Archinect - News

Noncompetes to be banned in the U.S. after FTC ruling

2024-04-24T11:36:00-04:00

The Federal Trade Commission has announced a rule banning noncompetes in the United States. According to the FTC, the ban seeks to “promote competition” by “protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs, increasing innovation, and fostering new business formation.” The rule is expected to go into effect in six months.

The rule will not apply to existing noncompetes for senior executives (workers earning more than $151,164 annually and who are in policy-making positions), although employers cannot enter into or enforce new noncompetes for senior executives. In all cases, employers must provide notice to workers bound to an existing noncompete that the agreement will not be enforced against them in the future.

Related on Archinect: A Guide to Salary Transparency Laws Across the United States. Image: Pixabay

Noncompetes can be used in the U.S. to impose contractual conditions on employees that prevent workers from taking a new job or starting their own business, the FTC n...

A fatal apartment building fire in Valencia, Spain, raises questions on the safety of building materials

2024-02-27T13:11:00-05:00

Valencia is reeling from a fatal fire at an apartment complex in the Spanish city. The incident began on the night of Thursday, February 22nd, and though the cause has not been definitively established, early reporting has suggested that the building’s cladding may have played a part in the disaster.

Ten people have been confirmed to have been killed in the fire, whose identities match the list of ten people deemed missing by authorities. In an isolated moment of relief, four people who had been included on the preceding list of 14 missing people have been located alive.

As per Spanish outlet El Pais, the vice-president of the Valencia College of Industrial and Technical Engineers, Esther Puchades, suggested that the building’s cladding included polyurethane and when “heated it is like plastic and it ignites.” In response, IPUR, Spain’s polyurethane manufacturers’ association, issued a statement saying there was no evidence that polyurethane was used in the subject building.

Related...

New Terner Center for Housing Innovation paper unpacks five years of SB 35's impact on the California housing crisis

2023-08-21T18:05:00-04:00

The Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley has released a statewide assessment of the development of housing five years after the implementation of California's Senate Bill (SB) 35 began in 2018.

The bill eased the barriers to housing production for builders, in some cases removing the required review process under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other policies that had been targeted as key impediments to the effort to meet a crisis that has become the defining issue of the time for embattled local governments, residents, and planning officials.

Statistics revealed that 18,000 new units were able to be developed thanks to the streamlining of nearly a thousand multifamily infill housing projects as a direct result of SB 35. The rate of successful developments peaked in 2020, with a noticeable dip recorded in the past year. The study also found encouragingly that most projects covered by SB 35 were considered 100 percent affordable.

Related on Archine...

LA exempts affordable developments from Site Plan Review process as housing needs grow

2023-07-10T11:40:00-04:00

Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday signed into law an ordinance updating the city's zoning code to exempt all affordable units from the time-consuming Site Plan Review process that often delays final approval of much-needed housing projects. The city's existing building code required all housing developments of more than 49 units to undergo Site Plan Review, which can add months to the completion of a project and increase expenses.

Bass had promised to alleviate the burden on developers as part of her mayoral campaign and has since cut down the city’s end of the approval process and added a new Deputy Mayor of Housing to the administration, though structural problems within the political apparatus still remain.

The city has approved 22 new developments in the calendar year with the aim of aiding a 9% growth in homelessness and an economic situation where nearly a third of all renters are considered "severely cost-burdened” countywide.

Code compliance platform UpCodes launches AI assistant and raises $3.5 million

2023-06-01T12:43:00-04:00

The code compliance platform UpCodes has raised $3.5 million in funding. The San Francisco-based company describes itself as a “platform for architects, engineers, GCs, tradespeople, building owners, and homeowners” to provide a “searchable library of the adapted codes, updates, amendments, and errata across most major US jurisdictions.”

Archinect reported on UpCodes in 2018, where it was being used by firms including Ennead and FXCollaborative as a compatible plug-in for Revit. Today, the platform is used by over 650,000 monthly users, and claims to host over 5 million code sections (updating over 7,000 per month), and 1,700 state and city codes.

In tandem with the latest funding results, the company has unveiled an AI-powered code research assistant named UpCodes Copilot. Utilizing GPT-4, Copilot’s UI will feel familiar to users of ChatGPT. The AI interface can answer user questions about its dataset of over 5 million code sections. In addition to answering the question directly, ...

