From headwaters near Salem, Missouri, the Meramec River snakes 218 free-flowing miles, through 14 counties and scores of towns, skirting St. Louis before emptying into the mighty Mississippi. Derek Hoeferlin grew up outside St. Louis, on a wooded hill close to the Meramec. As he commuted to school... View full entry
The World Green Building Council (WGBC) has published its Advancing Net Zero Status Report 2021, offering an overview of the construction sector’s progress towards decarbonization throughout the last twelve months. Available to read and download here for free, the 48-page report offers detail on... View full entry
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday added the Reunion House, by prominent modernist architect, Richard Neutra, to the city’s list of Historic-Cultural Monuments. The hillside residence was built in 1950 and sits at 2440 Neutra Place in Silver Lake. It was built as a speculative... View full entry
The Museum of Modern Art has appointed curator, writer, and educator, Carson Chan, as the first director of the museum’s Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment. He will also serve as a curator in the museum’s Department of Architecture and Design... View full entry
Plans to transform the northernmost pier within Hudson River Park have picked up steam again with landscape architecture firm !melk sharing that construction will begin this summer. — Urbanize NYC
The renowned German architect Gottfried Böhm has passed away at the age of 101. In 1986, Böhm became the first German architect to be awarded the Pritzker Prize, recognizing his skilled use of concrete, steel, and glass in church architecture. Böhm won particular acclaim for his sculptural... View full entry
A multidisciplinary team led by Haptic Architects has won the £10,000 first prize in the inaugural Davidson Prize, a competition calling for new ideas that rethink the design of the contemporary home. Titled HomeForest, the winning proposal comes from a diverse team. In addition to those... View full entry
The latest iteration of the Serpentine Pavilion is now open in London after more than a year of COVID-related delays. South African studio Counterspace had to wait 10 months to present its final design after being named to the commission in February of 2020. Serpentine Pavilion... View full entry
In Africa, design practices tend to focus on bottom-up growth and organic, fractal forms. They are created in a sort of feedback loop, what computer scientists call “recursion.” You start with a basic shape and then divide it into smaller versions of itself, so that the subdivisions are embedded in the original shape. What emerges is called a “self-similar” pattern, because the whole can be found in the parts. — The Conversation
"Design remains a largely white profession, with Black people still vastly underrepresented – making up just 3% of the design industry.This dilemma isn’t new. For decades, the field’s whiteness has been recognized as a problem, and was being openly discussed as far back as the late... View full entry
The City of Chicago, Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) revealed preliminary designs for a renovation of the city’s State/Lake elevated station. Located in the heart of downtown, this is the second busiest station in the CTA network, located at... View full entry
The Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Loeb Fellowship has announced its Class of 2022. The ten individuals were selected from a group of 134 candidates, and work across fields including activism, urbanism, public art, film and media, technology, and real estate development. The... View full entry
Zaha Hadid Architects has signed an agreement with Hyperloop Italia to co-design the next phase of development for the transformative transportation system. Hyperloop Italia is a start-up born from an initiative by Bibop Gresta, the founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), to... View full entry
It's no secret that a lot of public engagement is worthless—or worse. It's not just that much of it is lazily designed to check off a box on a list of requirements—though that's true. It's not just that there's a built-in power imbalance, in which public feedback tends to overrepresent groups with a lot of access to and familiarity with the political process—older, wealthier, whiter, and more politically engaged residents. Though that's true too. — Strong Towns
Often the public surveys on a public space, new building proposal, town center, shopping area, a local roadway, housing, etc., involve meaningless questions and public input via the neighborhood workshops, hearings, and other means of conjuring up political support for the projects already decided... View full entry
Architects and designers from multiple Perkins&Will studios worldwide have developed design solutions to address how urban spaces, workplaces, and/or daily life may change in post-COVID London. As part of the firm’s annual Phil Freelon Design Competition, these proposals explore ways parts of... View full entry
Curtain wall construction has begun on what will become the world’s largest passive house office building, marking an important milestone in the drive to give Boston an iconic and environmentally friendly new skyscraper that could help the city meet its carbon-free mandate by midcentury. ... View full entry
