Cities that are growing and cities that are shrinking, climate change, environmental health and equity, resource scarcity, technological change — all demand that we rethink how we plan, design, construct, and maintain the built environment. These challenges also demand that serious design journalism and scholarship move from the margins to the center of the larger cultural discussion. — Places Journal
Last week The New Yorker opened up part of its archive, setting off a mad dash through the corridors in search of great summer reading.The editors at Places Journal have rounded up some of the best articles on architecture and urbanism, including profiles of David Adjaye and Bjarke Ingels... View full entry
A Motor City Mapping app will make it possible for users to snap photos of properties and text them to the public database. (They are trying to brand a new word to describe this process — the awful-sounding “blexting.”) These will be quality-checked before going onto the database, and the hope is that users will participate in training sessions before pointing, clicking and sending. Several “blexting bootcamps,” will be held in coming weeks. — nextcity.org
Previously: Despite Successes, Blight Still Threatens Detroit’s Future View full entry
The idea behind CV dazzle is simple. Facial recognition algorithms look for certain patterns when they analyze images: patterns of light and dark in the cheekbones, or the way color is distributed on the nose bridge—a baseline amount of symmetry. These hallmarks all betray the uniqueness of a human visage. If you obstruct them, the algorithm can’t separate a face from any other swath of pixels. — theatlantic.com
From the creators of the popular Skyscraper Competition, you can now get your hands on a copy of eVolo's latest book, "Digital & Parametric Architecture".This 312-page book dives into the "architecture of the future" — from the development of the latest digital tools to how they are... View full entry
A woman rented her 600-square-foot Palm Springs, California, condo to someone for a little over a month, and now she says the guy won't leave and is threatening to sue her.
She's had to hire a lawyer and go through the entire eviction process, which could take 3-6 months, the same as if he were a long-term tenant.
It's "been a nightmare," the host, Cory Tschogl, told Business Insider.
— Business Insider
The map, one of the central elements of navigation, has expanded in capability since the form has been translated to digital. Case in point, the MIT Media Lab’s “You Are Here” project is a collection of maps that visualize a variety of datasets over space. Things from bike accidents to coffee shops, graffiti reports, and transit connectivity are all laid out, using a variety of open data and other online resources, such as Google’s map directions services API. — marketplace.org
Direct link to You Are Here. View full entry
In need of a fresh perspective on sustainable design that goes beyond the ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all things deemed as green? The book Behind the Green Door - A Critical Look at Sustainable Architecture through 600 Objects could help with that. And Archinect is giving away five copies to our... View full entry
We have our book giveaway winner for Adolf Loos, A Private Portrait and Escape Home, Rebuilding a Life After the Anschluss! The two memoirs were each written by family members of Austrian architect Adolf Loos.Adolf Loos, A Private Portrait is the first English translation of the 140-page... View full entry
Need some ideas for designing a solar home or to make your space a little greener? "A Place in the Sun: Green Living and the Solar Home" could be a helpful guide -- and Archinect is giving away 5 copies to our readers.Released this past April, the 228-page hardcover book by green-living writer and... View full entry
Take a gander at our latest roundup of Kickstarter and crowdfunding projects for Archinect's curated Kickstarter page! Here are our picks for June 2014:Sydney Opera House Architectural Model KitMarcus Bree of Brisbane-based Little Building Co. continues to showcase his talent in crafting exquisite... View full entry
For some meals, it's not the food that makes it special, but how it was prepared. A cake made by a dear friend can taste better than the one bought from the bakery; instant oatmeal becomes transcendent made over a campfire in the woods. The traditions of cooking that we abide by are part... View full entry
Time for another book giveaway! We've got two great titles from DoppelHouse Press. The first is the first English edition of Adolf Loos, A Private Portrait by Claire Beck Loos, who was the last wife of Austrian modern architect Adolf Loos. The 140-page biography was originally published in German... View full entry
The documentary Lagos Wide and Close - An Interactive Journey into an Exploding City, arose from Rem Koolhaas' 2001 visit to Lagos, Nigeria with filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak, hoping to document a phase in one of Africa's fastest growing cities. The doc's unique direction allows viewers to... View full entry
Using images provided by cultural organizations worldwide, some of which were captured with Google’s Street View camera technology, [the Google Cultural Institute's Street Art Project] includes street art from around the globe, including work that no longer exists [...]
Google is the latest organization to wade into debates about how or whether to institutionalize, let alone commercialize, art that is ephemeral and often willfully created subversively.
— nytimes.com
Maa2too3a, or ‘Happin’ in English, is a free app that uses news and crowd-sourced information to geo-tag disruptive events in the city as they occur, allowing users to mitigate risks or simply save time by avoiding them. Launched in May 2013, the app now has over 100,000 users, according to the developer, Mohammed Taha. “It’s a tool to keep people safe,” he says. And on calmer days, it can be used to simply avoid traffic jams or other routine problems. — nextcity.org
