Amazon is offering $20 million to the Arlington County Affordable Housing Investment Fund in exchange for being allowed to build a bigger headquarters complex in the county than zoning allows.
...it would be the greatest single infusion of money ever into Arlington’s housing fund, which in recent years received between $14 million and $16 million annually from the county government and $5 million to $6 million in loan repayments from developers.
— The Washington Post
According to The Washington Post, the affordable housing proposal has been long awaited by Arlington residents who worry about the arrival of thousands of well-paid Amazon employees and the higher rents and housing costs that could result. In exchange for the donation, Amazon hopes to... View full entry
Noguchi heads rejoice! The archives of Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi have been digitized and made available to the public via a online archive and portal. Hyperallergic reports that the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York has made 60,000 archival items, including 28,000 photographs... View full entry
The Pacific Northwest has become a region many architects and designers are drawn to thanks to its amazing nature, ever-growing tech economy, and its penchant for low-impact and sustainable design practices. Continuing from our regional Spotlight on Seattle coverage Archinect has curated... View full entry
Construction software company HoloBuilder Inc. has announced a partnership with Boston Dynamics, maker of mobile robots, to develop SpotWalk, which the firm claims is a first-of-its-kind robotic document capture app for construction sites.
...the robot [can] walk around job sites autonomously and capture 360-degree images that record construction progress, thus creating digital, recordable data of the project over time.
— Construction Dive
According to Construction Dive, Hensel Phelps tested the new technology on a recent project and found its application to be efficient and time-saving. A spokesperson for the contractor said that the robot "removes a time-consuming step while providing accurate construction photos with a high... View full entry
California Senator and presidential contender Kamala Harris and California Representative Maxine Waters have introduced the "Housing is Infrastructure Act," a $107 billion bill that aims to upgrade and expand affordable housing across the country. The bill is the latest in a series of efforts... View full entry
A group of architects at NAC Architecture in Chinatown LA have come together to raise money for the students at Castelar Elementary School located just a few blocks from their office. “We are a community-focused practice, and we love the community we’re in. So a chance to help our... View full entry
We’re excited to release a new varietal to our Brutal single-origin coffee lineup as we bid farewell to our Guatemala Ceiba and Brazil Yellow Diamond beans. Starting today we are now offering bags of Colombia Ibagué. This medium roast is incredibly well-balanced, with notes of chocolate... View full entry
After a 20-year run as the launching pad for a generation of aspiring architects and young designers, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and MoMA PS1-sponsored Young Architects Program (YAP) will be going on hiatus for at least one year. Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of... View full entry
Dion Neutra, the son of the 20th century architect Richard Neutra and a practitioner in his own right who also waged a decades-long war to save his father’s iconic buildings from the ravages of time, remodeling and demolition, has died at his home on Neutra Place in Silver Lake, a neighborhood studded with Neutra architecture.
Neutra, who was 93, died Sunday in his sleep, said his brother, Raymond Neutra.
— The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times highlights the life and career of Dion Neutra, the son and collaborator of Richard Neutra, the famed Los Angeles architect behind many of the city's sleek Modernist-era structures. Dion worked alongside his father on some of the firm's most creative works, including the VDL... View full entry
How can we make stronger building materials? An experiment conducted by Rice University's Brown School of Engineering explores this limit by manipulating materials like plastic, metal, and concrete to match the strength of diamonds. 3D printed blocks made at Rice University. Image... View full entry
New York City-based legal group Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) has filed a class action lawsuit against a collection of public agencies representing the borough of Queens, New York "challenging the inaccessibility" of the new Steven Holl Architects-designed Hunters Point Library, according... View full entry
The U.S. is at the beginning of a tidal wave of homes hitting the market on the scale of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. This time it won’t be driven by overbuilding, easy credit or irrational exuberance, but by an inevitable fact of life: the passing of the baby boomer generation. — The Wall Street Journal
A report in The Wall Street Journal highlights the coming vacancy crisis set to impact America's retirement communities and exurbs as members of the Baby Boomer generation age out of independent living with fewer members of younger generations left—or willing—to take their... View full entry
A project team lead by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), nARCHITECTS, Perkins Eastman, and W Architecture and Landscape Architecture has unveiled renderings for a new economic hub slated for the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. Overall view of... View full entry
Eleanor Marshall examined how and why "there is a significant pay gap between men and women in architecture" on both sides of the Atlantic. Will Galloway totally supports transparent salaries "It may not solve the underlying problems, still worth it to make the difference an obvious one. Employers... View full entry
Students at the Yale University School of Architecture have completed construction on the 2019 Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, a student-led design-build exploration that has brought a three-unit "triple-decker"-style home into existence. View of a upperlevel balcony-porch attached to... View full entry