by Jason R. Woods

Located in the Arts District in Downtown Los Angeles, Archinect Outpost offers a curated collection of small-run, independently published monographs, design objects, apparel and architecture publications including Art Papers, Beautifully Banal, Bracket, CLOG, Concrete Map...

Artificial Intelligence helps mapping urban trees (all of them)

2019-01-07T14:19:00-05:00

To train the model, he identified known locations of tree canopy using lidar data and NAIP imagery over California. Using that as ground truth, the model was trained to classify which pixels contain trees in the corresponding satellite images. The result is a machine-learning model that has learned to identify trees just using four-band high-resolution (~1 meter) satellite or aerial imagery—no lidar required!

Former New York Times cartographer Tim Wallace describes how his current firm, Santa Fe-based Descartes Labs, has built a machine learning model to identify tree canopy from satellite imagery thus making accurate mapping of trees and urban forests far more accessible to cities worldwide.

San Francisco Open Forest Map tree inventory (point data) in comparison with the Descartes Labs tree canopy layer (image data). Image: Tim Wallace/Descartes Labs

"The ability to map tree canopy at a such a high resolution in areas that can’t be easily reached on foot would be helpful for utility companies to pinpoint encroachment issues—or for municipalities to find possible trouble spots beyond their official tree census (if they even have one)," writes Wallace. "But by zooming out to a city level, patterns in the tree canopy show off urban greenspace quirks. For example, unexpected tree deserts can be identified and neighborhoods that would most benefit from a surge of saplings revealed."

New York...

The 2018 class of landmarked buildings in NYC

2018-12-18T14:04:00-05:00

While 2018 wasn’t quite the banner year for historic preservation like 2017—NYC got three rare, new interior landmarks last year—several beloved structures finally got the recognition (and protection) they deserve. Those include the Riegelmann Boardwalk along the Coney Island waterfront, and 550 Madison Avenue, Philip Johnson’s 37-story Postmdodern icon.

Curbed New York has put together a handy map of all historically significant buildings that received landmark protection this year, including a number of structures in the outer boroughs as well as the iconic 550 Madison Avenue (formerly the AT&T Building), which just returned to the spotlight with Snøhetta's latest renovation plans.

Brutalist Sydney Map celebrates the city's concrete heritage

2017-04-25T21:03:00-04:00

The family of Brutalist Maps architectural guide books just welcomed its newest member into this world and extends the reach to Australia: Brutalist Sydney Map—launched this week by Blue Crow Media in collaboration with Glenn Harper of @Brutalist_Project_Sydney and Senior Associate Architect at PTW Architects—helps concrete aficionados locate and learn more about landmark buildings designed by Marcel Breuer, Herbert Beckhard, Harry Seidler & Associates and many others.

"The guide features fifty of the most significant examples of Brutalist architecture in the city and suburbs of Sydney. Celebrated buildings such as the Sirius Apartments (likely to be sold without heritage listing) by Tao Gofers and the former NSW Housing Commission, Sydney Town Hall by Anchor Mortlock and Woolley, and Bidura Children’s Court (now sold and likely to be demolished) by former NSW Government Architect are included alongside lesser known structures such as Buhrich House II by the émigré architects Hugh ...

Mapping how LA's expanding Metro network fuels gentrification (or not)

2016-09-09T14:01:00-04:00

Researchers from the Urban Displacement project, a joint UCLA and UC Berkeley effort, recently released a gentrification map of Los Angeles. They examined the city from 1990 to 2000 and up to 2015, focusing on neighborhoods near transit stops. The goal was to see if these areas saw higher rents and more displacement than other areas. The answer? Yes — with some exceptions.

Some of the UCLA researchers' key findings for Los Angeles Country (via the project's website, urbandisplacement.org):

Our analysis found that areas around transit stations are changing and that many of the changes are in direction of neighborhood upscaling and gentrification.
Examining the changes from 2000 to 2013, we find that relative to non-transit areas, transit neighborhoods are more associated with higher increases in whites, college educated, higher income households and greater increases in the cost of rent. Conversely, transit neighborhoods are associated with greater losses in disadvantaged populations including individuals with less than a high school diploma and lower income households.
The impacts of changes vary across locations but the biggest impacts seem to be around the Downtown areas where transit-oriented development interacts with other interventions aiming to revitalize the urban form.

Click here for the interactive LA map. — Looking for the SF Bay Area map inste...

VACANT NEW YORK maps Manhattan's shuttered storefronts

2016-09-02T13:23:00-04:00

This is high-rent blight. The vacancy problem is immediately visible but lacking in hard data. The intent of this project is to provide some background around commercial vacancies and use a map to give some insight into the extent of the issue, ideally doubling as a tool for community groups and policymakers to identify areas for intervention. It's an obvious problem without a clear set of causes or solutions, but there are several contributing factors [...]

Click here for the interactive VACANT NEW YORK map.

These fascinating GPS doodles were 'drawn' by cycling the grid of the city

2016-02-09T15:11:00-05:00

Stephen Lund considers the Canadian city of Victoria his canvas and a bicycle his brush. And the paint? Strava, a GPS tracking system which marks his routes with crimson lines. So far, he has pedaled around in the shapes of critters such as an angler fish, giraffe, giant anteater, and nine-banded armadillo; mythical and interplanetary creatures such as the Siren of the Salish Sea, the Sea Serpent of Haro Strait, and the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Take a look at some of Lund's intricate "GPS Doodles," also known as "Strava art:"

Head over to Stephen Lund's blog gpsdoodles.com to find way more of this goodness and watch him explain his approach in the video from the recent TEDxVictoria below.

