Archinect - News

SOM unveils new bus shelter designs for a more equitable future LA

2024-07-07T08:00:00-04:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has shared photos of its new bus shelter designs for the City of Los Angeles.

The LA STAP (short for Sidewalk and Transit Amenities Program) shelters are the first prototype designs for the initiative that will eventually install 3,000 shelters and 450 shade structures in need-based locations across Los Angeles over the next decade. Officials from the city's Bureau of Street Services (aka StreetsLA) met in Tarzana last month to preview the designs.

Image: James Michael Juarez © SOM

There, they bore witness to what will eventually be unique new additions to the city's visual landscape. Another 250 total are expected to be installed by June 2025.

Image: James Michael Juarez © SOM

The configurable designs are said to be inspired by the California Modernism movement and will display a digital art program and feature smart lighting technology.

Image: James Michael Juarez © SOM

Leading the contract for STAP is Tranzito-Vector, a joint venture between smart mobi...

Is the sight and scale of New York’s new 5G towers appropriate for the city?

2024-06-11T14:41:00-04:00

“There is a harm to having these 32-foot- tall futuristic towers, often with large video display terminals on them, in residential neighborhoods in historic districts”

The New York Times picks up on the growing “visual distraction” that the appearance of 5G towers has created, along with a debate about their existence vis-à-vis the historic street-level visual character of neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village. LinkNYC is planning to add up to 2,000 more to its already 150-strong inventory. Alternative designs to the “shroud”-covered 32-foot poles were apparently too “ugly” by New York standards.

Still, an expanding chorus of detractors has led to FCC reviews and complaints from at least 16 community boards. Crain's also reported last week the city's Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Fraser, is considering a massive redesign campaign in deference to them and the torrent of tech companies' proposals that have followed since their roll out in 2022.

New RIBA and Create London commissions debut to boost social life in large East London housing development

2023-07-12T19:28:00-04:00

A pair of new interventions commissioned for East London’s Becontree Estate have debuted this summer as an artistic effort to provide space for residents of the historic community that was at one time considered to be the largest social housing development in the western world.

The first, spread across six locations on the 281-acre estate, uses furniture designed by artists Ivan Morison and Heather Peak in order to create “subtle” spaces for gathering and interaction in areas that had previously been overlooked or underutilized. They say their contribution was made using a “shared vocabulary of basic forms” (cone, cylinder, and slab), and have the simplicity of children’s toys with the equally playful title “Two Cannibals Eating a Clown.”

Image © Thierry Bal

"We wanted to create sculptural forms that also offer rest and contemplation," Morison said. "We stack a cylinder on a cone and call it a table. We put a flat slab on a smaller slab and call it a bench. We put ...

Marc Newson unveils the final Tokyo Toilet project design

2023-01-25T13:44:00-05:00

World-renowned Australian industrial designer Marc Newson has revealed his contribution to the Nippon Foundation’s ongoing The Tokyo Toilet public design project.

Located in the capital’s tourist-heavy Shibuya ward, the Urasando toilet completes the project’s offering of 17 facilities placed across the commercial district beginning in 2020.

Photo: Satoshi Nagare, courtesy of The Nippon Foundation

The design for the public restroom was inspired by elements central to vernacular Japanese architecture. Using a copper Minoko roof common to tea rooms, shrines, and other rural spaces, the concrete structure’s form engenders a “subconscious feeling of comfort and peacefulness” while providing users with an accessible facility whose material selection will, over time, help it blend into the urban fabric of the neighborhood.

Photo: Satoshi Nagare, courtesy of The Nippon Foundation

As Newson explains: “It is important to me that the Toilet feels trustworthy and honest inside and out: The bright...

Influential GSA chief architect Ed Feiner passes away aged 75

2022-08-03T13:29:00-04:00

The world of public design is mourning the loss of an influential figure at the news that former General Services Administration chief architect Ed Feiner passed away on July 1st at his home in suburban D.C. Feiner was known as the GSA’s first chief architect and a “driving force” behind some of its most successful programs, including his spearheading of the acclaimed Design Excellence Program, which is now in its 28th year.

"He changed the design and construction of public buildings," Feiner’s former colleague Leslie L. Shepherd remembered last month in the Engineering News-Record.

Among the GSA projects Feiner’s influence was cast over were Thom Mayne’s Wayne Lyman Morse United States Courthouse and San Francisco Federal Building; the Oklahoma City National Memorial design and subsequent Carol Ross Barney-designed Federal Building; and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners pot-stirring John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston. The list of architects he worked directly with inclu...

