Archinect - News

The DOJ says it will sue Texas over floating Rio Grande migrant barriers

2023-07-22T09:05:00-04:00

The Justice Department has put Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on notice that it intends to file suit over a floating barrier wall he erected in the Rio Grande River to keep migrants from crossing the border illegally. The letter, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY, gives Texas officials until Monday to commit to removing the barrier. If there is no response, the Justice Department will pursue legal action, the letter warns.

The buoys, which are manufactured off-site by a U.S./Dubai-based company called Cochrane USA, were already challenged by a local kayaking rental business owner who claimed their presence was damaging to the river’s ecosystem. The DOJ’s letter was met with a tweet from Abbott wherein he claimed "sovereign authority” over the international border. The news comes in the wake of another DOJ investigation involving potentially life-threatening commands given to a Texas DPS trooper regarding the handling of migrants, an allegation which Abbott apparently denies.

Texas begins installation of defensive buoys along the Rio Grande

2023-07-13T11:29:00-04:00

Texas began rolling out what is set to become a new floating barrier on the Rio Grande on Friday in the latest escalation of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar effort to secure the U.S. border with Mexico, which already has included bussing migrants to liberal states and authorizing the National Guard to make arrests. Setting up the barriers could take up to two weeks, according to Lt. Chris Olivarez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The barriers are being deployed along a strategic 1,000-foot-long point in the Rio Grande. CNN recently reported on one local business owner’s attempt to halt their placement via a lawsuit. Abbott, for his part, promised "mile after mile" more.

The issue goes beyond affecting what an ACLU attorney called the “moral conscience of Texas.” As the suit’s plaintiff told reporters, “I know it’s a detriment to the river flow, to the ecology of the river, to the fauna and flora. Every aspect of nature is being affected when you put something that doesn’t belong in the river.”

(The buoys are designed by Cochrane USA, according to multiple sources.)

Un-professional handbooks: graphic standards and crime prevention through environmental design

2021-07-12T18:24:00-04:00

Like other professions, such as law and medicine, architects rely on technical publications to do our jobs. Thus, we frequently turn to volumes such as Architectural Graphic Standards, which is authored by The American Institute of Architects (AIA). Promoted by its publisher, Wiley, as “the architect’s Bible since 1932,” the $260 handbook is presented as “the written authority for architects.” Nevertheless, not all of the information presented in Graphic Standards is unbiased, or even that technically sound.

It was therefore with quite a bit of interest that I discovered, while recently leafing through my twelfth edition in search of a framing detail, that it contains a short article on “Crime Preventions through Environmental Design” (CPTED). Included in the third chapter on “Building Resiliency,” alongside “Sustainability,” “Good Practices in Resilience-Based Architectural Designs,” and “Lifecycle Considerations in Resiliency-Based Designs,” CPTED is a bit like architecture’s “Bro...

Has the public become numb to hostile architecture?

2019-08-19T16:00:00-04:00

As New York grapples with its constant demand for public spaces, some residents are objecting to the restrictive and exclusionary designs and policies that they say reflect an increasingly hostile city. And as more developers build amenities in exchange for greater density, there is increased scrutiny on what passes for free and open public spaces.

The implications for hostile architecture are often presented as subtle design solutions that can aide the public from unwanted city disturbances. However, many individuals are beginning to notice these design efforts to become politically driven initiatives for controlling people experiencing homelessness and loiterers.

Elizabeth Kim from the Gothamist shares in her recent article responses from architects and their perspectives on hostile architecture.

“There are these battles of access that often play out through architecture and urban design,” said Tobias Armborst, a Brooklyn-based architect and urban designer. Armborst co-founded Interboro Partners which focuses on public space design and community engagement. The ethos of the practice highlights design methods that focus on inclusive design and awareness. In 2017 Armborst and his colleagues wrote a book about the topic of hostile architecture called The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion. In regards to hostile architecture Armb...

Have public parks transitioned into privatized spaces filled with defensive urban design techniques?

2019-07-26T14:18:00-04:00

There is the vision of parks, and public space more generally, as space free from institutional control or coercion—from police, or parks ambassadors, and encroaching privatization. And then there is the vision of public space as controlled and orderly, for passive use, or for recreation and entertainment. 'Users of this space must be made to feel comfortable, and they should not be driven away by unsightly homeless people or unsolicited political activity...'

With the privatization of spaces steadily increasing the idea of a genuine public space seems to be an ideal of the past. The importance of public space, specifically public parks is an integral part of a thriving city and community. However, laws and new policies are being re-configured to appease spaces like public parks to satisfy a specific demographic.

According to a recent article by Toronto-based journalist Matthew Braga, he shares the looming possible future of a city's battle with public space. In his piece for The Local, Braga shares, "There is a long history of bureaucracy and bylaws being wielded against the poor, and cities have gone to great lengths to make those experiencing homelessness feel unwelcome in public spaces." Initiatives for local city government's enforcing defensive design techniques.

A balance between maintaining public space for all while regulating disruptive behaviors are approached with conflicting views. Have public parks become new territories fo...

A brief history of designing secure spaces

2018-04-10T15:44:00-04:00

Can design keep you safe from crime? Architects and urbanists have been making that claim since urban crime — or the threat of it — reached crisis proportions in the 1960s. [...] But with scant evidence to support those claims, at what cost do we build “defensible space”? Architectural historian Joy Knoblauch looks back at sixty years of attempts to secure space and asks whether safety lies in the design of the built environment, in our social structures, or in our heads.

Amid London's austerity measures, "defensive design" becomes even more hostile

2016-01-04T13:21:00-05:00

Designing out homelessness appears to be part of a wider ambition to make consumers and investors feel secure, while avoiding direct human intervention. [...] It is an indictment of our communities that we have come to identify street homelessness as a form of “disorder” – a sign that something is amiss or dangerous in our public spaces. Yet the reality is that these kinds of design and security measures are put in place because of the breakdown of these very communities.

This piece by Rowland Atkinson (Chair in Inclusive Societies) and Aidan While (Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning) at the University of Sheffield gets at how exclusionary design towards the homeless and so-called "rough" sleepers (those who sleep in the city's streets) is a sign of increasing societal rifts, as income inequality and austerity measures press down hard on London.