This post is brought to you by BQE Core. All too often architects find themselves dealing with clients and prospects who treat them as employees, rather than fellow business owners (Related: Clients from Hell… and Other Love Stories). Even if your clients aren’t difficult on purpose... View full entry
Abraham Lincoln's Disappointment In the summer of 1863 after three days of brutal warfare, the Battle of Gettysburg culminated with the retreat of Robert E. Lee's army, something, that at the time, President Lincoln was not happy about. While the battle was seen as a triumph for the Union Army... View full entry
If there is one skill we learn as architects and designers, it's how to talk. We know how to dress up our ideas and present them eloquently and compellingly. As a result, we sometimes build a tricky habit of winging presentations. This happens in school and in professional practice. Most of the... View full entry
"Construction spending in the commercial category, which encompasses retail space among other segments, is down nearly 12% on a year-over-year basis. Spending related to lodging, including new hotel construction, was down 0.7% for the month and is up less than 4% year over year. Spending in the power segment also decreased in August and is down 3.5% compared to the same time last year." — Building Design + Construction
A recent report from the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) looking at construction activity year-over-year shows a slight increase in construction spending for the year ending in August 2019. Total construction spending rose 0.3-percent relative to the same point in 2018, resulting in... View full entry
JBG Smith, the biggest developer in the D.C. area and landlord of Amazon’s future Northern Virginia headquarters, Tuesday announced that it would redevelop about 2.6 million square feet of space at five multifamily buildings and an office building in Crystal City. The buildings are all within half a mile of the Amazon headquarters site and near Reagan National Airport, representing part of a broader development push in the area now called “National Landing.” — Curbed DC
In total, JBG Smith plans to redevelop around 6.9 million square feet at National Landing with a third of that area devoted to office space and the rest developed as residential spaces that could generate between 4,000 and 5,000 dwelling units, as well as ground floor retail, reports Curbed DC... View full entry
The all-nighter is a common occurrence in architecture today, especially in school. We briefly explored the reasons for this growing phenomenon in The Architecture Student's Guide to Studio, but let's dive a little deeper into the issue. Here are 2 things you should ask yourself before you... View full entry
In the workplace, probably unsurprisingly to many women who are routinely talked over, patronized or ignored by male colleagues, research shows that rather than women being underconfident, men tend to be overconfident in relation to their actual abilities. Women generally aren’t failing to speak up; the problem is that men are refusing to pipe down. — The New York Times
Author Ruth Whippman, writing in The New York Times, questions the focus on coaching women to adopt the aggressive social behaviors of men in the workplace. Might these efforts be more effective if men were simultaneously encouraged to cede space, attention, and power in a reciprocal... View full entry
MARKERAD collection, a collaboration between IKEA x Virgil Abloh...This range stylishly fuses functionality with street cred and high cultural references, it brings you statement pieces that challenge tradition. The collection of 15 pieces consists of a range of fashion-forward homewares that cater towards fluid and contemporary living, including a day bed, table, chair, mirror, lighting, bed textiles, cabinet and accessories. — IKEA
"It’s about elevating the anonymous, everyday icons that we use without noticing. When we put a doorstop on one of the legs of an ordinary chair we create something unexpected – an interruption," said Abloh about the collection. View full entry
That’s what I’m trying to do with Tools & Tiaras: Have girls start envisioning that it’s normal for a woman to be an ironworker, to be my sister, to be working with me. Our stories are not told; no woman really knows: “Wow, she looks like me. She’s only four feet eleven and seven eighths and she’s doing plumbing? I can do it.” Society needs to change the way we portray what is women’s work and what tradespeople look like. — Urban Omnibus
Judaline Cassidy, a New York-based plumber and the founder/director of the nonprofit Tools & Tiaras Inc, explains her struggles to break into the overwhelmingly male-dominated construction industry (only 3.4 percent of construction trades workers are women), the progress that has been made in... View full entry
After emerging triumphant in an international design competition, David Chipperfield Architects have received the commission for the Rolex USA headquarters in New York. It will be located on the corner of 5th Avenue and 53rd Street and will replace an existing building that has been occupied by... View full entry
Sitting there, program in hand, concept underway, and with constraints to abide by, we consider the possibilities. The design process isn't a scientific thing, there's an artistic aspect to it, one that sometimes leaves us searching for the perfect solution. We arrive at something, but know when... View full entry
Any busy person understands the overwhelming sight of countless emails sitting in an inbox on a Monday morning. They come in all shapes and sizes: there are those that don't require a response, easy enough, on to the next; the sales ones asking us to check out a new glass product, annoying; there... View full entry
The Roosevelt neighborhood has the makings of a huge transit-oriented development success story. A building boom is underway, protected bike lanes have recently gone in, and the station site will be home to an affordable housing complex right around the time trains begin operating.
Northgate Link, along with an underground station in Roosevelt, will open in 2021, and the neighborhood–like others along the line–are already transforming
— The Urbanist
The Urbanist takes a look at three neighborhoods in Seattle that have seen a rush in transit-oriented development as a new light rail line heads toward its 2021 completion. View full entry
The architecture profession tends to assume that there is always more to build. We need more infrastructure, more houses and more office space to accommodate economies and societies that are forever expanding. Greedy though it may be, this mindset is supported by the pervasive belief that a society’s success is best measured not in terms of humane measures such as the capacity for care and play but in economic terms such as market expansion. — Failed Architecture
Mark Minkjan of Failed Architecture interviews Phineas Harper and Maria Smith, two of the curators behind the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019. The triennale's theme, Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth is focused "proposing alternatives to the unsustainable and unfair paradigm of... View full entry
Google's Architect-In-Residence and Head of R+D for the Built Environment, Michelle Kaufmann, will help lead the first ever 2019 fellowship cohort. After releasing an open call for fellowship applications earlier this year, four fellows have been chosen to help spearhead Google's newest... View full entry