Archinect - News

A look at the Inflation Reduction Act’s potential impacts on the Landscape Architecture community

2022-08-16T12:45:00-04:00

A new report from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has outlined the potential impacts and trade benefits of the provisions included in the Biden Administration’s recently passed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, that is set to be signed into law in the coming days.

The $369 billion bill includes many grants and other types of funding for a host of green GSA-owned properties, Federal Highway Administration projects, and affordable housing developments. Over on the ASLA’s The Dirt blog, Roxanne Blackwell and Caleb Raspler broke down what it might entail for the landscape architecture community in separate practice and client areas.

Among the relevant provisions included in the overall package are:

More than $4.5 billion to be directed toward water infrastructure (dams, water treatment facilities, etc.). This includes the $4 billion in drought relief funds, another $15 million to "provide technical assistance for climate change planning, mitigation, adaptation, and r...

The Stonewall Inn historic site is getting a new visitors center

2022-06-24T15:30:00-04:00

The first visitor center within the national park system dedicated to L.G.B.T.Q. history will honor and explore the history of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a galvanizing moment in the fight for equality, the center’s managers announced on Tuesday. The visitor center is being funded with donations, and a groundbreaking ceremony will take place on Friday. The 3,700-square-foot space will include exhibitions, in-person and virtual tours and art displays that examine the uprising and its legacy.

The visitors center will be located at the address adjacent to the bar, which had sat vacant for some time. Plans for an expanded presence at the site, which includes a sculpture installation by George Segal, the bar, and Christopher Park, have been floated around since it was officially declared a national monument by President Obama in 2016. Anne Marie Gothard, president of PRIDE LIVE (the nonprofit behind the visitors center project), shared her hopes with the TIMES that it would garner more interest for similar preservation efforts at LGBTQ historic sites across the country.

“Our goal is to create a place that honors both the bravery and courage of the past five decades of the movement while also motivating the next generation of leaders to take up the fight, because we know that there is more work to be done when it comes to full equality.”

Examining the history and importance of four LGBTQ sites newly listed by the National Trust for Historic Places

2022-06-17T18:13:00-04:00

Preserving spaces are integral to maintaining America's gay communities and keeping the memory of their members' hard work in establishing physical sites of resistance in the face of legal repression, violence, and generational intolerance. Terms like "Gay power" convey the desire for visibility in those spaces that have evolved due to their hard-fought existence. Today they serve as a rallying cry for different scholarly interventions initiated to protect the important story of queer history in the United States.

In honor of the slate of Pride celebrations taking place in June, the National Trust for Historic Preservation continues to expand on the documentary research of these sites. Thanks to the National Park Service's influential 2016 Theme Study that identified several new locations for nomination to join the group's two official heritage designations, four new sites have been added to the list since its original publication.

The cover of the publication LGBTQ America. Design...

Yosemite offers an enrapturing environment for architects looking for a challenging career in public service

2021-12-02T12:13:00-05:00

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”

John Muir’s dictum from almost 150 years ago has perhaps never been more necessary to the preservation of one of the now reconsidered founder’s more enlightened endeavors. Yosemite National Park has long been considered the crown jewel in the U.S. National Park Service’s already impressive holdings, but the recent moribund threats faced by the park due to climate change and manmade intrusions have added a challenging new dynamic to the park’s original environmentalist mission.

As part of its delivery of that mission, the NPS is currently looking to hire an architect with a strong background in preservation and compliance strategy to serve its ever-changing facilities and park maintenance needs, which to date totals around $500 million.

The post requires past experience in either a public or private capacity working as the Architect-of-Record on design and construction projects with an added knowledge of historical preservation techniques (a...

Donald Trump wants to renovate the West Wing

2020-07-30T20:24:00-04:00

President Donald Trump is pushing for congressional funding that would allow the General Services Administration (GSA) to undertake a long-delayed renovation and modernization plan for the White House West Wing.

Included in a recent legislative framework floated by Republican senators aimed at addressing the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 crisis is a request from the presidential administration for $377 million in funding for the project, AP News reports. The renovation, according to the report, has been in the works since at least the Obama administration and would represent the first modernization effort for the executive wing of the White House since 1933.

