Still, the trouble with the Hyperloop is not its breathless gee-whizzery. It’s the fact that it mistakes the charismatic mega-project for a viable solution to current problems. If the Hyperloop’s purpose is to address large-scale urban mobility, then there are many other options already deserving of public funding and attention—ones that do not require a hard rebooting of the entire urban world to be realized. — New Yorker
Musk’s visions are valuable because they show that even people far outside the field of urban planning can be frustrated with the world others have built for us. They, too, should have a say. It’s great set design, but terrible city planning. Tunnels might abruptly end where investors fear to... View full entry
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the housing shortage in Venice Beach. As one of Los Angeles' hottest neighborhoods—in large part due to the influx of tech companies that have made it their home and lent it the new nickname, Silicon Beach—it might come as a surprise to learn... View full entry
The best things in life are free, but construction cranes still cost money, which has prompted an investor to sue the developers behind SHoP's 111 West 57th Street for failing to budget appropriately for the cost of cranes (among other things) for the super skinny tower, which is already way over... View full entry
estudioOCA, a landscape architecture and urban design practice in Bangkok and New York, recently won a Rockefeller Foundation grant to support the further development of solutions for flood mitigation and drought in Udon Thani, a rapidly growing city in... View full entry
The Turf House Tradition of Iceland was nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status in 2011. “The turf house is an exceptional example of a vernacular architectural tradition, which has survived in Iceland,” according to the nomination. “The form and design of the turf house is an expression of the cultural values of the society and has adapted to the social and technological changes that took place through the centuries.” — National Geographic
Although living walls are still considered to be somewhat noteworthy in contemporary design, Iceland's architecture has been overgrown with the technique for hundreds of years. Along with a history of turf as a building material (and the pressures of modernism on Iceland's architecture in the 20th... View full entry
Looking for a job? Archinect's Employer of the Day Weekly Round-Up can help start off your hunt amid the hundreds of active listings on our job board. If you've been following the feature on our Facebook, Employer of the Day is where we highlight active employers and showcase a gallery of... View full entry
For designers who love to draw by hand on real paper but want to store those sketches in the cloud, there is now a kind of a refined, tech-savvy etch-o-sketch in the form of the Rocketbook Wave Smart Notebook from self-described "notebook innovators" Joe Lemay and Jake Epstein. Using a special... View full entry
The price, a record for a single U.K. office property, is remarkable given that the building will face ongoing maintenance costs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts including Tim Leckie wrote in a client note. LKK, which sells Chinese herbal medicines, paid a 13 percent premium to book value for the property even as Land Securities’s shares trade at a 26 percent discount, he said. — Bloomberg
Land Securities Group Plc and Canary Wharf Group Plc agreed to sell the Rafael Viñoly-designed Walkie Talkie for 1.28 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) to Hong Kong-based LKK Health Products Group, founded in 1992 by the Lee Kum Kee family, whose primary business sells a variety of condiments... View full entry
Apple Park is unlike any other product Ive has worked on. There will be only one campus—in contrast to the ubiquity of Apple’s phones and computers—and it doesn’t fit in a pocket or a hand. Yet Ive applied the same design process he brings to technological devices: prototyping to minimize any issues with the end result and to narrow what he calls the delta between the vision and the reality of a project. — WSJ. Magazine
“A lot of the buildings that are being built at the moment are products of software-only cultures,” says Ive. “Because we understand making, we’ll build [a prototype] and try it and use it, and see what works and what doesn’t.” View full entry
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from University of Oregon, Stanford and Dartmouth have co-developed a new digital archive. The collection contains nearly 4,000 drawings, prints, paintings and photographs of historic Rome from the 16th to 20th centuries that are now available online to... View full entry
Last week, we covered the newly released designs for a landmark sculpture that would be built at Flint Castle in Wales. The sculpture, designed by George King Architects, was to be a cantilevered bridge structure made of weathering steel and engraved with words chosen from the local community. At... View full entry
The Sound and Matter in Design exhibition at the Design Museum Holon in Israel explores the relationship between sound and design, as well as how sound influences our everyday environments and experiences. From site-specific installations to dozens of historic objects on... View full entry
Built in 1896 for piano dealers M. Steinert & Sons, Steinert Hall is a magnificent six-story limestone and brick building tucked 40 feet below the street level. Appropriately nicknamed “The Little Gem”, it was designed by Winsell&Weterell and incorporated a Beaux Arts-style facade... View full entry
OPEN Architecture's “Dialogue by the Sea” recently won a top accolade in the German Design Council's honorable Iconic Awards 2017. Located on a quiet beach along the coast of Bohai Bay in China, the project comprises two separate but related... View full entry
This is a two-part series on housing policy in Vienna and how it could be a model for progressive housing policy in Seattle, where I live, or other American cities struggling with affordable housing. The first part is an overview of financing and subsidies. Part two, coming tomorrow, looks in detail at how zoning and development supports housing affordability. — cityobservatory.org
Mike Eliason, passivhaus designer with Seattle-based Patano Studio, penned an insightful two-part commentary for City Observatory, looking at issues of financing, zoning, affordability, sustainability, and quality of life in a side-by-side comparison of Vienna and Seattle. View full entry