Archinect - News

On the potential 'second draft' of the American suburbs

2022-07-28T13:29:00-04:00

It could look like another round of flight from the city. Or what we may be witnessing is a “second draft” of the American suburbs. Many communities that were once white, exclusionary, and car-dependent are today diverse and evolving places, still distinct from the big city but just as distinct from their own “first draft” more than a half-century ago.

The American suburbs are continuing to diversify and gain millennials and increased numbers of immigrants, two groups that have traditionally been confined to cities. More mixed-use and affordable developments are being delivered in suburban areas where single-family constructions have long dominated. Considerations for car-free and walkable communities are also becoming more popular in planning circles, joined by taller buildings, improved restaurant culture, and nightclubs. As Addison Del Mastro noted in the Vox piece, “the makings of a suburban transformation are here.”

Indeed. Home builders are currently attempting to meet a perplexing demand challenge by going smaller and cheaper, leading to a 7% decrease in single-family starts in June. ADUs are also starting to present themselves as affordable solutions, along with more newfashioned inventions like co-living that, in combination, are making the never-ending horizontal sprawl of the suburbs much denser. In the words of one eco...

Soviet architecture is the star of a new immersive indie video game called It's Winter

2019-03-14T21:15:00-04:00

It’s nighttime and you find yourself in a small, dark flat in a nondescript suburb in Russia. You look out of the window and see the courtyard covered in snow, illuminated by street lamps and the cold neon glare of storefronts. You turn on the light switch and look around your apartment. This is the melancholy start of a new immersive game made by developer Alexander Ignatov and poet Ilia Mazo.

The setting and landscapes of video game worlds add to the overall gaming experience, particularly free roaming games. Called a "sandbox" in the gaming community, the mission-less free to roam game allows the player to wander throughout the virtual world. Without a plot or mission to accomplish, gamers are allowed to do everything and nothing in the game It's Winter. Left with very little to dictate gameplay, the immersive gaming experience created by developer Alexander Ignatov and poet Ilia Mazo immerses players into a mundane suburban Russian tower block.

It's Winter game play still, Image © Alexander Ignatov and Ilia Mazo

According to the developer the "post-Soviet and sad 3D game" has nothing awaiting the player. "There is no chance to get out, no room for adventures, nor a breathtaking plot.” All you have to do is experience the precisely detailed, pixelated mundanity of the world around you." The only thing players are left with, however, are the detailed building interiors a...

Driverless technology is about to reshape the real estate industry

2018-02-16T18:06:00-05:00

The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human history. Since the ancients, few things have delivered higher land values with more certainty than advances in transport, from roads to canals, railways to highways. [...] But now, the dawn of the driverless car—promising a utopia of stress-free commutes, urban playgrounds and the end of parking hassles—threatens to complicate the calculus for anyone buying property.

Bloomberg Technology explains how the real estate industry is already preparing for all that sweet, sweet valuable space to open up for development once the widespread arrival of driverless vehicles makes parked cars — and the blocked square footage they occupy — a thing of the past.

Aging office parks are making a comeback as (sub)urban residences

2017-08-07T14:00:00-04:00

From the rooftop terrace of their new townhouse, Keisuke and Idalia Yabe take in their suburban Maryland neighborhood: a staid, 1970s-era office park of glass office buildings and concrete parking garages. The Yabes say they have found the advantages of urban living in a shorter commute and the ability to walk to shopping centers and a park. They also have what feels like the best of suburbia — mature trees, plentiful parking, Bethesda’s sought-after schools and a more affordable mortgage.

"[...] suburban office parks have plenty to offer residential developers," The Washington Post explains. "Many are close to major roads and near top-ranked public schools, and their sprawling campuses and vast parking lots provide land that has become increasingly scarce in lucrative areas."

New Urbanism takes over Chicago’s suburbs

2015-07-07T17:20:00-04:00

But thanks to increased interest from buyers and less resistance from village governments, developers are constructing more new-urbanism-style homes in the burbs. “Millennials and boomers are demanding it,” explains Drew Williams-Clark, principal planner at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

Owen Hatherley on the mass housing history of Moscow’s suburbs

2015-06-22T15:23:00-04:00

The ideals of Novye Cheryomushki may have died, but its methods and techniques remain — having managed to make some people very wealthy. Moscow suburbia is not so much the remnants of a great experiment, perhaps, but suburbia like any other suburbia — a place of dreams and boredom, great ideas being implemented and then slowly crushed.

Russia’s suburbs lack charm ... which may be why they're creative hotspots

2014-05-28T13:58:00-04:00

How exactly did the faceless tower block become the inspiration for contemporary Russian visual culture?[...] Large estates are like fractals, or a space created by facing mirrors. Building 8 is exactly the same as building 14, and its young inhabitants must perhaps have the same preoccupation: to someday acquire a similar cell in one of these purpose-built units around town. Can creativity come from places like that? In contemporary Russia, somehow, it does.

America's Oddly Beautiful Suburban Sprawl, Photographed From The Sky

2014-04-29T13:51:00-04:00

In a series of photos taken over seven years, now published in a new book called Ciphers, photographer Christoph Gielen shows a different perspective on sprawl, intended to get more people to question typical patterns of development. "I meant for Ciphers to be provocative at a time when we are witnessing a phenomenal escalation in urban construction ... when entire cities are emerging fully formed in India and China, rather than slowly evolving," says Gielen.

Latino Placemaking: How the Civil Rights Movement Reshaped East LA

2014-03-25T15:08:00-04:00

Latino Placemaking goes beyond creating great public spaces. It also includes cultural identity, which is shaped by needs, desires, and imagination. The Latino quest for cultural identity parallels the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, which has its genesis in protests – many of which were carried out in public spaces.