Archinect - News

LA's 101 Freeway wildlife crossing now has a groundbreaking set for spring

2022-01-20T11:37:00-05:00

A much-needed piece of infrastructure is about to start taking shape for wildlife in Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Mountains.

Curbed is reporting that construction for the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, which connects a stretch of protected land along California’s 101 freeway called Liberty Canyon will now officially begin this spring following an increase in the state’s funding for the project recently announced by Governor Gavin Newsom.

The bridge was originally announced in 2015 and has been amongst the most vocally-supported public works projects in Los Angeles in recent years. The county’s mountain lion population has been shown to be increasingly fragmented and diffuse since 2002 and will now be protected along with other groups of animals thanks to the new 210-foot crossing from architect Robert Rock.

Rock was selected by the joint National Wildlife Foundation-Caltrans development team to put an end to the high frequency of animal-related collisions that happen about 300,0...

The NRA's design for "hardening" schools

2018-02-26T16:21:00-05:00

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre offered schools his organization’s “free” support and guidance to protect themselves, saying that communities “must come together to implement the very best strategy to harden their schools.” President Donald Trump echoed the sentiment Thursday saying, “We have to harden our sites” to protect schools from gun violence [...] it’s worth revisiting exactly what the NRA means when it calls for measures to “harden” a school.

Here are a few architectural elements and design features the NRA recommends from its 2013 task force report for "hardening" schools.

A big fence
No trees
No parking lots
Entrapment areas
No windows
A door stop

Join the discussion asking: "Where are the designers, architects, and engineers in the debate on hardening school security through design?"

Reinventing school buildings for the age of mass shootings

2018-02-22T16:59:00-05:00

For architects, the challenge is balancing the need for additional security with design principles that foster a more nurturing educational environment for students. As architect Jim French explained, designers could apply the design methods used to keep prisons secure to schools, but that would hamper the experience for children.

Following the recent school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Jacob Passy reviews some of the ways that the design of schools is changing to address safety concerns.

Interestingly, at last night's CNN Town Hall Gun Debate, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel argued there are three things we need to do in America to prevent future tragedies; 1) we have to use CPTED (Crime prevention through environmental design) to make schools harder to penetrate 2) we need to empower law enforcement to help people with mental illness get the care they need and restrict them from owning guns 3) lastly and perhaps most importantly we do need gun control reform.

Of note, none of those three actions include President Trump's (and the NRA's) preferred option which is arming teachers.

#ProtectCity campaign launched in support of Michael Heizer's "City"

2015-03-19T19:00:00-04:00

Located in Garden Valley, Nevada, Michael Heizer’s City is one of the most significant works of art in the United States. Begun by Heizer in 1972, the project is now in its final stage of completion. It will, in the future, be accessible by the public. [...] To see the land developed into a site for military, energy, or waste purposes, would ruin it forever. After 43 years of work, can it really be destroyed like this?

Notable American museums publicly expressed their support on Twitter via #protectCITY. The LACMA petition to protect Michael Heizer's City and the Basin and Range can be reached here.

Previously on Archinect: Michael Heizer's massive desert sculpture, "City", will make you cry

Protective wrap covers historical structures near French Fire

2014-08-07T15:22:00-04:00

Archaeologists are working with other firefighters to protect several historical guard stations using, what's essentially a protective foil wrap. Crews rushed this weekend to cover five historical cabins at the Placer Guard Station. "We ordered this wrap," said archaeologist Ward Stanley. "It looks like tin foil. "It's pretty simple, you just wrap the house in a shingle-type fashion so it's overlapping going down so the stuff that goes down doesn't get into the cracks," Stanley said.

h/t BLDGBLOG

Designing for disaster

2011-12-14T15:32:37-05:00

The mission facing architects today is fusing aesthetics and armor. In the aftermath of attacks on US embassies abroad, the 1995 truck-bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the 2001 terrorist takedown of the World Trade Towers, guidelines for government buildings and other potential targets such as museums and monuments assumed a quasi-military character.