The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) registered positive growth for American architecture firms during the month of November 2019. According to a newly published report from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the ABI scored at 51.9 last month, signaling the second month of modest... View full entry
A long-in-the-works plan to link Houston and Dallas with high-speed rail is making steady progress as backers for the project announce that they could be one year away from breaking ground. Earlier this year, Archinect reported that Texas CentralTexas Central, the group advocating for and... View full entry
L. Jane Frederick, principal at Frederick + Frederick Architects in Beaufort, South Carolina, has been inaugurated as the American Institute of Architects (AIA) president for the year 2020. Aside from running an award-winning practice and being a Fellow of the AIA, Frederick has played various... View full entry
A year after breaking ground at 5790 W. Jefferson Boulevard, the arrival of a tower crane signals that construction is ramping up at the Eric Owen Moss-designed Wrapper development.
The project, located just west of Metro's La Cienega/Jefferson Station, is being developed by Samitaur Constructs - the local real estate investment firm behind a slew of abstract office complexes in Culver City's Hayden Tract.
— Urbanize LA
The exoskeleton wrapping the 17-story tower like giant rubber bands enables the interior spaces to be column-free, some even with double-height ceilings, reports Urbanize LA. Image: Eric Owen Moss/Zimmerman Visual, via wrappertower.com Image: Eric Owen Moss/Zimmerman Visual, via wrappertower.com... View full entry
Greenhouse gases are still rising globally. Some advocacy groups are demanding that these emissions be eliminated entirely within a decade, requiring a scale of industrial and political mobilization matching or exceeding that of World War II. — The New York Times
In order to clean up the electricity grid by 2030, the scale of construction programs required would be a "national project on an immense scale," The New York Times reports. American workers would need to build about 120,000 new wind turbines and around 44,000 large solar power plants to accompany... View full entry
There’s no question Austin is a boomtown.
A record-breaking 8.1 million square feet of office buildings is under construction in the capital city, according to CoStar Group Inc., as developers and investors try to capitalize on rising prices and continued demand for space. Austin ranks No. 2 in the country for office construction, behind Nashville — although the Texas capital has the momentum to overtake the Tennessee capital in the coming months.
— Austin Business Journal
The list of new Downtown Austin towers — under construction or proposed — contains the Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects-designed Block 185 for Google, the 36-story Indeed Tower, the Quincy by Ziegler Cooper Architects, the 66-story 6 x Guadelupe as well as a new University of Texas... View full entry
A jury has awarded the Washington State Department of Transportation $57.2 million in damages, after a two-month trial over delays in the downtown Seattle Highway 99 tunnel project.
The verdict, reached Friday against the tunnel contractors in Thurston County Superior Court in Olympia, represents the entire amount the state requested at trial.
— Seattle Times
Remember Bertha, once the world's largest tunnel-boring machine which, very inconveniently, broke down in 2013 after hitting a pipe while digging the Seattle Tunnel, delaying the megaproject for more than two years? A jury just sided with the Washington State Department of Transportation that the... View full entry
Fragile and flammable, Eucalypti have been implicated in worsening wildfires across the world. But there's little consensus over their culpability, value, or future in California's landscape. Defenders and opponents each say that science and history are on their side. — The Guardian
A long-simmering battle over the current and future status of California's Eucalyptus trees is close to bubbling over again, as the increasingly present risk of catastrophic fire events pits Eucalyptus lovers against native plant enthusiasts who would like to see the tinder-producing groves... View full entry
The McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania has published a digital atlas that attempts to communicate the wide-ranging implications of both climate change and a potential Green New Deal for the United States. A color-coded breakdown of land uses across the country that includes... View full entry
New Story, a non-profit pioneering solutions to end global homelessness, in partnership with Mexico-based ÉCHALE, have announced "the world's first 3D-printed community" in Mexico. The first set of homes have been revealed. Each coming in at 500 square feet, the innovative structures were printed... View full entry
Greg Mills, co-owner of Southwest Engineering Concepts is suing the Arizona State Board of Technical Registration after he was fined for calling himself an engineer and working without an engineering license, reports IEEE Spectrum. Mills has three decades of experience as an engineer in the... View full entry
University of Pennsylvania Professor David Leatherbarrow has been awarded the 2020 Topaz Medallion by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). The award is presented by the two organization every year to superlative educators... View full entry
Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio said the newly elected government: [...] "We are left now with our country in tatters, and no hope, no future and no sense that our government will ever be anything other than a horrendous concoction of idiotic, self-interested, self-serving and morally bankrupt half-wits. We deserved better: we had our chance, and we’ve blown it. Now for two decades or more of discontent." — Architect's Journal
Architects in the United Kingdom are not taking kindly to the electoral rout taken by the nation's liberal political parties in this week's election. The conservative electoral victory guarantees that Brexit will finally come to pass; UK Architects have strongly opposed the measure... View full entry
NOMAArchitect and equity and inclusion advocate Gabrielle Bullock has been named as the recipient of the 2020 Whitney M. Young, Jr. Award by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The award, which has been given out since 1972, according to the AIA website, “distinguishes an architect... View full entry
The height of the new jail towers was later slashed from 45 storeys to a maximum of 29, but the damage had been done. The images of these brutish concrete silos symbolised a rack’em and stack’em approach, attracting criticism from both prison reform advocates and the communities in which these fortified slabs were to be planted. — The Guardian
Writing in The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright examines competing visions for the future of New York City’s prisons. Earlier this year, AECOM was selected to envision a dispersed carceral archipelago for the city that would take the place of the sordid Rikers Island prison. The plan has... View full entry