President Donald Trump in the Oval office. Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.

The West Wing administrative suite was built as an extension to the existing White House complex in 1904 by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead & White during the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Over the years, major additions and reno...

Melania Trump to renovate White House Rose Garden

2020-07-27T10:54:00-04:00

First Lady Melania Trump has announced plans to spruce up the grounds of the White House Rose Garden.

According to a report from The New York Times, the project will bring electrical upgrades, a new walkway, and new flowers and shrubs to the garden, which is situated between the West Wing and White House residential areas.

Previously on Archinect: Melania Trump is building a classically inspired tennis pavilion on the White House lawn. Image courtesy of the National Capital Planning Commission.

The work is being led by Southampton, New York-based landscape architect Perry Guillot, a recipient of the 2009 Arthur Ross Award for Landscape Architecture from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America.

In remarks made by Trump covered by The New York Times, the First Lady stated that the renovations are an “act of expressing hope and optimism for the future,” adding, “Our country has seen difficult times before, but the White House and the Rose Garden have always stood...

Billions could flow toward addressing National Park Service maintenance backlog

2020-07-14T15:18:00-04:00

Progress is being made toward enacting the Great American Outdoors Act, a legislative effort recently passed by the United States Senate and due to be taken up by the US House of Representatives next week that could begin to address the $11 billion backlog of road, building, and facilities maintenance that has plagued the National Park Service (NPS) for years.

President Donald Trump has indicated that he would sign the rare bipartisan bill once it reaches his desk, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The bill aims to bring $1.9 billion in funding per year for the next five years to the NPS to help meet these deferred maintenance needs, which include building improvements, bathroom facilities, accessibility upgrades, and other infrastructural building programs.

Trump deals another blow to America's public lands

2019-08-07T20:00:00-04:00

An ardent critic of the federal government who has argued for selling off almost all public lands has been named the Trump administration’s top steward over nearly a quarter-billion federally controlled acres, raising new questions about the administration’s intentions for vast Western ranges and other lands roamed by hunters, hikers and wildlife.

William Perry Pendley, a former mid-level Department of Interior appointee who served in the Ronald Regan administration, has been tapped to oversee the Bureau of Land Management, an organization that oversees nearly 10% of America's land area.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Pendley has previously advocated for selling off nearly all public lands.

Phil Hanceford, conservation director for the Wilderness Society told The Salt Lake Tribune that Pendley's selection to head "BLM just as it is being reorganized strongly suggests the administration is positioning itself to liquidate our shared public lands.”

Amid $12 billion maintenance backlog, Parks Service diverts funding for Trump's July Fourth parade

2019-07-03T13:03:00-04:00

The National Park Service is diverting nearly $2.5 million in entrance and recreation fees primarily intended to improve parks across the country to cover costs associated with President Trump’s Independence Day celebration Thursday on the Mall, according to two individuals familiar with the arrangement.

The move from the National Parks Service (NPS) comes as the department works to find funding to help ease its nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog.

NPS estimates that it needs over $2 billion to repair its building stock, as well as over $186 million to improve NPS-administered housing, for example. The department also estimates it would take $6 billion to fully repair the paved roads maintained across the National Parks System.

Congress is currently debating a plan to help provide some of this funding by directing royalties from energy development that occurs on federal lands and waters toward the backlog.

Check out the newly-restored Neutra-designed Oasis Building in the Petrified National Forest

2017-04-14T12:21:00-04:00

Back in the early ‘60s, the National Park Service had a program dubbed Mission 66, dedicated to bringing modern facilities to the national parks. One of the earliest examples of this, the Painted Desert Community Complex designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander, has just been restored in a joint effort between the Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

A 22-acre self-contained park community, the Complex is the last surviving Neutral-Designed structure in the Park Service system. It’s design was inspired by Puebloan Native American buildings as well as the dramatic landscape of its site, the Petrified Forest National Park. Comprising 36 steel, glass and masonry buildings with flat roofs, low silhouettes, primary colors and native plantings.

The buildings have been in a state of depredation for some time, ravaged by neglect, a lack of maintenance funding and the harsh desert climate. The restoration mainly focused on the glass Oasis Building storefront, m...