A new London Tube map shows walking times between stations

2015-11-11T05:41:00-05:00

Transport bosses have unveiled the first official map showing the walking times between central London's Tube stations. The comprehensive plan highlights the time it takes to travel on foot between almost all of the stations on London’s Underground network. [Transport for London] Chief Executive Gordon Innes said: “The Tube is the most used transport method by visitors in London, stations for many of our top attractions are within walking distance of each other.

You can download the new map here.

Pop quiz, hot shot: identify these world cities from above

2015-10-05T17:58:00-04:00

We’ve stripped out the street names and lost the labels – but can you still recognise the cities from their aerial views?

This exercise in aerial recognition comes in quiz form, where the viewer must guess the city pictured in a monochrome-treated satellite image of an urban grid. Identifying some cities is far easier than others – the quiz will tell you how your response stacks up against others'.

New York City's tree species mapped

2015-04-14T13:21:00-04:00

Though New York can sometimes seem like a drab warren of chain-link fence and oily pavement, the city actually has an impressive number of trees. On the streets alone [...] there were 592,130 at last reckoning, a leafy explosion you can now peruse in this great visualization of tree species. Jill Hubley, a Brooklyn web developer whose last project involved mapping local chemical spills, made the chlorophyllous cartography with data from the 2005-2006 Street Tree Census.

Urban Omnibus travels the Brooklyn-Queens Divide

2015-01-16T14:57:00-05:00

As a researcher interested in the intersection of urban form and place, Joseph Heathcott set out to explore how one of New York’s borders shapes the lived experience and physical environment of its surroundings. Through historical research, photography, and deep observation, he traces the city’s only major internal land boundary — the Brooklyn-Queens border — and draws out the social and spatial conditions of this largely invisible urban seam.

New map tool reveals NYC's vacant lots zoned for revitalization

2014-11-11T11:46:00-05:00

Developed with the help of a team of volunteer researchers, urban planners and designers, this new online tool allows anyone to view the staggering amount of publicly-owned lots that once had an urban renewal plan in the pipeline but were scrapped due to bureaucracy. By mapping out all of the vacant spaces across the city, 596 hopes that we as a community can take a top-down approach to turning these urban blights into public gardens, play lots, and spaces where people can “co-create.”

From 1949-1974 NYC took on an urban renewal project that resulted in the bulldozing of "slums" across Manhattan. The vast majority of the proposals planned for the land floundered and today nearly 15,000 lots across the city lay vacant. 596 Acres, a grassroots land access nonprofit, had developed a map tool called Urban Reviewer that pinpoints all of these spots—most owned by the public—already zoned for action.

Wowza: Scale Maps of Barcelona and Atlanta Show the Waste of Sprawl

2014-09-03T14:49:00-04:00

Urban densities are not trivial, they severely limit the transport mode choice and change only very slowly. Because of the large differences in densities between Atlanta and Barcelona about the same length of metro line is accessible to 60% of the population in Barcelona but only 4% in Atlanta. The low density of Atlanta render this city improper for rail transit.

A New Mapping Tool Lets NYC Residents Peek Into Developers' Plans

2014-06-30T13:38:00-04:00

The Municipal Art Society of New York has developed a new tool that shows where development could bring the most change across the city's five boroughs. This resource is a continuation of the group's "Accidental Skyline" initiative, an effort to curb the "as-of-right" development (which allows developers to bypass some regulatory hurdles) that has resulted in some of New York's tallest and skinniest new skyscrapers.

Animated map shows America's love of shopping malls, 100 years in the making

2014-05-30T12:56:00-04:00

[The American shopping mall] has its own traceable lineage, from the earliest planned shopping centers to the first regional hubs for shoppers traveling by car, to the novel post-war enclosed malls of Victor Gruen [...] Malls, in short, have spread across the American landscape -- and defined it -- with remarkable success, adapting to our changing tastes along the way.

The below animation shows the spread of shopping malls across the U.S. throughout the twentieth century, and was created by Sravani Vadlamani, a doctoral student in transportation engineering at Arizona State University. Including numbers of strip, outlet, indoor and outdoor malls, growth really starts to pick up in the 1950s.

Buckminster Fuller Institute Selects DYMAX REDUX Winner

2013-08-07T16:57:00-04:00

Just a few days ago, we published the eleven finalists of DYMAX REDUX, an open call launched in April by the Buckminster Fuller Institute to create a new and inspiring interpretation of Buckminster Fuller's 1943 Dymaxion Map. Now the winning designs have been announced.

Previously: Buckminster Fuller Institute Announces DYMAX REDUX Finalists

Buckminster Fuller Institute Announces DYMAX REDUX Finalists

2013-07-22T14:21:00-04:00

The Buckminster Fuller Institute has unveiled the eleven finalists of DYMAX REDUX, an open call to create a new and inspiring interpretation of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map from 1943.

UPDATE: Buckminster Fuller Institute Selects DYMAX REDUX Winner

Odd Things Happen When You Chop Up Cities And Stack Them Sideways

2012-09-13T16:12:00-04:00

It's not that I'm disappointed in New York, not at all. I love walking Manhattan's grid system, but now that I've seen Armelle Caron's bottom-up version of Istanbul, all those crooked, lopsided, curvaceous streets, going off in so many directions, I can't help wondering, what would it be like to wander there? Would I be constantly lost? Would every turn be an adventure? Suddenly I can't help it. I want to go.

Ahead of Its Time | An Icon Goes Digital

2011-09-28T20:14:26-04:00

In 1972, Massimo Vignelli designed a diagrammatic map for the New York City subway. It was a radical departure. He replaced the serpentine maze of geographically accurate train routes with simple, bold bands of color that turned at 45- and 90-degree angles. [...] Its abstract representation of the routes was elegant but flawed. To make the map function effectively, a few geographic liberties were taken, something that didn’t sit well with New Yorkers.