Electric car company Faraday Future held a groundbreaking ceremony for its $1 billion manufacturing facility outside Las Vegas this afternoon, attended by Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, North Las Vegas mayor John Lee, and a host of other officials. There wasn't any actual "ground" broken, though, really — Faraday still needs to grade the land, which it says it will do "soon." — the Verge
[...]"Faraday's VP of Global Manufacturing Dag Reckhorn says that they are "moving extremely quickly for a project of this size" — a 3 million square-foot factory on 900 acres that the company claims will bring 4,300 jobs to the region over a decade — with plans to build in just two years... View full entry
Cars conquered the daily culture of American life back when top hats and child labor were in vogue, and well ahead of such other innovations as radio, plastic, refrigerators, the electrical grid, and women’s suffrage.
A big part of why they’ve stuck around is that they are the epitome of convenience...Convenience (some might call it freedom) is not a selling point to be easily dismissed [...]
In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane.
— theatlantic.com
Related on Archinect:More Americans are becoming "mega-commuters", U.S. Census stats showIs America actually shifting away from its car obsession? Not entirely.Can a loss of driver autonomy save lives?Q&A with Kati Rubinyi, author of The Car in 2035: Mobility Planning for the Near... View full entry
ICYMI Amelia Taylor-Hochberg published a 3 part interview with Coy Howard, by students in John Southern's “Architectural Media and Publishing” Cultural Studies seminar at SCI-Arc. Ewa Lenart was impressed "Great Work and greatly inspiring teacher!" Plus, Nicholas Korody explored... View full entry
With April comes springtime, and a proliferation of reproduction symbols laden with the sticky pollen of the universal allergen – sex. We're devoting our next editorial issue on Archinect to themes of sex and sexuality in architecture, and we want you to submit (to our open call).Effective... View full entry
Borders are often controversial and rarely flexible, but Ma Yansong of MAD has playfully reinterpreted them with his installation for the 2016 Salone del Mobile in Milan. “Borders are usually seen as something closed and unapproachable but I think it’s interesting to make borders attractive... View full entry
After Ms. Hadid died on March 31 at 65, The New York Times, in an informal online questionnaire, asked female architects among its readers to talk candidly about their experiences in the profession: the progress they’ve made and the obstacles they still face on construction sites and in client meetings. Below are edited excerpts from a few of some 200 responses we received. — The New York Times
Architecture, already a tough field, can be even more challenging if you happen to be female. As Christine Matheu from Bloomington, Indiana recalls in this article, “There was a time when women were not allowed to be members of the Century Club. About that same time, as a young architect... View full entry
Rikers Island looms large in New York’s imagination. It is home to a notorious complex of prisons, one whose excesses are still being discovered by the media and the courts. Many would like to see the Rikers Island closed forever, or barring that, to at least change the name to something that does not honor a slaveowner.
One group of designers has a different goal for Rikers Island—one that is within reach and, in fact, already at hand.
— CityLab
"The problem: On the most prominent map of New York City, Rikers Island is a nonentity. The island simply isn’t labeled on Metropolitan Transportation Authority maps inside the New York subway. The solution: Label it. On every map."For more on the #SeeRikers campaign – or to create your own... View full entry
We need to think of technology-enabled furniture as a platform for integrating other technology because in a small apartment it is not practical to put in conventional systems...I don't believe in smart homes, I believe in dumb homes that you put smart things into. If smartness is embedded in the walls then your home becomes obsolete in five years time — BBC news
Jane Wakefield talks with folks behind various efforts to lower the cost of homes including; WikiHouse, CityHome and the Brazilian tiny apartment construction firm, Vitacon. View full entry
Boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and around it.
A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety — a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops — or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones.
— nymag.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Putting entire cities on the psychiatrist's couchGetting Neural: Van Alen hosts "How Does the Brain Respond to the City?"The Quest to Measure the Brain's Response to Urban Design View full entry
For Brazil’s economy, the near future probably features a period of stagnation, as a government paralyzed by political crisis dodges the tough choices created by strong inflation, rising budget deficits and, at best, a touch of economic growth in 2017 after hitting rock bottom in 2016. [...]
Demonstrators have turned out in numbers larger than in 1984 — when Brazilians of all stripes united to throw off military rule— to demand [President] Rousseff’s ouster
— ibtimes.com
As reported by Reuters today, a congressional committee has recommended impeaching President Rousseff, partially in response to charges that during her 2014 re-election, she broke campaigning budget laws. This Sunday, the entire lower house will vote, and if the decision to impeach receives... View full entry
”...it might be that loneliness is often due to circumstance.
The thing with cities is we are absolutely surrounded by people...We can see other people living richer, more populated lives than our own. At the same time, we can feel very exposed … there are lots of eyes on everyone. That is why the loneliness of the city has a particularly distinct tang to it.
Loneliness, however, is often like bad weather, “it passes through our lives”.
— The Guardian
More about mental health on Archinect:The Internet and the Future of LonelinessAn environmental psychologist on why boring design is bad for your healthHow urban designers can better address mental health in their work, according to a new think tankStudy Links Walkable Neighborhoods to Prevention... View full entry
bastardized visual language has become the de facto standard of Dallas residential architecture development. The explanation for its ever-increasing prevalence, however depressing, is fairly straightforward. Developers find something that’s profitable and want to reproduce it. Risk-averse banks are happy to lend them money given their track record, at least in the short term. Architects, stuck with low budgets, tight schedules, and conservative developers, serve to please and follow convention. — artsblog.dallasnews.com
"But Dallas architecture shouldn’t be a joke, and it doesn’t have to be. A look at recent developments in Los Angeles, a historically auto-centric city faced with similar growth challenges, suggests how Dallas might break the vicious cycle in which it is mired."Related stories in the... View full entry
All of us, including myself have been engaged in catering to the 0.1 per cent through our work. Our training has always been in material and designing architecture for that one per cent.
The kind of world we live in today, we need to democratise architecture. I know that it may give an impression that I am saying this only because I am retired now, but I have become deeply involved in how architecture can provide social justice and (grounds) for an equitable society.
— TheNews on Sunday
Related stories in the Archinect news:Relocation or Adaptation: Earth Home Project Brings Relief to Pakistanis Reeling from FloodsSave the only Neutra In PakistanArchitect of Osama bin Laden's hideout discovered the fate of his designs on Archinect! View full entry
As the stories of Hadid and Scott Brown show, the pairing of architecture prizes (or at least the big ones) and women raises hackles. Hadid won the Pritzker Prize amid talk that she did not deserve it; Scott Brown did not win the prize amid talk that she did not deserve it. No solo female architect has won the Pritzker Prize since Hadid, nor has a husband-and-wife architectural team ever been honored. Indeed, to date, of the 39 Pritzker Prize laureates, only two (or about 5 percent) are women. — Despina Stratigakos
Excerpted from her new book, Despina Stratigakos sheds some light on the Pritzker's lack of awarding women architects in their own right.More on Archinect:Despina Stratigakos on the emerging "third wave of feminism" in architectureWhy Zaha Hadid's gender and ethnicity mattered so muchWhy... View full entry
He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?” — telegraph.co.uk
Related stories in the Archinect news:Olafur Eliasson to storm VersaillesOlafur Eliasson wins a Crystal Award for "improving the state of the world"Olafur Eliasson opens ship-themed pedestrian bridge in Copenhagenand in a way: Frank Gehry gives the crowd a piece of his mind (and his middle finger) View full entry