The architecture of burglary is increasingly virtual

2016-03-31T18:29:00-04:00

Buildings and burglars are intertwined in the mind of Mr. Manaugh, whose nonfiction book arrives Tuesday from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Fascinated by bandits who smash through walls, crawl up air ducts and tunnel through floors, the author wanted to explore their singular approach to architecture as a force to be abused, outsmarted and escaped.

In an era of cybercrime, do burglars miss the architectural beauty of the traditional brick and mortar break-in? Well, yeah, according to author Geoff Manaugh. In an era where break-ins are more about clearing digital walls and hacking into people's identities than using diamond-tipped drills to penetrate hidden vaults, the bad old-fashioned vocation of physical burglary is the latest casualty of digital disruption. Ironically, many of the contemporary light-fingered must now worry about carpal-tunnel syndrome.

For more on the intersection of crime and architecture:

Abandoned schools = new development opportunities

2015-08-05T19:02:00-04:00

Many school buildings that used to house children now just primarily house debris thanks to a precipitous drop in public school enrollment over several decades. One independent website puts the figure at over 1,000 abandoned schools in states stretching from West Virginia to Indiana.

Some advocate selling the empty buildings to charter schools, while others see the buildings as potential spaces for artists and inventive start-ups. According to NPR, "A few deals are in the works to renovate old schools into apartments, offices and artist spaces." In Japan, so-called "haiko camps" allow adults to camp overnight in refurbished former schools to both satisfy nostalgia and keep the buildings from becoming the eyesores and crime scenes they've become in the United States.

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The architecture of burglary is increasingly virtual

Abandoned schools = new development opportunities