Winning “The Cambridge to Oxford Connection: Ideas Competition” is the all-women team behind VeloCity. The competition is focused on the Cambridge – Milton Keynes – Oxford arc, which currently is home to leading tech hubs and universities, as well as some 3.3 million people. The area is... View full entry
It's the last working week until the Christmas spirit takes over the whole city and the year winds to a festive halt. Make sure you get to the Gingerbread City while it's at its best, and skip the Christmas shopping in favour of talks on the future of London. Check back regularly to keep up... View full entry
MVRDV will be making their mark in the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi with a new project called “Pixel”. The mixed-use project will be part of the 18-hectare Makers District development near the Saadiyat Island cultural hub. The 76,000 m2 Pixel development will have seven mid-rise... View full entry
The fires raging in Los Angeles County and Ventura are an urgent signal that we need to start asking the hard questions — about the true cost of expanding the local tax base with new residences in high fire hazard zones. We need to stop having the same conversation over and over again, a conversation laced with non-sequiturs and focused on outdated, ineffective solutions. — latimes.com
The fires consuming California homes are located in wildland areas, where developers continue to spread cities further. Planning agencies should be the first line of action, not firefighters. View full entry
Beverley "David" Thorne, the last of the Case Study architects and the designer of Dave and Iola Brubeck’s modernist California and Connecticut homes, died December 6 in Sonoma, Calif. He was 93. [...]
Bev designed Harrison House, Case Study No. 26, in San Francisco in 1963.
— Enter Tint Name
Case Study House #26. Photo via csh26.info.The Case Study #26 "Harrison House" Thorne designed in San Rafael, California is the only Case Study House in the San Francisco Bay Area. View full entry
As the end of the year quickly approaches, many architecture schools from coast to coast are wrapping up their Fall 2017 lecture events. As you may have seen from Archinect's ongoing Get Lectured series, the graphic design of these posters are as diverse as the institutions they represent. The... View full entry
Architecture, like contemporary art in the 1990s and legal theory a decade before, faces a critical moment in theory and practice. What do black citizens of major U.S. cities and global cities have to look forward to in the coming century in terms of urban conditions and their agency in determining how these conditions change and transform? What does an approach to cities that takes into account black agency, social codes and aesthetics have to offer to city-making as such? — CNN
CNN Style highlights USC architecture dean and CriticalProductive editor, Milton S. F. Curry, and his recent role as lead organizer behind Spatializing Blackness, a three-part panel discussion on "contemporary thinking and creative work related to black aesthetics, urbanism and the lived... View full entry
Can you tell the difference between a Brakdak and an Afdak, a Sekwere or a Caka? Do you know your Domba hut from your Zulu one? An Inqolobane from an Indlu yezikhali?
Give yourself a pat on the back if you do. Truly, you deserve it. However, don't worry too much if you can't, as there's a new English-isiZulu architectural dictionary, just published by UKZN Press, which contains more than 1200 entries of local architectural terms.
— HuffPost
"I set out to study independent vernacular architecture in the 1970s, not realizing that a multitude of readings and meanings would emerge out of it," the book's co-author Franco Frescura, a former Professor and Chair of Architecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, tells HuffPost South... View full entry
After a couple of days though, the peace and diversity of the countryside became meditational, a panorama that seemed dreamlike through my windscreen...Spectacular modern installations appeared on remote corners in the most far-fetched of places, that they sometimes seemed like a figment of my imagination. — NYT
Ondine Cohane traveled to Norway to tour the Norwegian Scenic Routes. A collection of (so far) 144 wonders, that have been built to encourage tourism, with 46 more to be completed by 2023. Snefjord rest area | Architect: PUSHAK arkitekter | photo by Anne Olsen-Ryum Eggum rest... View full entry
The University of Bristol, in the South West of England, is set to recieve a new £80 million library development on its Clifton campus by 2021. The team for the project is formed of Hawkins\Brown, Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and BuroHappold. The architect-led team has extensive previous... View full entry
Wondering what architecture and design events are happening around New York City? This week's picks highlight the lasting power of photography, whether it's documenting a historically rich and ever-evolving place like NYC, or looking back at one's own... View full entry
Architects know best, as they often claim. With conviction, they’re sure certain details will make a space more hospitable, more beautiful, more preferable, and more enjoyable...But an emerging field of research is now uncovering and quantifying our psychological response to buildings: cognitive architecture. The hope is that by better understanding through science what exactly it is people like or dislike about our built environment, designers can truly improve it. — Fast Co Design
What does it mean to see a building? As we approach a building, what is that calls our attention? The door? The entry? That corner detail that is doing something we have never seen before? Architect Ann Sussman and designer Janice M. Ward are two leading researchers studying how our brains see... View full entry
Zaha Hadid Architects designed the newly opened CityLife Shopping District in Milan, as part of the larger CityLife redevelopment that is expected to welcome over 7 million visitors annually when it's completed in 2020. Photo © Hufton+Crow. Located above the Tre Torri station on the M... View full entry
Hannah Wood, Archinect’s Features Columnist, dug into the topic of America and the AV: Digital Mobility for Architects. Following conversations with Yale professor Keller Easterling, Carlo Ratti of MIT’s Senseable City Lab and three former, Easterling students. Who are the... View full entry
Since 2008, Solidia Technologies [...] has been quietly developing a new cement-making process that produces up to 70% fewer CO2 emissions at a cost that DeCristofaro claims is on par with or better than conventional cement.
Solidia, which was formed in a bid to commercialize ideas developed at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is not the first company to attempt to make environmentally friendly cement. But industry experts say it’s the most promising yet.
— Quartz
"Of course, the startup now needs to show that this lower-emission cement can be made into concrete that’s at least as good as others, and can be scaled up in a way that’s affordable," Quartz explains. "That’s what Solidia is working on right now." View full entry
