If we imagine one's escape to a refugee camp as fragmentary, provisional and incomplete, the camp must be transformed not only in design but also in its role as a catalyst for promoting the humanity of those living within its barbed-wired walls. [...]

Architecture has become the litmus test of society's capacity for holistic and compassionate security. — cnn.com

Philosopher Jason Millar claims to have originated the idea of the ethically challenged self-driving car in a 2014 paper on robotics...

In the “The Tunnel Problem,” Millar’s driverless car (let’s call her Porsche again) is fast approaching a narrow tunnel, the entrance of which is blocked by a child who has fallen in the roadway. The car can either kill the kid or hit the wall of the tunnel, killing the driver (who is really just a passenger). — Daniel Albert | N+1

But an old friend, and a special commission, have gotten the architect to change his stripes. Mr. Meier has designed a black building.

At East 39th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, developer Sheldon Solow will be unveiling a 42-story, 556-unit residential building. It will be Mr. Meier’s tallest in the city and his first since his trio of apartment towers on West Street were completed in 2004. — The Wall Street Journal

The grade-separated pedestrian systems built in the 20th century have a variety of names: skyways, skywalks, pedways, footbridges, the +15, and the Ville Souteraine. But they have one thing in common — they have radically altered the form and spatial logic of cities around the world. — Places Journal

“Trump ... believes in using expensive materials that convey prestige and wealth, and people buy into that,” said Jerold Kayden, professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University. He said in some ways the legacy of Trump buildings is a matter of taste. “To some they are the height of ambition and the height of prestige and to others they are gaudy, but he has certainly pioneered with some others architecture as brand.” — marketplace.org

If the founders of a new face recognition app get their way, anonymity in public could soon be a thing of the past. FindFace, launched two months ago and currently taking Russia by storm, allows users to photograph people in a crowd and work out their identities, with 70% reliability.

It works by comparing photographs to profile pictures on Vkontakte, a social network popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union, with more than 200 million accounts. — the Guardian

After beginning the year with a decline, the Architecture Billings Index has posted three consecutive months of increasing demand for design activity at architecture firms. [...] (AIA) reported the April ABI score was 50.6, down from the mark of 51.9 in the previous month. This score still reflects an increase in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 56.9, down from a reading of 58.1 the previous month. — aia.org

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) invited six contemporary architecture practices to create speculative responses to the UK’s housing crisis for the exhibition, At Home in Britain: Designing the House of Tomorrow.

Drawing on materials from the RIBA archives, the studios from the UK, France and the Netherlands produced designs that re-examine the familiar housing typologies of the cottage, terrace and flat. — thespaces.com

OK, so this would mean the way to make San Francisco as affordable as (say) Portland would be to either cut everybody’s salary in half, or fire half of them, or allow the city’s population to rapidly grow about 50 percent, to about 1.2 million, while the number of housing units increased even faster. — Michael Andersen, on Medium

The City of Copenhagen will pull its investments out of coal, oil and gas companies. The city council have agreed to divest the fossil fuel holdings of the city’s €920 million investment fund

[...]

"Copenhagen decided to ban investments in companies that gain more than 5 percent of their revenue from coal, oil and gas. The criteria apply to companies that engage in prospecting, extracting or refining coal, oil and gas..." — Cities Today

Not long ago, the Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order catalog was the ultimate marketplace, much like Amazon is today. You could even buy a house straight from the catalog. Just pick out the home you like, and voila, Sears would deliver it just for you. [...]

From 1908 to 1940, Sears sold between 70,000 to 75,000 homes, so there are plenty out there, you just need to know where to look. — popularmechanics.com

What’s the root cause of Los Angeles’ affordable housing crisis? Many blame the new luxury housing developments springing up... driving up interest in the neighborhood and attracting hipsters. Landlords take notice and soon rents start climbing. That’s the story anyway.

But here’s the thing: If booming development in hot markets like Hollywood and downtown is why rents keep going up... why have the same price increases hit locales with extremely limited development? — LA Times

[Mayor Sadiq Khan] has already begun scrutinising Boris Johnson’s decisions relating to the controversial project, to which £60m of public money has been allocated in circumstances previously criticised by parliamentary spending officials as unorthodox. [...]

The proposed bridge has secured vast sums of public money despite being initially promoted as entirely private-funded. It has recently been bedevilled by accusations that its designer was selected before the actual tender process began. — theguardian.com