When I talk about small spaces, I’m not talking about photogenic shelters constructed from found materials by Silicon Valley billionaires. I am not talking about cabin porn. I am talking about the universal human instinct to burrow, regardless of your personal dimensions. — NYT
Molly Young penned a Letter of Recommendation: for Tiny Spaces. She opens by noting that many of the homes she grew up in, shared a commonality - "smallness".On a related note, earlier this year Orhan Ayyüce pointed out The Tiny House Fantasy. View full entry
Privacy: just the word is probably enough to elicit a cringe. Boundaries transgressed, information accessed, space trespassed—whether digitally or spatially, our private selves are vulnerable in more ways than ever, while simultaneously, our ability to connect and communicate with everything... View full entry
For the moment, we remain largely wedded to superficial visual futures. The likelihood is that the prevailing chrome and chlorophyll vision of architects and urbanists will become as much an enticing, but outdated, fashion as the Raygun Gothic of The Jetsons or the cyberpunk of Blade Runner — Guardian
Darran Anderson peers into the near future, at the intersection of climate change, technology, megacities and "survivability". Bruce Sterling remarked "It's pretty good" and #ArchitectureFiction #BigCities #AfraidofSky #OldPeople View full entry
The general atmosphere at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Reporting from the Front, is one of excitement, of subversion. The Fifteenth edition of the Biennale explicitly calls for instances where architecture is an “instrument of self-government, of humanist civilization, and a... View full entry
adding butts can cut the energy needed to fire bricks by up to 58 per cent.
Fired-clay bricks incorporated with cigarette butts were also lighter with better insulation properties – meaning reduced household heating and cooling costs.
Importantly, bricks incorporated with 1 per cent cigarette butts maintained properties very similar to those of normal bricks.
— sciencedaily.com
Related on Archinect:New glow-in-the-dark cement could illuminate roads & structuresUCL researchers present a new kind of self-cleaning nano-engineered windowMIT researchers have created a new material that stores and releases solar energyHow "smart" tintable glass will reduce our needs for... View full entry
May 26, 2016Aravena’s Biennale for architecture to give a damn might imply a specific kind of project, but, after one day on the ground, it is clear that there is no one way for it to respond. For one thing, there is a truly incomprehensible quantity of material to cover. The volume alone speaks... View full entry
May 25, 2016:At La Biennale Architettura di Venezia, architecture packages itself for a global forum. It is a distinct occasion through which the world’s constructs and place-makings converge in a single microcosm. Against the backdrop of a sinking city, designers and works tapped to represent... View full entry
The pilot program is limited to about 25,000 employees of companies including Walmart and Adobe Systems... Waze will match riders with drivers already heading along similar routes during the morning and evening rush hours. [...]
Waze Carpool is charging riders just $0.54 a mile, which is also what the IRS recommends companies reimburse their employees per mile for business-related travel. “Waze Carpool focuses on covering costs, not generating an income,” the company explains.
— qz.com
Google purchased Waze, the Israeli GPS-based navigation system with real-time travel details submitted by users, in 2013 for $1.15B. With a fleet of already operating autonomous vehicles, Google stands to leverage its Waze transit data in big ways for an autonomous taxi service that could hit... View full entry
“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.” — The Guardian
In this piece design critic par excellence Alexandra Lange analyzes two similar Thomas Heatherwick designed-projects, London's Garden Bridge and New York's Pier 55, in the hopes of discovering why one seems to be resonating with the public while the other has inspired satiric contests to replace... View full entry
Donna, Ken and Fred all converged in the meatspace that was the AIA National Convention last week in Philadelphia—to explore the massive Expo floor, visit local architecture, vote on resolutions and watch those keynotes (!) by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Neri Oxman and Rem Koolhaas. Spoiler alert... View full entry
Former Princeton architecture dean Alejandro Zaera-Polo filed a lawsuit to the Superior Court of Mercer County earlier this week against Princeton University, claiming that the school is guilty of libel and breach of contract. Zaera-Polo was asked to resign from his position by President... View full entry
I’m not so critical about New York, because they have this very firm grid-pattern. Even the newer buildings are lined up on good streets. If you stand in front of the Empire State Building, you can’t really guess how tall it is, because it meets the street in a friendly way. [...] It’s not so important how high the building is, or how much it looks like a perfume bottle, it’s more important how it interacts with the city. — commonedge.org
Related stories in the Archinect news:Jan Gehl's perspective on making "a good urban habitat for homo sapiens"Is Jan Gehl winning his battle to make our cities liveable?How to design that elusive "Perfect Town" View full entry
Private property developers are outmanoeuvring councils in housing negotiations and routinely delivering fewer affordable homes than town halls want, an industry analysis has revealed.
Amid growing anger at the sale to foreign buyers of almost two-thirds of London’s tallest residential skyscraper, which includes no affordable housing, it has emerged that not one London borough which set targets met them in the last six years.
— the Guardian
For more on the increasingly dire state of housing in London, take a look at some past coverage:London's Bleak Housing£950 for a mouldy 'central' flat? Welcome to London.The root of London's housing crisis lies beyond its bordersLondon's housing crisis is creating a chasm... View full entry
Portland has embarked on a gentler approach – letting the homeless bunk down on city sidewalks or pitch tents on public rights of way during evening hours, with the understanding they pack up and move out by 7 a.m.
The city's "safe sleep policy" is aimed at breaking up the homeless encampments where crime and drug use can fester by allowing people to sleep in public places and sidewalks without fear of being harassed by authorities.
More on the homelessness crisis throughout the US:Increasing development translates to more homeless housingHomes of the homeless, seized: L.A. cracks down on free housing"It’s about recognizing someone as existing": Photo exhibit depicts L.A.'s homelessness crisisBay Area media ban together for... View full entry
The cherry atop 520 West 28th, Penthouse 37 contains five bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms, including a corner master suite with two windowed dressing rooms and his-and-hers baths nestled on its lower level, which also houses three guest en-suite bedrooms, a utility room, and a wet bar. — Forbes
Running at a little over $7,269 a square foot, Zaha Hadid's one and only High Line-adjacent luxury penthouse design features a sinuous metal exterior with floor to ceiling glass windows between 10th and 11th avenues in Chelsea. Ismael Levya Architects worked with Zaha Hadid Architects to create... View full entry
