ICYMI, Sean Joyner visited with the founder and team behind Gallery 90220. He believes the gallery is part of a larger urban renaissance centered around the artistic expression of Black and Brown creatives, in Compton, South Los Angeles.

Adam Paul Martinez commented "Fantastic. I wish Archinect did more long form narrative pieces like this."

Plus, as Exhibit Columbus' official media sponsor, Archinect provided coverage of the event's design presentations and exhibitions as well as in-depth conversations with its participants and curators via a six-part conversation series, Next Up: Exhibit Columbus, with the curators and the recipients of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize.

Donna Sink also reported in, "It’s a really excellent batch of Miller prize winners this year. Ecosistema’s cloud is absolutely gorgeous."

News

To kick off the month DIALOG unveiled plans for a new NaAC facility in Calgary. Non Sequitur knows "a few at Dialogue's Calgary office.  Good crowd for a large corporate firm."

Sales are underway for units in SO – IL designed 450 Warren, in Brooklyn, following topping out, last fall. ‘Nectors generally agreed that the "new way of living" ad-copy "read as a bit out of touch", though the project looked "expensive and beautiful".

Noah Walker was impressed by the proposed new arts facility for Wesleyan University by Peterson Rich Office, a "beautifully conceived project.  It will be exciting to see the completed pics."

Later, randomised and others lamented the looming demolition of an iconic piece of postmodern architecture in Wrocław, Poland

"would be a pity to see this eyesore go, have good memories passing by this building and being appalled by it". Solpol is "butt ugly but fun."

ae_0 wasn’t too surprised by the news that HDR has reportedly been surveilling the activists who oppose their controversial projects  "nonetheless interesting to see the sheer scale of operations the corporate-architectural complex is engaging in nowadays...The entity providing design services, beyond a certain scale perhaps turns into a massive choreographer of public opinion - it has to fabricate subjects along the way which apparently involves a healthy dose of segregative language.. I know it leads to a well-worn tale of privatization in general, but this is just sad, and wrong in many levels."

Meanwhile, the August ABI score of 55.6 showed that despite some concerns about the ongoing impact of the Delta variant, most firms are continuing to report robust business conditions. 

As for the pandemic, the state of reopening and future of remote-work, "nearly two thirds of responding firms (65%) indicated that their office is now fully reopened, with 46% reporting that all/most employees have returned to the office and 19% indicating that some of their employees are back in the office. Others continue to work remotely full time. An additional 18% of firms indicated that their office has partially reopened, while just 3% of firms reported that their office remains fully closed. Of the remaining firms, 8% of firms have no office or were fully remote prior to the pandemic, and 6% have reopened, or plan to reopen, their office in some other way."

R.I.P. Irish architect Niall McCullough.

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York, NY by Mecanoo and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners LLP and 'Pierre Bottero' Media Library and Park in Pélissanne, France by Dominique Coulon & associés are just two of the latest top images (in no particular order) to be found on the Archinect Pinterest board Old+New.

Blogs/Firms/Updates/Work

Back in August, Rafsana Yeamin was working on some "brick screening".

If you are looking for a new gig and interested in the commercial sector, there are opportunities ranging from a regional, "entry-level project coordinator" in Tulsa, OK., to something for those with at least "8+ years of experience in interior architecture".

There are also positions at global AEC behemoths or maybe in-house "Store Designer" for Starbucks.

School/Blogs

The School of Architecture, celebrated a historic moment: the first generation of experimental structures, built at the school’s new campus at Arcosanti.

Niall Patrick Walsh dug into the tenth annual NCARB by the Numbers data. Overall, "the number of new and total enrollments in NAAB-accredited programs continued to rise for the 2019/2020 academic year, as did the number of graduates. Of those who completed the NCARB path to licensure in 2020, 53% started their NCARB record while in school, which is a 3% increase on 2019 and more than double than a decade ago."

This trend seems likely to only increase especially with the growth to 28 of NAAB-accredited programs participating in NCARB’s Integrated Path to Architectural Licensure (IPAL) initiative last year.

Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture announced Sarah Rafson as their Curator of Public Programs. In this new role, Sarah will organize various annual public programs, while also continuing to edit EX-CHANGE, the school’s annual publication of student work.

Discussion/Threads

x-jla was looking for advice "how do I get better at" Turning away work?  "I feel obligated to take on everything". RJ87 agreed with Miles "If it's not something you're particularly interested in just price it accordingly, then if they still want to continue it's suddenly worth your time. That said our office has certain things that we just have no interest in dealing with a particular set of client & just tell them that it's not what we do". midlander added "i think you just have to be honest and tell them you'd like to take the work but you're fully booked for the foreseeable future." Or, as others suggested you can either keep a list of other firms to refer them to or longer-term "expand your capacity to take on these additional projects".

Donna Sink started a thread Is this building Sink-ing into itself? Almosthip and Wood Guy suspected roof "Truss uplift". mightyaa laughed as this is why he earns the "big bucks...All sorts of things can cause these issues. You just have to narrow it down. Since I think you are probably doing a 'should you buy' assessment, you want to narrow it down to know if it's an expensive fix (foundation) or simple (slip joint at the wall head)." When joseffischer questioned the lack of snark in responses, randomised offered a simple explanation "u get out what you put in".

Finally, Seth Bouman wanted some feedback on their proposed "project breakdown for percentage of fees". tint answered right out of the gate "I would put PD and SD together. CD's seems too high, DD seems too low" while whistler thinks "it depends on the project type...Bit more of a sliding scale but for the project type you have noted in the original post I don't think you are far off." Later greenlander1 chimed in "On a side note, one issue with overall profitability is architects don't itemize their work enough.  Any sort of coordination (plan check, site visits, coordination with engineers ,etc) should be its own category."

Additionally

Over at Governing, Rick Reinhard wrote about how across the USA municipalities and community development institutions "have rolled up their sleeves and embarked on initiatives to smooth out the kinks and actively transform empty faith properties into affordable housing".

Here in Denver, Radian (a nonprofit architecture and urban design group) has been working on a "Congregational Land Campaign".