A 50-story housing proposal is shaking up planning officials in San Francisco

2023-04-19T18:07:00-04:00

A proposed new high-rise development in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district is standing out over its disputed manipulation of statewide density laws.

The LA Times is reporting on CH Planning‘s unlikely new proposal, which could add a Solomon Cordwell Buenz-designed 50-story tower to the neighborhood via provisions in California’s Density Bonus Law — a regulation they say allows for permitted deviations from local building restrictions to provide options for affordable housing.

“It simply defies logic that a building in a 100-foot height district seeking a 50% bonus could somehow rise to 560 feet,” Daniel Sider, chief of staff for San Francisco’s Planning Department said in a rebuke published by the newspaper. “While we agree that this site is ripe for housing, and we hope to work with the developer to achieve that, there is no provision in state or local law to permit the downtown-style building that’s been proposed.”

“The proposed project is flat out inconsistent with local zoni...

UK announces massive cladding remediation mandate in wake of Grenfell inquiry

2023-01-31T11:45:00-05:00

England's housing developers have been given an ultimatum - commit to repairing unsafe buildings or be banned from operating in the market. Developers now have six weeks to sign a government contract to fix their unsafe buildings from the past 30 years. According to the government's new plan, homeowners living in buildings whose construction poses a potential fire risk will be reimbursed, and building companies who installed the unsafe cladding must pay to replace it with a safer material.

Speaking to the press on Sunday, UK Housing Secretary Michael Gove admitted “faulty” guidance was to blame for the Grenfell Tower tragedy, stating his opinion that the building industry had gone underregulated for years. Cladding manufacturers like Celotex and Kingspan were not included in the mandate. Gove said the government will be committing a total of £5 billion ($6.15 billion) towards the effort.

With construction injuries on the rise, NYC steps up surprise job site inspections

2019-12-04T07:00:00-05:00

The surprise inspections are New York’s most aggressive effort to tighten oversight of construction sites after a surge in worker injuries as the city undergoes its biggest building boom in more than half a century... ...In the first nine months of this year — as dozens of surprise inspections were carried out daily — construction injuries fell by 26 percent to 437 from 590 in the same period the year before, according to city-data.

The surprise inspections have been carried out by a team of 38 experts in areas such as renovations, high-rise construction, scaffolding, and demolitions, reports The New York Times. The team is due to eventually grow to 53. Since September 2018, the team has completed 20,166 surprise inspections of 10,256 construction sites, according to The Times. Of those visits, 11,484 violations were issued, totaling $15 million in fines, with another 2,523 stop-work orders issued, The Times reports.

UpCodes wants to make building regulations less tedious by becoming the 'spellcheck for buildings'

2018-06-21T14:25:00-04:00

American counties and municipalities alone have nearly 93,000 different building codes. If you are an architect, that can be an overwhelming amount of requirements to navigate, which is why Upcodes has been working on what it describes as a 'spellcheck' for construction.

Started by two brothers—one, an architect and the other, a software engineer—UpCodes uses AI to help the construction industry manage compliance. Currently compatible with Revit (though they are looking to apply it to Sketchup, ARCHICAD, and IFC models in the future), the plug in analyzes BIM data to make sure the project is meeting the necessary standards. It also automatically syncs with the latest updates, ensuring code checks are working with the most current data.

By using Upcodes, the code review process becomes instantaneous, highlighting code errors in realtime. So far, the founders say that on average, the plugin has identified 27 violations per project, most of which have revolved around egress and access...

Patrik Schumacher calls for a 'capitalist revolution' to fix housing

2018-05-15T15:06:00-04:00

Housing is one of our most essential and cherished commodities. It is rightly one of our biggest markets, but unfortunately one of the most politicised, suffocating under quasi-socialist political interventionism. The loss of prosperity in our whole society is enormous. Not only because of poor housing provision, but because of its stifling impact on all economic activities. That’s why the need for a capitalist revolution is so urgent.

It's been a bit quiet around Zaha Hadid Architects principal and outspoken free-market evangelist Patrik Schumacher since his last big public statement calling for the elimination of social housing caused an overwhelming backlash, but now he's back with a new commentary piece on how to fix housing via privatization and deregulation, published in The Guardian.

