The government of France is set to require that all new public buildings must be made at least 50% from wood or other sustainable materials from 2022 as it pushes for sustainable urban development.
The local government in Paris had already pledged a greater use of natural materials such as wood, straw and hemp, and any buildings higher than eight storeys built for the 2024 Paris Olympics must be made entirely of timber.
— Global Construction Review
As part of President Emmanuel Macron's climate action plan, a new measure announced by the country's Minister for Towns and Housing Julien Denormandie requires all new public buildings financed by the French State to contain at least 50% wood or other organic material, such as straw or hemp, by... View full entry
Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, Dean of the School of Architecture at Woodbury University, will present on the topic of affordable housing at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. This comes as part of the UN's 58th Session of the Commission for Social Development. According to Woodbury... View full entry
New York City F.C.’s circuitous search for a permanent home [...] has come full circle.
The team’s owners, in conjunction with a group of local developers, are nearing an agreement with New York City that would allow the team to construct a privately financed, 25,000-seat stadium in the South Bronx as part of a development project costing more than $1 billion.
— The New York Times
According to the NYT, the New York City Football Club may be close to sealing a deal with a group of developers to build a 25,000-seat soccer stadium complex in the South Bronx near Yankee Stadium. The project, which would also include retail, a hotel, a school, and much-needed affordable housing... View full entry
An ironworker was killed...while performing work on the $1.5 billion Amazon Air hub project at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) in Hebron, Kentucky, an incident confirmed via an emailed statement to Construction Dive from the general contractor, Whiting-Turner Kokosing JV. The Boone County, Kentucky, coroner has identified the worker as 46-year-old Loren Shoemake and said he died from blunt force trauma. — Construction Dive
According to Construction Dive, a full investigation is underway led by OSHA. In a statement, Amazon said, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, along with the contractors and construction teams during this difficult time," reports Construction Dive. View full entry
Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, has filed papers to run for mayor of New York City in the upcoming 2021 election. Donovan is vying to succeed current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who... View full entry
The Architecture Lobby (TAL) has published a letter arguing against a proposed executive order from President Donald Trump that would mandate classical architectural stylings for America's federal buildings. The group became the latest major architecture and built environment-related... View full entry
The University of Oregon is currently seeking applicants for its latest cohort of Visiting Faculty Fellowships in Design for Spatial Justice. The initiative, according to a listing currently featured on the Archinect Jobs board, “will award up to six faculty fellowships in... View full entry
The U.S. government implemented final management plans Thursday for two national monuments in Utah that President Trump downsized. The plans ensure lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits by conservation, tribal and paleontology groups challenging the constitutionality of the president’s action — Los Angeles Times
About two years ago, President Trump cut the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by almost 50 percent and the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent. The President said the scaled back size was to reverse misuse of the Antiquities Act by previous Democratic presidents that... View full entry
Following a great deal of uproar in the architectural community in response to President Trump's proposed "Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” executive order, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has written a letter to the president officially opposing the initiative. ... View full entry
Paul Revere Williams was one of the nation's most eminent architects beginning in the early 1920s and spanning his 5-decade-long career. He designed homes for celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz earning him the... View full entry
David and Marina, the dynamic duo behind the Midnight Charette podcast, have hosted some big hitters in the architecture industry recently. We've particularly enjoyed their recent episodes featuring interviews with architects. Their informal style breaks the typically serious, academic format this... View full entry
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), and the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), Docomomo US, and the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) have joined the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in voicing deep... View full entry
In a seven-page draft executive order obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, Trump declares that the federal government since the 1950s has “largely stopped building beautiful buildings that the American people want to look at or work in.”
Future federal government buildings, he decrees, should look like those of ancient Rome, Greece and Europe.
“Classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style,” he states.
— The Chicago Sun Times
The Chicago Sun-Times has published the draft text of President Donald Trump’s proposed “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” executive order that seeks to impose a classically-inspired architectural style on the nation’s federal buildings. The American Institute of... View full entry
Beverly Pepper, the multi-talented artist who dabbled in monumental sculpture, land art, painting, and site design, has passed away at age 97. Over a career that stretches back over six decades, Pepper helped create a vast collection of large scale works that engaged materiality, form... View full entry
Politicians, planners and policy-makers have frequently debated the benefits of allowing architecture to decay – neither demolishing nor preserving it, but letting entropy take hold. What makes this approach to ruins equally empowering and horrifying? — Failed Architecture
Writer and artist Owen Vince penned an excellent Failed Architecture essay on the intricate interplay between managed decline and indifferent decay, architectural reverence and conscious abandonment, preservation, erasure, and deliberate ruination. "To allow a structure to degrade — refusing... View full entry
