Labeled with nice-sounding terms like “reproduction,”replica,” or “homage,” many designer chairs in offices, hotel lobbies, airports, restaurants and even big furniture stores are actually unauthorized copies. And while a knock-off Eames or Barcelona chair might seem like a harmless, budget-friendly addition to your living room, these illegal knockoffs threaten the economy and the environment, and erode the very meaning of design. — Quartz Media
For furniture designers, protecting intellectual property is challenging—IP laws for furniture in the US don’t protect function, so designers have to prove a unique element in their design to qualify for a patent. And even when a patent is obtained, its protections often do not apply in... View full entry
When most Amish men were farmers, it was common for them to work seasonally with non-Amish in town, on more traditional things like cabinet making or carpentry, or even making cigar boxes, boats and band instruments. Nolt, who conducted interviews in the late ‘90s with Amish workers in the boat-making industry, said interviewees pointed to the fact that making the wooden boats was similar to wood working. — Atlas Obscura
According to Steve Nolt, Senior Scholar at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, most of the Amish men under 65 work in factories. The majority of these manufacturing plants either assemble RVS or supply parts such as cabinets or windows. Such increased... View full entry
Rachel Whiteread is known for her architecturally-relevant art practice, in particular her casts of the inside of buildings. One such sculpture, a cast of a Victorian townhouse, helped secure her the Turner Prize, making her the first woman to ever win the illustrious award. The London-based... View full entry
Peckham’s famous multi-storey car park has a new addition; a new viewing gallery created by Cooke Fawcett. The young practice, based in London’s creative Clerkenwell, was formed just two years ago, by directors Oliver Cooke and Francis Fawcett, after working on the Tate’s Switch House at... View full entry
A wet and cooler week… anyone would have thought it was the end of the summer. Keep dry while exploring the world of design; this week's picks are almost all set inside. Make sure you get any budding architects onto the Grimshaw-led summer school which runs throughout next week, and get... View full entry
Over thousands of years, the building science of timber framing developed independently in both Northern Europe and China. But one big difference between the regions is that China, by virtue of its size and geological traits, is prone to devastating earthquakes. Ancient Chinese builders thus needed a way to create wooden structures that could not be shaken apart, and that were not so stiff that its support members would shatter. — Core 77
Known as dougong, these earthquake-resistant series of brackets were designed and engineered roughly 500 B.C. When interlocked together, the joints transfer weight to supporting columns, containing so many redundancies they can not be shaken apart. By spreading their tolerances over multiple... View full entry
Archinectors recently had a chance to win “Mid-Century Modern Architecture Travel Guide: West Coast USA” by Sam Lubell. Published by Phaidon, this handy travel guide features over 250 Mid-Century Modern projects neatly organized into color-coded chapters that cover the Pacific Northwest... View full entry
Studio Gang's 2017 Summer Block Party installation called the “Hive," opened to the public in the beginning of July. Since then, many have flocked to the National Building Museum in Washington D.C to experience the structure made of 2,700 wounded paper tubes. For those not near the D.C... View full entry
Lea Oxenhandler and Benjamin Halpern were announced today as the winners of the very first Architectural Record Traveling Fellowship, which the magazine established in celebration of their 125th anniversary. The fellowship will fund the travel expenses of Oxenhandler and Halpern as they each... View full entry
To shift our focus from innovation to maintenance would also create an opportunity for greater political consensus. Maintenance is an area of public policy where conservatives and progressives should see eye to eye. — The NY Times
As Andrew Russell and Lee Vinseljuly of NY Times point out, officials in federal, state and local government do not allocate the resources necessary for preventive maintenance. The authors argue that American conception of technology is narrow and immature—obsessing over gadgets and... View full entry
Healthcare facilities matter just as much as the important services they provide to their communities. In this spirit, the AIA's annual Healthcare Design Awards spotlight exemplary healthcare-building design and healthcare design-oriented research projects by... View full entry
Entering 2017, construction forecasters were quite optimistic about the near-term outlook for the industry. [...]
However, as of the mid-year 2017 update, the grounds of this euphoria are evaporating. [...] key elements of the Trump administration’s legislative agenda have made almost no progress. [...]
As a result, the AIA Consensus Construction Forecast panel is predicting slower growth for the construction industry for the remainder of 2017 and through 2018.
— aia.org
"The slower estimated growth for 2017 is expected to continue through 2018. Overall spending growth is currently projected by the Consensus Forecast panel at 3.6 percent for next year, down modestly from the 4.9 percent forecast entering this year. Commercial construction is expected to perform... View full entry
[P]erhaps enticed by predictions of a $7 trillion autonomous driving industry, Lyft is saying it wants a build its own technology stack so it can operate its own self-driving cars.
To accomplish this, Lyft is opening a new 50,000-square-foot engineering facility in Palo Alto, California, that it’s calling the “Level 5” center in reference to the most advanced level of autonomous driving. Kapoor said the goal is to have “hundreds” of engineers working out of the facility by the end of 2018.
— The Verge
According to The Verge, Lyft is yet to release more concrete details of their plan, including which components of a self-driving car they will build themselves or how much money they plan to spend. Last month, Lyft announced their partnership with self-driving car startup NuTonomy to launch a test... View full entry
...So today's engineers battle not only the force of gravity but the the whirling pockets of wind, known as vortices, that can cause towers to shake or vibrate. Failure to do so would make the motion of the building — or "acceleration," as engineers call it — uncomfortably noticeable. — Chicago Tribune
Tunnel tests for Chicago's future third-tallest skyscraper showed that the plan for the building—three thin, interconnected high-rises designed by Studio Gang—would not be able to withstand high winds. According to the engineers, the design for the Vista tower "would result in building... View full entry
Talk about redeveloping the long-vacant Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown area heated up again Thursday during an announcement about this year's Detroit Homecoming, which will hold the first significant private event in the 104-year-old train station since the mid-1980s. [...]
"(Redevelopment of) the depot is going to take a marathon, but we're not at the beginning of the race, we're a few miles into it," said Matthew Moroun, whose father, Matty, bought the building in 1995.
— crainsdetroit.com
"I said, 'there's one thing: Every time I read a damn national story about Detroit, there's a picture of the train station with the holes in the windows as the international image of the city's decline,'" Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is quoted saying, recalling his conversation with billionaire... View full entry