Monterrey, Mexico is the latest city to employ a full-time Chief Heat Officer

2022-06-17T14:45:00-04:00

In time for the start of summer, the global fraternity of Chief Heat Officers has grown as cities decide to commit themselves to full-time professionals from the subfield of public design in the face of mounting challenges caused by climate change.

The city of Monterrey, in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, recently announced architect and urban planner Surella Segú as the first-ever head of its new civic office, which is being funded through a partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock).

Surella Segú. Image courtesy Harvard University.

The 2018 Harvard Loeb Fellow is the principal and co-founder of EL CIELO, an 18-year-old practice with a focus on housing and urban renewal, and the former head of the Urban Development at the country’s Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers.

A graduate of the Columbia University GSAPP and the ITESM, she now holds the fifth official CHO title under the Council's new City Cha...

Justice Stephen Breyer will continue to serve on the Pritzker Prize jury after Supreme Court retirement

2022-01-31T11:59:00-05:00

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer may be leaving the nation’s top court, but his days of making high-profile decisions are not over yet. Breyer will reportedly remain one of the jurors of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, regarded as the highest honor in the field.

The 83-year-old Breyer has served on the Pritzker Prize jury since 2011. He reportedly became interested in the discipline after having first-hand involvement in the selection of architects for the then-new Moakley Courthouse in Boston as part of his responsibilities as Chief Judge of the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Breyer’s architectural activities may be limited to the Pritzker jury, which he chaired for the 2019 and 2020 competitions, but his tastes and opinions in areas of public design are rather well known. His reputation as a philosopher has extended over into his Pritzker-judging activities as well, according to Yale SoA Dean Deborah Berke, who said she and the prize’s seven other jury members deeply value his astute and original observations.

“He has a very, very keen eye, not only for buildings but also for their context, their community, and within the building itself its composition and materiality. He sees works of architecture holistically,” the recent Topaz ...

Gensler-designed 'Deer District' a model for NBA cities

2021-07-21T18:42:00-04:00

Last night, the Milwaukee Bucks secured their first NBA title in 50 years with a Game 6 win over the Phoenix Suns. Known for their lively fan atmosphere, the Bucks’ triumph was shared by 65,000 supporters who were present just outside of the Fiserv Forum in a dedicated fan section known as the Deer District. As the Bucks progressed through the playoffs, the reputation of the Gensler-designed entertainment area has grown and is now being used as a model for NBA cities across the country.

Image: Courtesy Milwaukee Bucks

Gensler designed the Deer District, in collaboration with Milwaukee-based firm RINKA, to become the city’s new “living room”. Formerly occupied by a parking structure, vacant lots, and a street, the site was cleared to connect the surrounding communities to the new Fiserv Forum, which opened in tandem with the district in 2019.

Image: Courtesy Gensler

The architecture is envisioned as a modern interpretation of the industrial heritage of the city, incorporating design ...

Architecture firm Hou de Sousa creates a multi-functional outdoor educational facility for New York's Socrates Sculpture Park

2019-05-10T18:35:00-04:00

In 2016 the Brooklyn-based firm Hou de Sousa submitted a winning proposal for the Folly Competition held by the Architectural League of New York and Socrates Sculpture Park. The goal of the project was to create a newly designed open-air education facility that would act as a permanent replacement to the previous facility which was severely damaged during a storm. Hou de Sousa created a structural space - frame design out of standard dimensional lumber. The structure's interconnections formed a structural space-frame which acts as a wall and roof system for the facility. Appropriately called Sticks, the project was intended to "ornamentally highlight the design strategies being deployed as well as prototypically demonstrate potential implementations of this construction method at future locations." Due to the facility's design success, the team has created an extension to the project called, Sticks II.

Follow the yellow wooden road into Rotterdam's new Luchtsingel pedestrian park

2015-07-14T19:46:00-04:00

Rotterdam recently welcomed The Luchtsingel, a communal endeavor to spruce up the long-neglected Hofplein neighborhood in the heart of the city. Locally based architecture practice Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS) devised The Luchtsingel in 2011. The focal point of the emerging "three-dimensional cityscape" is a nearly 400-meter wooden pedestrian bridge that was largely built from crowdsourced funds, accompanied by a network of refurbished public spaces.

"Based on the idea of Permanent Temporality, the Luchtsingel introduces a new way of [city-making]. This means using the city's evolutionary character and existing forms as a starting point. Therefore, we have developed new instruments for design, financing, and planning," said ZUS partner Elma van Boxel in a statement.

The project gained traction when ZUS set up the "I Make Rotterdam" crowdfunding campaign for the bridge. The campaign sold over 8,000 boards painted in a hard-to-ignore shade of yellow inscribed with the supporter's name...