The city of Los Angeles is considering a proposal from Councilman Bernard Parks that would pass the cost of retrofitting apartment buildings on to tenants. Currently, only 50% of major renovation costs may be passed along to tenants, with landlords and building owners paying the cost of retrofitting. — scpr.org
Your assignment is to come up with an idea so revolutionary that it could be considered an important advance in industrial design.
Students at Rice University in Houston accomplished that with plans for a floating city that is being considered by one of the world's largest oil companies. Last year, the students won the inaugural Odebrecht Award for a radical design of man-made floating islands where as many as 25,000 oil workers and their families could live.
— npr.org
Previously featured in our Student Works and Screen/Print series, "The Petropolis of Tomorrow" proposes a new style of floating company towns to aid Brazil in offshore oil findings. NPR now reports that the project has surpassed its academic role to be considered by Petrobas, a Brazilian... View full entry
In many of our bigger cities, the drinking fountain disappeared along with police boxes, mile stones and horse troughs. However, a new initiative is attempting to revive this public utility, with the help of some of London’s best design talent.
Six of the city’s leading architectural firms have designed a series of new drinking fountains, as part of the Kiosk Challenge.
— phaidon.com
The long and varied history of waste and its removal in New York from the 18th century onwards is the subject of Elizabeth Royte’s 2005 book Garbage Land and of the Urban Omnibus City of Systems video she narrates. In the video, Royte describes how her research into where exactly her trash was going after she threw it out has led her to become a more ecological citizen, with “a systems view” of our interconnected processes of manufacturing, transportation, disposal and re-use. — Urban Omnibus
Amelia interviewed Jason Pomeroy an architect, academic and urban planner based in Singapore, about his new travel show City Time Traveller.His travels through Asia have convinced him "What transcends culture though is an indigenous civilisation’s understanding of basic environmental... View full entry
With strange weather patterns becoming the norm, who knows when or where the next natural disaster will strike and affect local neighborhoods. And architects are trying to work with nature to find effective and economic solutions in disaster rebuilding. Some of those architects include Ida D.K... View full entry
Gowanus has become the most obvious touchstone for fears surrounding the rapid evolution that has overwhelmed so much of Brooklyn in recent years. It is also a test case for how democratically an area once colonized by industry might evolve into something like a modern Jane Jacobs vision. Dumbo is both a point of reference here and in one view, the representation of a nightmare outcome, given the area’s distinction as a nexus of multimillion-dollar lofts and budding tech empires. — nytimes.com
Previously on Archinect:Gowanus by Design: WATER_WORKS Competition WinnersGowanus Lowline Competition WinnersStudent Works: Wal-(medley mixed-up mélange montage mash-up shopping) mart View full entry
Rio de Janeiro is set to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and there are two starkly different visions of what that will mean for the "marvelous city," as it is known[...]
"Instead of creating a space of conviviality, a space of shared culture, of community, of conversation, you are going to have this very isolated element where after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, it's going to be dead. You are creating banks, parking lots, Trump towers," Gaffney said. "It's been rezoned for 50-story buildings."
— npr.org
Previously on Archinect:Once Unsafe, Rio's Shantytowns See Rapid GentrificationOlympic Displacement: Atlanta 1996 to Rio 2016Before Olympics It's Demolition Derby View full entry
Over the next few years, two professional sports teams are in a position to radically reshape much of the fringe of Atlanta's downtown core. [...]
Neither stadium deal has been the public relations coup that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed surely hoped for. [...]
There's an inherent messiness to these dual, competing narratives – one of downtown reinvestment, the other a triumph of the suburbs.
— theatlanticcities.com
The idea of wrapping a house in giant graphic stickers, like the ones used for ads on city buses, appealed to Eric Chu the moment his architect suggested it. [...]
Applying colorful, blown-up photos to the exterior glass walls — allowing daytime views out, but not in — was the unconventional solution proposed by Mr. Chu’s architect, Whitney Sander, who runs Sander Architects with his wife, Catherine Holliss.
— nytimes.com
Last night, nearly 500 New Yorkers gathered at the New York Public Library’s main branch for a forum on the wave of skyscrapers that are rising along the Southern edge of Central Park. Skyscrapers that will, depending on whom you ask, either transform Central Park into a gloomy airshaft or create shadows as fleeting and insubstantial as a cloud moving across the sun. Concerns were raised, grievances aired and oligarchs denigrated. — observer.com
With Jack Evans and Vince Gray headed to New York and Muriel Bowser and Andy Shallal otherwise occupied, the small candidate crowd at last night's architecture debate must have left the hosts feeling as lonely as sad architect archetype Ted Mosby. The lack of candidates at the District Architecture Center brought about a similar lack of political tension, but that didn't keep the candidates who did show up from having ideas about buildings. — washingtoncitypaper.com
Los Angeles may be known for its celebrities, glitz and glam, but the city's mayor, Eric Garcetti, is focused on something decidedly less flashy: infrastructure. [...]
"We destroyed our public transit system from the '30s and '40s and '50s, and so we're in the process of rebuilding it," Garcetti says. "A bigger program than anywhere in the U.S., but a long way to go."
— npr.org
See also:LA Mayor talks urbanism and mass transit with architecture critic Christopher HawthorneL.A.'s "People St." initiative puts public place-making into the public's hands View full entry
What have we learned so far about how cities function — and how they don’t? What is the role of that most symbolic of city features, the skyscraper? And is it possible to “break” a city? Five experts offered their perspectives on the use of data to solve urban problems, the ways in which the skyscraper is venerated and misused, and their best guesses on what the cities of the future might look like. — nytimes.com
For his NYT Science Times Podcast, Jeffery DelViscio sits down with SOM structural engineer William F. Baker; architect and IIT architecture dean Wiel Arets; University of Chicago associate professor Virginia Parks; Columbia University professor Saskia Sassen; and Council on Tall Buildings and... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the January ABI score was 50.4, up from a mark of 48.5 in December. This score reflects an increase in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 58.5, down a bit from the reading of 59.2 the previous month. — calculatedriskblog.com