The congested, chaotic section of Manhattan near Pennsylvania Station is undeniably drab. Does that make it blighted?
New York State has decreed that it is, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has recently likened the Penn Station area to “a Skid Row neighborhood.” She was defending the controversial plan to allow developers to build 10 towers around the decrepit train station — the busiest transit hub in the nation — in exchange for some of the $7 billion the state needs to renovate it.
— The New York Times
The same tactic was used in the urban cores of major American cities such as Los Angeles to break apart mostly residential areas and redevelop them into high-rise-laden commercial districts, a practice which may now be boomeranging in the post-pandemic economy. New York is claiming “economic... View full entry
2022 saw so many new construction projects finally reach completion as the further easing of pandemic restrictions around the globe continued to unclog backlogs and delays. From the myriad of projects published on Archinect this year, we have picked some of the stand-out newly-opened... View full entry
As the architecture industry reviews another year filled with a range of ups and downs, it's an important time to reflect on what progress has been made when it comes to important topics such as social justice, activism, equity, and diversity initiatives within architecture. While we've already... View full entry
In 2022, hardly a week passed on Archinect without the hottest construction material of the year making the news: Mass timber was everywhere — in novel conceptual proposals, competition-winning entries, experimental school projects, and, increasingly so, in completed, real-life, and often... View full entry
In an effort to combat the crisis of homelessness nationwide, the Biden-Harris Administration has announced its new All In: The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and Homelessness aimed at the "bold but achievable goal" of reducing the country’s unhoused population by 25% by the year 2025. The... View full entry
And just like that, 2022 is coming to an end. As quickly as it went by, this year was equally prolonged by many of the same issues that have plagued the world over the last couple of years. In addition to the ongoing pandemic, which society is still adjusting to, we have been witness to Russia’s... View full entry
Construction workers died at a rate of 9.4 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2021, the BLS reported, down from 10.1 in 2020. That rate has hovered in that threshold for at least a decade. The new per capita figures are the lowest since 2011, but still don’t break the trend.
Worker death rate across all industries was 3.6 per 100,000, the highest since 2016.
— Construction Dive
Among the demographics, immigrant Hispanic & Latino workers were almost twice as likely to die than their U.S.-born counterparts, highlighting an underreported problem nationwide. Slips, trips, and falls were among the most commonly-recorded causes of death, followed by transportation... View full entry
The year’s end brings the chance to survey architecture’s progression and social impact through salient entryways that include labor, activism, and the development of topical building trends. Another way of recapping things is by looking at the varied rows, discord, stories of ill-treatment... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects has released their latest quarterly report into residential design. The AIA Home Design Trends Survey (Q4) revealed a contraction in the demand for residential design inquiries and design contracts, despite billings for residential projects continuing to... View full entry
There is another cause of overcrowding and homelessness. It is mansionization, the demolition of older, smaller, less expensive houses by real estate speculators who quickly replace them with spec McMansions: boxy, shoddily built houses that max out the permitted building envelope. — City Watch LA
The disincentive to build multifamily and affordable housing is made worse by the popularity of these easily repeatable home designs, which also cost more to construct while taking up more space and using more water and electricity. Certain communities around L.A. County have developed effective... View full entry
The historic hotel, with its haunted reputation and 600 rooms, reopened in December 2021 as a privately funded permanent supportive housing project. With most of the rooms reserved specifically for those in the bottom 30% of the area’s median income, it’s open to any [...] with a government-funded voucher. Many viewed the project as a promising new model in L.A. because of its size and flexibility.
And yet, a year later, two-thirds of the Cecil remains unoccupied.
— Los Angeles Times
The rare privately-funded $80 million conversion project for the influential Skid Row Housing Trust is one of many case studies on the issue of vacant single-room occupancy (SROs) in Los Angeles. The city housing authority’s Section 8 director thinks an absence of in-unit bathrooms and... View full entry
The NEOM megadevelopment in Saudi Arabia is moving forward with an attention-grabbing feature after the American engineering firm Bechtel announced its retention as project managers for a new manmade ski resort project called Trojena. According to NEOM’s website, the resort will be spread... View full entry
Several chapters of the AIA in California, including AIA California and AIA Los Angeles, have published an open letter to the California Architects Board (CAB) in opposition to proposed changes in how licensed architects in the state must advertise their license number. California Code of... View full entry
Saad Rajan penned an editorial about The Revival of Human-Centered Architecture. In it he praises the works of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) "hidden gems…from unexpected places" which have "had a transformational impact on how we reward, understand, analyze, appreciate, and... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has released a new study examining the impact of student debt across different demographic groups in the architecture industry. The organization used the research company Ipsos to conduct an interview survey of over 700 members who provided insights on... View full entry