Archinect - News

Covid as catalyst for better design

2020-09-17T13:34:00-04:00

What are architects and urban planners foreseeing as people cautiously gather? Streets “curated” for various uses and dynamic cityscapes that both advance wellness and knit communities together. [...] Architects and other designers who have devoted efforts to creating public places that encourage gathering and sociability now say their task is to make congregating in these spaces possible again — and perhaps to achieve some community-enhancing goals in the process.

Zaha Hadid Architects transforms the classic billboard into public art

2018-09-04T15:00:00-04:00

JCDecaux has taken the wraps off a unique piece of out-of-home inventory in London designed by Zaha Hadid Design. The agency briefed the agency to redefine 'the design language of billboards'. It ditched the conventional shapes and frames that have steered the industry to date. Dubbed 'The Kensington', and located on the road from London to Heathrow, the structure takes the shape of a curved double-ribbon.

Zaha Hadid Architects has created a new design for street advertising with JCDecaux Group, a multinational corporation known for its bus-stop advertising systems and billboards. Creating a sculptural advertising approach, the firm's design reinvents the classic billboard into public art. Brands have been invited to bid for placement on the 85 by 20 foot screen structure. So far Audi and Coty are the first to sign up.

A manual on traffic engineering excuses opens the gates for pointed criticism

2018-07-02T15:16:00-04:00

Im developing a new guide called the ‘Manual on Uniform Traffic Engineer Excuses’ or #MUTEE,” tweeted Boise-based planner Don Kostelec in a moment of genius. “You get to name the chapters. Go!” The responses were swift, and hilarious, and like so much humor carried painful truths.

Don Kostelec recently opened the door to traffic engineering jabs with a call for chapter titles on his Manual on Uniform Traffic Engineer Excuses. Some of these cutting responses are all too real...

Responses included chapter titles such as:

Appendix 99 – A Listing of All Mandatory Design Features for All Forms of Alternative Transportation [This page intentionally left blank]
Chapter 16: Sharrows: How to Apply the Single Ply Toilet Paper for Bike Infrastructure
Chapter 13: Two-way Cycle Tracks Mean Highly Complex Intersections; Why You Should Just Use Sharrows Instead
Chapter 44: Someday Dark Clothing Will Go Out of Style
Introduction: Why the World Is Designed for Peak Hour Car Use and Not 24-Hour Use by Everybody Else
Chapter 12: Induced Demand and Widening Projects: Tall Tales, Lies, and Other Falsehoods
Chapter 5: How to Remove a Crosswalk – It’s too dangerous for pedestrians to cross here, wouldn’t want to give them a false sense of security.

Check out Don Kostelec’s Twitter feed @...

This online street designing tool, Streetmix, lets you play urban planner

2018-04-06T13:58:00-04:00

Streetmix is an online tool that lets you play with street design, allowing you to widen sidewalks, add public transportation, move around bike lanes, and more. Created by a small team of fellows at Code for America, a non-profit dedicated to finding ways to apply modern technology practices to city governments, the app allows players to imagine their dream streets and partake in the urban design process.

The idea came about when Lou Huang, back in 2013, attended a community meeting about redesigning a street in San Francisco. To help brainstorm ways of improving the corridor, planners handed out paper cutouts, allowing participants to visualize their ideas. Huang, who was an urban designer at the time, got the idea that this exercise would make for a great web-based application where citizens and planners alike can mockup city street designs.

Streetmix lets users redesign a street by dragging elements around the screen. Through the online tool, users are able to edit and arrange ...

The benefits of roundabouts, explained by the mayor of the Indiana town that now has 102 of them

2017-01-04T16:20:00-05:00

In Carmel, driving around in circles isn’t a symptom of being lost; it’s a way of life. Despite its small size, the Indiana city has more roundabouts than any other burg in the U.S. [...] The thing most people don’t know is how much money is saved by converting traffic signals into roundabouts. Our city engineer’s office has found that on average, roundabouts in Carmel have cost $250,000 less to build than signalized intersections and they are much less expensive to maintain [...].

While Carmel Mayor Jim Brainard talks about "unheralded benefits" of roundabouts (and the potential impact of Trump's infrastructure plans on his city's 102 roundabouts) in the CityLab article, reader douglasss points out an often overlooked benefit of this approach to intersection design over the conventional 4x4 species in the comment section:

"An added benefit of roundabouts is that (if they are spaced close enough) they eliminate the need for center turning lanes, thus narrower roads. Instead of needing a center turning lane to make a left hand turn, you just go to the next roundabout and turn around. This also allows for mid road tree lined medians, which center turning lanes destroy."

Revisiting the urban plan of Burning Man

2016-08-30T14:41:00-04:00

When a group of Burners describing themselves as the Black Rock City Ministry of Urban Planning announced a design competition last fall for a new urban plan for Burning Man, Phil Walker had never given the matter much thought. “I’m actually not a Burner. I’ve never done it,” says Walker, the senior associate vice president for CallisonRTKL, an architecture firm and design consultancy. “Maybe a bit of vicarious living for a middle-aged suburban dad is what appealed to me.”

"So Walker didn’t set about to change the orientation of Black Rock City [...] instead, he built out a “kit of parts” for simple streetscape interventions that he says can have a dramatic impact on urban flow and cultural space."

Related Burning Man stories in the Archinect news:

Sydney's revamped Kensington Street wins Good Design award

2016-06-09T18:27:00-04:00

Juxtaposed by modern architecture on the western side of the street, the circa 1842 working class terrace facades on the eastern side have been retained and restored in line with strict heritage conditions. “Kensington Street’s integration with the Central Park precinct was of great consideration. We wanted to celebrate its difference in vernacular to the rest of the contemporary precinct but wanted to integrate it with quality landscaping and other infrastructure.

Until several architectural firms were charged with restoring and revamping it, Kensington Street in Sydney's Chippendale area was a former bustling industrial zone fallen to ruin. Now the street (or at least, the design firms responsible for its transformation, including Turf Design Studio, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, and Paul Davies & Associates) has won the "Architectural Design" prize in the Good Design awards, which is marking its 58th year.

All the Sydney news that's fit to link to:

How prepared are American cities for the new reality of self-driving cars?

2016-04-07T19:51:00-04:00

Everything from sidewalks and curbs to streets, building designs, urban layouts, and living patterns will change as computers take the wheel. “We’re looking at the broader urban effects—and urban opportunities—of this technology,” says Illinois Tech architect Marshall Brown, one of the team members in the Chicago school’s Driverless Cities Project. “It’s in the news a lot, but nobody’s been discussing what it will actually do to cities.”

The surprisingly ideological debate over roundabouts

2015-10-19T12:48:00-04:00

The same is happening in other UK cities, which have decided that signal junctions are better for traffic flow and safer for cyclists. [...] After a century of resistance, US cities are finally learning to love the roundabout – the Bronx just got its first – believing them to be safer and better for traffic flow. [...] “Traffic lights are so fascist and dictatorial, telling you when to stop and go,” says Beresford. “Roundabouts are quintessentially English and democratic in their etiquette.”

Humanizing street design with 'shared space'

2015-10-12T14:35:00-04:00

The future of urban roads may be one where motorists, pedestrians and cyclists act as one. Spaces where these usually segregated members of the population live -- or move -- by the same rules. Most importantly, these rules would be social, not formal, to befit the increasingly popular trend of 'shared space'. "Shared space breaks the principle of segregation," says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a street designer who [...] brought these spaces to the U.K., which now hosts more than any other country.

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