Archinect - News

BBC journalists arrested for reporting on Qatar's World Cup laborers

2015-05-19T14:00:00-04:00

We were invited to Qatar by the prime minister's office to see new flagship accommodation for low-paid migrant workers in early May - but while gathering additional material for our report, we ended up being thrown into prison for doing our jobs. Our arrest was dramatic.

Previously:

A Memorial for the Workers Dying While Constructing the Qatar World Cup Stadium
World Cup ‘slaves’ scandal: Qatar holds 2 UK rights researchers over ‘emigration violations’

Zaha Hadid sues architecture critic Martin Filler over book review

2014-08-22T12:40:00-04:00

Hadid, who was born in Baghdad and is now a British citizen, claimed that Filler falsely implied she was indifferent to the alleged difficult working conditions of migrant workers on high-profile construction projects in the Middle East, including her own. She also claimed Filler used large portions of his June 5 review of Rowan Moore's "Why We Build: Power and Desire in Architecture" to question her success and fault her personality, although she was not a prominent character in the book.

Debating abortion rights and free speech on the sidewalk

2014-06-26T12:39:00-04:00

The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law that barred protests near abortion clinics. The law, enacted in 2007, created 35-foot buffer zones around entrances to abortion clinics. State officials said the law was a response to a history of harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Massachusetts, including a shooting rampage at two facilities in 1994. The law was challenged on First Amendment grounds by opponents of abortion

Massachusett's 35-foot buffer zone was initially enacted as a defensive mechanism, responding to a history of harassments and violence around clinics' entrances. The law had previously barred anyone from entering a fixed buffer zone around entrances to reproductive health care facilities (excepting those simply passing through, clinic employees, or those intentionally going in and out of the building). Plaintiffs in the recent Supreme Court case effectively argued that those exceptions were biased towards supporters of abortion rights.

More on the architecture of abortion clinics.