The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced a call for proposals to solicit feedback and concepts for the next version of LEED certification standards. According to the announcement, the organization is looking to expand and improve upon its recently... View full entry
Some have speculated it could be the solution to the country’s affordable housing crisis by providing a quick infusion of lower-priced homes in areas starved for housing inventory. Some affordable housing experts, however, caution that the technology is not a panacea. — Politico Magazine
We've all seen videos of a giant robotic arm assembling layers of material which would later turn into a completed home 12-24 hours later. Some companies are imagining how this type of technology could impact homelessness and affordable housing. Although 3D-printed homes are a favorable... View full entry
Earnings for US construction workers now outstrip the private sector average as contractors face what’s being called one of the tightest labour markets they’ve ever experienced.
The situation has led a contractors’ group there to slam an education system that produces “too many over-qualified baristas and not enough bricklayers” as employers are forced to increase pay to attract skilled workers from a diminishing pool.
— Global Construction Review
Global Construction Review reports on the recent response by the Associated General Contractors of America to June's construction jobs numbers, which signaled a continued struggle for the industry to attract enough skilled workers — despite higher-than-average hourly earnings of now $... View full entry
Her newly resurrected 114-year-old Purse Building features a floor-to ceiling mural of the late Jacobs, an urbanist activist and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, superimposed on a downtown street grid. Above Jacobs’ striking bespectacled image, her mantra “New ideas need old buildings” blazes in neon lights. — Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News profiles Tanya Ragan, a Dallas-based real estate developer who is taking on commercial real estate's "boys club" mentality with a Jane Jacobs-inspired approach. Ragan's Wildcat Management is behind a series of new and forthcoming projects, including the... View full entry
In the 2018 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 396,448 people were booked into an ICE detention facility, up 22.5% from a year earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Between October and January, apprehensions along the southwest border rose to 201,497, up a third from the same period a year ago. — The Wall Street Journal
According to The Wall Street Journal, the private prison business is booming as a result of the hardline immigration policies of President Donald Trump. Despite the growing controversies surrounding the government's treatment of detained migrants in increasingly makeshift and inadequate... View full entry
Mecanoo recently unveiled their first-prize competition design for a new Civic Cultural Center in Futian, one of Shenzhen's oldest and densest districts. The 93,000 m2 tower will comprise a cultural program and social spots for a city that thrives in semi-open spaces. In response to this... View full entry
An international architecture competition aiming to give Paris' much loathed Montparnasse Tower a 21st-century makeover selected the proposal by team Nouvelle AOM as the winning design back in 2017. Now, two years later, another competition hopes to overhaul the greater master... View full entry
Henning Larsen has completed work on a new 750,000-square-foot opera house and cultural center in Hangzhou, China. The opera-in-the-park-style complex is wrapped by a fractured metal panel and glass facade designed to reference the cracked ice that forms during the winter months along... View full entry
In a defeat for Foster + Partners, London mayor Sadiq Khan has rescinded municipal approval for the 997-foot Tulip tower the architects had proposed for the city's Square Mile high-rise district. Architect's Journal reports that a spokesperson for the mayor's office said that the... View full entry
A slim hotel tower slated to rise on a Historic Core parking lot is slated to begin construction in spring 2020 and wrap up in 2022.
The Spring Street Hotel is developed by Lizard Capital and designed by Asap/Adam Sokol Architecture Practice. It would hold 170 rooms—20 of them suites—as well as a restaurant, bar, conference rooms, a screening room, and a gym.
— Curbed LA
Downtown Los Angeles has seen a significant revitalization in the last twenty years, with much of the change happening in its central Historic Core, the dense area of early 20th century buildings now largely occupied by wealthy residents. A striking new addition to the Historic Core might... View full entry
The 2019 edition of the Australian Institute of Architects' regional NSW Architecture Awards recently came to a close with the big reveal of the winners. A total of 51 entries across 12 categories received named awards, awards, and commendations.The big-time winner of this year's competition... View full entry
“We have this museum district,” says architect and theorist Dana Cuff, who oversees cityLAB, an urban research and design center at UCLA, “but the stuff that holds everything together is the part we call the city, and that is the part that Los Angeles has never gotten right.” — The Los Angeles Times
Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times reports that despite a number of new and forthcoming institutional expansions coming to the Miracle Mile museum district in Los Angeles, the area's urban design is sorely lacking. The problem, according to Miranda, is worse by the fact that... View full entry
When the so-called House of the Century rose from the swampy earth back in the early 1970s, it arrived as a vision of the future, a biomorphic experiment in modern living. Back then it was a bright white jumble on the shoreline, and depending on your angle of approach, it looked like either a man's erect genitalia or a giant schnoz.
Today, this futuristic house is a decaying relic of the past, and its future is a subject of concern and conjecture.
— Dallas News
Though Ant Farm, the experimental architecture firm founded by Doug Michels and Chip Lord in 1968, is not among the most well known firms of that era, they produced a number of projects both famous and deserving of fame. They are perhaps best known for their early experiments with inflatable... View full entry
In California and Oregon, beavers are enhancing wetlands that are critical breeding habitat for salmonids, amphibians, and waterfowl. In Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, environmental groups have partnered with ranchers and farmers to encourage beaver activity on small streams. Watershed advocates in California are leading a campaign to have beavers removed from the state’s non-native species list, so that they can be managed as a keystone species rather than a nuisance. — placesjournal.org
Writing in Places Journal, landscape designer Stacy Passmore explores the amazing landscapes beavers create when they are allowed to fulfill their natural role as environmental engineers. More and more, beavers and humans have become partners in reshaping the landscapes of the American west... View full entry
Architect Francis Kéré has completed work on Xylem, a new pavilion at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana that is fashioned from a collection of tree trunks. The 2,100-square-foot pavilion, described as "a quiet place to contemplate nature" by the organizers, draws inspiration... View full entry
