Archinect - News

Urban journalism dealt another blow as Guardian Cities ends its six-year run

2020-01-13T16:02:00-05:00

City-focused reporting has suffered another setback this week as news that the Guardian Cities initiative at The Guardian will be shuttering has been made public.

In a farewell letter published in The Guardian, Guardian Cities editor Chris Michaels writes, "Since its founding six years ago, Guardian Cities has grown from a small experiment into a huge community," adding, "We have tried to shape how the world understands urbanisation: namely, as one of the truly transformative global phenomena of the 21st century." Regarding the end of the vertical's run as a leading source of global urbanism in-depth reporting, Michaels added, "Now, however, it’s time for a change. After many years of renewed generosity from the Rockefeller Foundation, whose arms-length support meant that we retained full editorial independence in every way, Cities is closing its doors."

No specific reason was given for the end of the initiative, though online commentators were quick to point out that the end of Gu...

Bloomberg Media acquires CityLab as The Atlantic slashes staff

2019-12-13T18:23:00-05:00

Following news earlier this week announcing the sale of urban design innovation vertical CityLab to Bloomberg Media by The Atlantic, news reports today indicate that the publication's entire staff has been laid off.

Nieman Lab reports that the acquisition is the first for Bloomberg Media in over a decade, following its purchase of BusinessWeek in 2009. The sale comes as Bloomberg Media founder and 90% owner Michael Bloomberg undertakes a presidential campaign. Bloomberg has stepped away from day-to-day operations at the company and has vowed to either sell or enter the company into a "blind trust" should he win the presidential election.

Regarding the sale, Bloomberg Media CEO Justin B. Smith tells Adweek, "What’s really exciting about the addition to CityLab to our portfolio is that it can be introduced into that model as a new multi-platform, global sub-brand that is super-serving a niche that we care about a lot, that we think is very valuable."

As part of the transaction, The...

Is Jeff Bezos' dream for a city in space just a sales pitch? Fred Scharmen breaks it down

2019-05-13T21:00:00-04:00

Now, in 2019, Jeff Bezos wants his private space company to take over the public imagination about life in space. Bezos is the head of a retail empire, and he knows how to sell an image, but what he’s offering today is a watered-down version of nostalgia for yesterday’s future. Bezos’s proposal is a version of O’Neill’s project that somehow manages to look and feel less futuristic than its predecessor.

The possibility of humans living in space is nothing new. Authors, scientists, and designers have all dreamed and formulated how this could be possible. Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, recently pitched his idea for space habitation and how his private space company Blue Origin would make this possible. After looking at rendered images of Bezos' idea some have noticed the stark similarities between them and former Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill's work presented in 1975. These similarities are intentional due to Bezos being a former student of O'Neill's. Architectural academic, designer and researcher Fred Scharmen shared with CityLab his thoughts on the new project and its relation to O'Neill's idea.

Rendering of Gerard O'Neill's space colony made by Rick Guidice for NASA in the 1970s. Image © NASA Ames Research Center

Rendered image of Jeff Bezos" Blue Origin space city was inspired by former professor Gerard O'Neill. Image © Blue Origin

"With so many similarities evident be...

A test of compassion: L.A. county to offer residents up to $75,000 to build a “granny flat” for a homeless family in their backyard

2017-08-22T21:04:00-04:00

The county’s board of supervisors gave the green light to The Granny Flats Motion project on Tuesday, which would give homeowners up to $75,000 to build a backyard home—if they agree to rent it to a homeless family or individual. On top of that, the county will also streamline the permitting process, an arguably attractive incentive considering that most of these “accessory dwelling units” in U.S. cities are illegal.

Los Angeles is undertaking a new effort to curb its ballooning homeless population—paying homeowners to build a 'granny flat' for a homeless family to inhabit in their backyard. According to CityLab, "The pilot, for which the county has earmarked $550,000, will grant two or three of such units in areas where zoning is managed by the county as officials assess whether to scale up in the future. It’s part of L.A. county’s broader initiative to address homelessness, in which 51 strategies—from opening up vacant lots for housing to subsidize housing—have been approved between 2016 and 2017."

During the next two months the county will flesh out the details with the hope of implementing the program within the next year and a half. Figuring out the rent and utilities costs is largely left up to the homeowners and their future tenants.

A similar program has already been tested in Oregon’s Multnomah County in May, offering to build as many as 300 tiny homes—roughly 200 square feet. When the...

Kevin Daly's Backyard BI(h)OME provides affordable housing for humans and wildlife

2015-06-18T15:40:00-04:00

Fittingly, Poolside’s version of “Harvest Moon” echoed off the wooden planks of the Broad Arts Center at UCLA on June 10th as a crowd of optimists, architects, and Ira-Glass lookalikes drank their way in and out of the opening reception for BI(h)OME, Kevin Daly Architects’ proposed “granny flat” solution to the L.A. Housing Crisis. The music was fitting because it was a laid-back cover of a much older tune: instead of raw passion, a more pragmatic vision of affordable housing was being unveiled, a 350-square foot, EFTE-enveloped, recyclable component-laden dwelling with wall cavities for bats, birds, and bugs. The students from cityLAB who manually assembled the mock-up of the BI(h)ome formed a lab-coat wearing cluster of “house doctors” as they stood behind Dana Cuff, Frances Anderton of KCRW, and Kevin Daly for a twenty-minute panel-style discussion about the future of housing in Los Angeles.

Part sales-pitch, part design lecture, the discussion encompassed the difficulties that Lo...

Join Archinect at the "CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges" conference, Sept. 29 & 30 in Los Angeles

2014-09-26T17:00:00-04:00

CityLab's more than 400 attendees will bring together the people who are creating the cities of the future—dozens of mayors from around the world, practitioners, planners, architects, artists, economists, urban scholars, and other civic leaders—to discuss emerging trends and share best practices for common challenges.

Archinect will be covering the second annual "CityLab: Urban Solutions to Global Challenges" conference, a summit for top figures in city governments, design, architecture, journalism and technology to address pressing urban issues. Hosted by The Atlantic in partnership with The Aspen Institute and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the program will include presentations by:

Eric Garcetti, Mayor, Los Angeles
Brian Chesky, CEO and Founder, Airbnb
Henk Ovink, Senior Advisor to Secretary Shaun Donovan, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Donald Shoup, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, UCLA
John Zimmer, Co-Founder and President, Lyft
Bill Peduto, Mayor, Pittsburgh
Kasim Reed, Mayor, Atlanta

We'll be live-tweeting the whole thing @Archinect, Monday September 29 and Tuesday September 30, #CityLab2014. You can also live-stream it here.

If you're in Los Angeles and looking to take part, CityLab is also hosting "CityLab: Making L.A....

MIT's Newest Invention Fits All the Furniture You Need in One Closet-Sized Box

2014-06-02T14:39:00-04:00

What if you only had to buy one piece of furniture to make your tiny apartment abundantly livable? CityHome, a new project from MIT Media Lab’s Changing Places group, promises to make that fantasy a reality. The highly transformable device, loaded with built-in sensors, motors, and LED lights, promises to make a 200 sq.ft. apartment feel three times larger.