Fluxus assists HUD manufactured housing regulatory reform

2018-04-04T13:24:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has asked for public comments on the current and planned standards for manufactured housing. This action is taken following an executive directive to reduce the U.S. government’s overall regulatory complexity.

In January HUD announced a review of manufactured housing rules seeking public comments on identifying regulations which stifle affordable housing.

Fluxus LLC, a prefabricated building technology platform, has submitted the following comment for the HUD Regulations Division’s consideration in current and planned manufactured housing rules. The group identifies two main issues and offers two recommendations each to address these issues:

Problem Statement No. 1
The definition of HUD-code Manufactured Homes constrains its potential applications typologically, programmatically and aesthetically. According to the definition below, the HUD-code Manufactured Homes applies only to dwellings with an attached permanent chassis on which they are transported to the site in one or more sections.

Recommendation
1. Focus on creating outcome and performance based standards to replace overly prescriptive design standards.
2. Focus on code development cost of ownership not cost of construction

Problem ...

With more severe weather events on the horizon, it's time to elevate our homes

2017-12-19T13:52:00-05:00

We can build homes to sit above flood waters so people can ride out the Harveys of the future, but it won’t be easy or cheap. [...] More than a million people live in the 100- and 500-year flood zones across the Houston area, and hundreds of thousands more do in other U.S. cities, including Miami and New York. Harris County’s move conforms with the advice of building engineers, climate experts, and the insurance industry.

How a 1980s flood regulation protected many newer homes in Houston during Hurricane Harvey

2017-11-08T14:13:00-05:00

No other major metropolitan area in the U.S. has grown faster than Houston over the last decade, with a significant portion of new construction occurring in areas that the federal government considers prone to flooding. But much of that new real estate in those zones did just fine, a Times analysis has found.

The City of Houston, notorious for its relative lack of zoning codes, did in fact take future flooding into account and mandated that new homes were to be built at least 12 inches above flood levels predicted by the federal government. "The 1985 regulation and others that followed," the LA Times writes, "proved widely effective in their biggest test to date — the record-setting rains of Harvey."

Having difficulty navigating those building regulations? There is an App for that!

2017-07-28T19:08:00-04:00

For architects, complying with building codes means navigating labyrinthine layers of regulations that vary between municipalities. Sorting through different codes and keeping track of updates is a daunting task and, in a worst-case scenario, a mistake can cost thousands or even millions of dollars to tear out and fix. Firms that can afford it hire building code consultants, but a startup called UpCodes wants to make code compliance easier for all builders.

Started by two brothers—one, an architect and the other, a software engineer—UpCodes provides an accessible platform for construction codes and works to consolidate building regulations into a single searchable database.

Beyond making codes and regulations easier to navigate, the app simplifies coordination by allowing users to hyperlink to sections of code and create project folders to share with other team members. So far, the start up has amassed building codes for about 40 states, as well as New York City, with regulations for Seattle, Los Angels, and Denver next on the horizon.

Grenfell Tower Fire: Corbyn calls for empty flats in the adjacent area to be requisitioned as evidence grows that negligence responsible for the blaze

2017-06-16T13:47:00-04:00

Reports indicate that a cladding, banned in the United States, added to the Grenfell Tower was largely responsible for the intensity of the fire that claimed at least 30 lives earlier this week in North Kensington. It was just £2 cheaper per square meter than an alternative, fire resistant version. Disturbingly, the cladding was added to appease wealthy residents nearby, states Emma Dent Coad, the Kensington MP, and to ‘regenerate’ the area through development.

Anger has risen as the fire increasingly looks less like a tragic accident and more and more like the result of outdated regulations and funding cuts. For example, sprinkler systems are not mandatory in public housing blocks—raising fears that some 4,000 similar blocks are at risk of similar tragedies. It is important to note that black and minority ethnic people are disproportionately housed in such flats.

When a fire erupted in 2009 in another tower block, analysis made clear inadequate measures were being taken to address fi...

Elizabeth Warren co-signs letter urging feds to investigate sharing economy

2016-07-14T13:18:00-04:00

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D), the senior Senator from Massachusetts, has co-signed a letter requesting that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigate the degree to which short-term lodging services are composed of "persons or firms acting in a commercial manner by renting out entire residences or multiple residences simultaneously".

