Across the United States, construction workers were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not to diminish the hardships and sacrifices of other essential workers and industries affected by the pandemic, Susannah Jacob of the Atlantic highlights the ongoing dangers and overshadowed accounts of... View full entry
It’s easy to imagine CLT becoming the next luxury building trend to invade the skylines of rapidly gentrifying cities, giving an eco-friendly excuse for remaking the city in service of maximized profit. [...]
In order for mass timber to truly engage with the regenerative power of forests to help alleviate our current climate predicament, it must be linked to a greater movement towards ecological reformation at all scales.
— Failed Architecture
In his latest piece for Failed Architecture, writer and architect Alexander Hadley takes a critical look at the future economical and environmental impact of the accelerating cross-laminated timber boom. "Building from regenerative materials like trees instead of intensively extracted substances... View full entry
The tough competition faced by architecture practices in the UK has led to the hiring of workers at pay rates that make commercial sense, and there’s not much the RIBA can do to change that. Part 1 and 2 ‘assistant architects’ have turned to mass protest against the working conditions... View full entry
After breaking ground in late 2018 and topping out nearly one year later, the OMA/Shohei Shigematsu-designed Audrey Irmas Pavilion at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles is increasingly taking shape. The $75 million expansion — OMA's first building in the city — will house a... View full entry
This week's featured virtual event happenings, from Archinect's Virtual Event Guide, are highlighted by Exhibit Columbus' Design Presentations kicking off this Friday. Other events to tune into address topics such as decolonization, surveillance, automation, public and domestic... View full entry
Cranbrook Academy of Art intends to pause admission to the Architecture program for Fall of 2021 as the institution embarks on “an ambitious plan to reimagine the Architecture department at the Academy”. In a letter to alumni (copied at the bottom of this article), Cranbrook Educational... View full entry
The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has dedicated its efforts towards architectural education and research by "empowering faculty and schools to educate increasingly diverse students, expand disciplinary impacts, and create knowledge for the advancement of... View full entry
French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal of Lacaton & Vassal have been awarded the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize, widely considered one of the industry's highest honors. Transformation of G, H, I Buildings, Grand Parc, 530 Units, Social Housing (with Frédéric Druot and... View full entry
After three years of quiet, a proposal to redevelop the former headquarters of the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) with a trio of high-rise buildings has taken a key step forward: the release of the project's draft environmental impact report. — Urbanize Los Angeles
The project previously on Archinect: Kengo Kuma to design boutique hotel for downtown L.A.'s 1111 Sunset Boulevard development. Rendering: Kilograph, courtesy of SOM/Palisades. View full entry
What’s below is a conversation with members of the Black Reconstruction Collective, which came together during the past year and a half, in tandem with an exhibition now at the Museum of Modern Art called “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.” The collective’s members are the 10 architects, artists and designers in the exhibition. — The New York Times
NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman has published a condensed version of his conversation with Amanda Williams, Emanuel Admassu, J. Yolande Daniels, and V. Mitch McEwen — four of the ten architects, designers, and artists of the Black Reconstruction Collective whose work is... View full entry
Two years after The Grand, the Gehry-designed $1-billion mixed-use development, broke ground in Downtown Los Angeles, construction reached a major milestone this week with the enormous structure officially topping out. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Grand (@thegrandla) A... View full entry
In an attempt to pick up border wall construction where former President Donald Trump left off, a state lawmaker in Texas has introduced legislation that would see the construction of a border wall along the Texas-Mexico border.
HB 2862 would create a special "border security enhancement fund" to pay for the projects [...]
— Construction Dive
The legislation, introduced by Republican Texas House Rep. Bryan Slaton, also proposes to name the fortification system the "President Donald J. Trump Wall." Construction Dive points out that it was "only a matter of hours after Biden was sworn in that he rescinded Trump's national emergency... View full entry
After completing two dozen 3D-printed structures across central Texas, printing a small community for impoverished residents in Mexico, and teaming up up with BIG and SEArch+ to create an off-world building system for the Moon, construction technology company ICON is now breaking into the... View full entry
More than a dozen designs for accessory dwelling units, known as ADUs, will be offered through the city’s ADU Standard Plan Program [...]. The small-scale, stand-alone residences are generally tucked into properties zoned for single-family homes. The idea, says the city’s chief design officer (and former Times architecture critic), Christopher Hawthorne, is to take a weeks-long permitting process and “turn it into an approval that is over-the counter.” — Los Angeles Times
Notoriously plagued by a shortage of housing stock, Los Angeles has launched a new initiative that aims to drastically shorten the approval process — and promote good design — with preapproved accessory dwelling unit (ADU) plans. The ADU Standard Plan Program will start out with... View full entry
One thing we're looking at is this synchronization of thermal mass and buoyancy ventilation so buildings can work like termite mounds. We've developed these scaling rules where you choose your material and you define your free-running ventilation rate so you can design for that heat wave. — Pioneer Works
Architectural historian C. Kaye Rawlings and science journalist Dan Samorodnitsky chatted with Salmaan Craig about specific ways architecture can adapt to the realities of catastrophic climate change. For more watch him speak on; Biogenic Buildings at the Institute of Technology in Architecture... View full entry