The United States Department of State has selected a team from the University of Illinois at Chicago to curate the United States Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale. The team, led by architects Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner, will create an installation in the pavilion... View full entry
Aspiring architects beware: The rules dictating how you communicate your professional aspirations and expertise are more strict than you may think. With constant state-level enforcement of architectural licensure standards a fact of life for designers, it may be wise to review a few of the laws of... View full entry
An earthquake safety revolution is spreading along the streets and back alleys of Los Angeles, as steel frames and strong walls appear inside the first-story parking garages of thousands of apartment buildings.
The construction is designed to fix one of the most dangerous earthquake risks: Wood apartment buildings collapsing because the skinny poles propping up parking at the ground level are not strong enough to withstand the shaking.
— The Los Angeles Times
A building permit analysis conducted by The Los Angeles Times has found that over 27% of Los Angeles’s 11,400 "soft story" wood-frame apartments have been retrofitted since 2015 when the city passed an aggressive seismic upgrading ordinance. "Soft story" buildings are built with an... View full entry
I built a house around a house [using chain-link fence, corrugated metal, asphalt, and other common building materials]. It was the first completely free piece I did. I did it exactly the way I wanted. My client was me and my wife, and my wife egged me on. … I talked about the asphalt floor, and I was going to chicken out, and she said, “Come on, I want to see that.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
A recently published Los Angeles Review of Books interview conducted by Steven Jay Fogel and Mark Bruce Rosin with Frank Gehry in 1991 highlights a few fascinating tidbits of the architect's early life and his career pre-Bilbao. In the wide-ranging interview, Gehry discusses, among other... View full entry
In a HyperAllergic opinion piece, Sarah Rose Sharp details the shortcomings of the recently completed Mui Ho Fine Arts Library at Cornell University, where "Architect Wolfgang Tschapeller says the library was designed with books in mind — but the grated floors fail to account... View full entry
Architects from around the world are continue to sign onto the Architects Declare Climate & Biodiversity Emergency call. The most recent national delegation to join the call comes from Germany, where at least 38 firms—including GRAFT, Kéré Architecture, Max Dudler, and... View full entry
The Design Museum of Chicago, Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), and NeoCon have unveiled a new Design Impact Grant Program targeted at "elevating the visibility of Chicago's design legacy, assets, talent, and community, and at supporting civic good through... View full entry
According to a recently published report from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) is showing signs of a rebound after showing consistently mixed results over recent months. September's Architecture Billings Index: Better than August, but that's... View full entry
Authorities in southern California have said two residents were convicted of more than 200 felony counts each after falsifying documents and conducting fraudulent construction projects on hundreds of homes.
...47-year-old Wilfrido Rodriguez of Downey and 45-year-old Ruben Gutierrez of Huntington Beach were convicted Wednesday after a civil engineering firm called into question the structural integrity of hundreds of homes.
— The San Diego Union-Tribune
According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, "Authorities say Palos Verdes Engineering Company contacted police suspecting two former employees were responsible for projects across 56 cities in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties." Driver's license photos of Ruben... View full entry
Homes For All United States Representative Ilhan Omar has unveiled a new piece of legislation that seeks to reinvigorate public housing construction across the country by building 12 million new public and affordable housing units over the next decade. The so-called “Homes for All Act”... View full entry
The demand for that material is so intense that around the world, riverbeds and beaches are being stripped bare, and farmlands and forests torn up to get at the precious grains. And in a growing number of countries, criminal gangs have moved in to the trade, spawning an often lethal black market in sand. — BBC
Writing for BBC Future, Vince Beiser explains how sand — a very specific kind of sand — has become the second most consumed natural resource on the planet, fueling global environmental destruction, criminal enterprises, and even "sand wars." "The demand for that material is so intense... View full entry
Beijing's latest, hotly anticipated skyscraper opened to the public today: the Zaha Hadid Architects-designed Leeza SOHO tower already made a big splash in architectural media long before it was even finished with its 623-foot-tall, full-height atrium (the world's tallest) and spectacular... View full entry
At a total investment of 24 billion yuan (S$4.65 billion), the 1.12 million square metre (sq m) Raffles City Chongqing is Singapore’s largest single development in China. In addition to the 235,000 sq m retail podium, the integrated development comprises the 201 unit Ascott Raffles City Chongqing serviced residence, 380 room InterContinental Raffles City Chongqing hotel, 150,000 sq m of Grade A office space and 1,400 luxury residential apartments. — The Business Times
After reaching structural completion only a few months ago, the Safdie Architects-designed $3.4 billion Raffles City Chongqing megadevelopment recently celebrated its phased opening. An earlier September soft opening of the enormous five-story shopping mall reportedly attracted a whopping... View full entry
The Architects Foundation, a philanthropic partner of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), has announced that it is now accepting applications for five scholarship programs targeted toward students pursuing architectural degrees. The five scholarships aim to bring a variety of funding... View full entry
French architect Dominique Perrault has been selected to curate the 2021 run of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Perrault, founder of Dominique Perrault Architecture, succeeds architect Lim Jaeyong and urban planner Francisco Sanin, the curators of the 2019 edition... View full entry