The letter, co-authored by Senators Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Diane Feinstein of California, marks a major move by lawmakers towards intervening in the so-called "sharing economy".

“[W]e are concerned that short-term rentals may be exacerbating housing shortages and driving up the cost of housing in our communities,” the Senators state in the letter.

The letter brings up concerns about racial discrimination with Airbnb, and questions the economic impact of the company. Studies have found that Airbnb contributes to rising rents and housing shortages.

h/t the Guardian

For more on the sharing economy, check out past coverage:

Falling through the sharing ec...

How Portland State's TREC hopes to improve bike lane design regulations

2016-04-19T20:48:00-04:00

Even where protected lanes are in place, when they meet up with busy intersections, those protections typically go away, and the logic behind their design can quickly fall apart...Will more widespread standards for bike lane treatment at intersections ever emerge in the U.S.? The Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University aims to move that conversation forward with its newest study.

Portland State University's TREC research group is working to develop a resource that will aims to help transportation agencies in any city design the safest and most useful bike lane infrastructure for both cyclists and drivers.

Bank of England proposes new limits for "buy-to-let" landlords

2016-03-29T13:00:00-04:00

Buy-to-let landlords should face new limits on the amount they can borrow, the Bank of England has proposed. It suggested that lenders should be much stricter when deciding whether or not to grant landlords a mortgage. Instead of just taking their rental income into account, the Bank wants lenders to look at their wider financial situation as well. If adopted, the new rules could reduce lending to landlords by up to 20% over the next three years.

According to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), the newly-proposed standards should "curtail inappropriate lending, and the potential for excessive credit losses."

The new strictures would take into account the costs a landlord accrues in order to rent a property, tax liabilities associated with the property, a landlord's "personal tax liabilities, 'essential expenditure' and living costs," and, in cases where it supports the loan, a landlord's extra income.

For more on the real estate landscape of the UK, check out some past Archinect coverage:

Why cranes keep collapsing, despite "sophisticated equipment"

2016-03-07T14:20:00-05:00

As cranes have grown in height and girth, the controls to operate them have intensified in number and complexity...the crane units in use these days have libraries of intricate manuals, packed with details...some operators may not have time to fully understand or read completely. Same goes for the maintenance team. When something does go wrong with such large machines...the 'mess and carnage' gets magnified.

Crane safety experts give their thoughts on the leading causes of crane collapses, and why safety regulation is more complex than it seems.

Previous news about collapses:

Crane collapses in Manhattan, one dead and two seriously injured

More than 50 dead after crane collapses on Mecca's Grand Mosque

13 lawsuits emerge after deadly balcony collapse in Berkeley

Three killed after partial stadium collapse at 2014 World Cup venue

Airbnb to collect taxes in Paris

2015-08-25T20:30:00-04:00

After imposing taxes on units in Amsterdam, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco and elsewhere, “home-sharing” facilitator Airbnb will now begin collecting taxes in Paris, the company’s biggest market. Collection officially begins October 1st and some see the move as Airbnb’s attempt at playing nice with city regulators. Venture Beat connects the change to Uber’s troubles in Paris, where the ride service company fought new regulation policies.

Two Uber executives detained in France

2015-06-29T13:06:00-04:00

Uber France CEO Thibaud Simphal and Uber Europe GM Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty were both taken into custody today in Paris [...] The two executives were charged with two different allegations. First, according to them, Uber is running illegal taxi operations. Uber has been struggling with this charge in many countries, starting with the U.S. Second, the police said that Uber France is concealing digital documents...

After protests last week turned violent, French authorities have detained two executives of the ride-sharing company Uber, although officials stated that they were brought into custody on charges unrelated to the protests. Uber is facing ferocious criticism in France, with taxi-drivers complaining that drivers for UberPOP don't have professional licenses and don't pay the same taxes as traditional car services. The conflict highlights tensions in France, a country with a long tradition of hard-fought labor rights, as it grapples with new technologies and economic models.

Last week's rioting, which resulted in 70 damaged cars, gained international attention in part due to tweets from Courtney Love, who found herself at the center of the melée, and sparked a lively discussion on Archinect.

The conversation oriented around issues of technological disruption, bureaucratic regulation and workers' rights, with some, like jla-x, drawing comparisons to architecture.

Donna Sink asked: "the co...