With a certain bulb-shaped observation tower in the news again, perhaps now is a good time to revisit another seminal observation tower project: The Welton Becket and Associates-designed Reunion Tower in Dallas, Texas. Crafted as a three-story, lightbulb-studded geodesic dome hoisted atop a... View full entry
Venice is full of water, Venice floods, the climate is visibly changing, and sea levels are rising, so you would expect Venice, of all places, to have an official strategy for what to do about it—but you would be wrong. The management plans produced by the City of Venice for Unesco in 2013 and 2018 barely mention the subject and twice, in 2016 and 2019, Unesco’s World Heritage Committee has failed to call them out on this astonishing failing. — The Art Newspaper
"We are used to thinking that, given enough will and money, there is a solution to everything, but this report says that we must get used to the idea that in many cases there will be no solution," writes a frustrated Anna Somers Cocks for The Art Newspaper and explains how a new report by the... View full entry
Parker Center, the controversial building that housed the Los Angeles Police Department for over 50 years, is officially no more.
Yesterday, the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Engineering announced that above-ground demolition of the eight-story building is now complete. The process, which began in August 2018, is expected to proceed through the end of 2019.
— Urbanize Los Angeles
"The site will be home to a new building, the Los Angeles Street Civic Building, which will house hundreds of City employees that are currently in more remote locations and in rental space," wrote the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering in a statement published yesterday. Urbanize LA reports... View full entry
How will we live together? That’s the question on the minds of Paolo Baratta, president of La Biennale di Venezia, and Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, as they unveil a guiding vision for the 2020 Venice Biennale. Baratta and Sarkis announced the... View full entry
People often ask me if that’s the reason women don’t go into architecture or leave architecture, but I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s one single reason. I think for decades it has been a combination of lots of little reasons - being the only woman in the room, not being respected on construction sites, and add into that working hours, balanced with wanting to be a parent, all those things together have discouraged women. But I do see it changing. — Forbes
In 2019, the rise of female leadership and representation in architectural academia has become more apparent then ever. In practice and academia, women have risen to position themselves amongst a male-dominated profession. Yale has Deborah Berke, Cornell has Meejin Yoon, Columbia has Amale... View full entry
The city recently enacted stricter zoning regulations to curb excessive mechanical spaces in residential buildings, the first in a series of steps geared toward eliminating zoning ambiguities exploited by developers.
[...]
Now, elected officials and preservationists are pushing the city to enact stern oversight on additional types of voids and other perceived zoning loopholes.
— Curbed NY
"Many neighborhood advocates felt the void amendment did not go far enough, and called for the change to recognize unenclosed voids—such as Rafael Viñoly Architects’ disputed 'condo on stilts' on the Upper East Side—as mechanical," writes Caroline Spivack for Curbed NY. "They charge... View full entry
The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced a call for proposals to solicit feedback and concepts for the next version of LEED certification standards. According to the announcement, the organization is looking to expand and improve upon its recently... View full entry
Some have speculated it could be the solution to the country’s affordable housing crisis by providing a quick infusion of lower-priced homes in areas starved for housing inventory. Some affordable housing experts, however, caution that the technology is not a panacea. — Politico Magazine
We've all seen videos of a giant robotic arm assembling layers of material which would later turn into a completed home 12-24 hours later. Some companies are imagining how this type of technology could impact homelessness and affordable housing. Although 3D-printed homes are a favorable... View full entry
Earnings for US construction workers now outstrip the private sector average as contractors face what’s being called one of the tightest labour markets they’ve ever experienced.
The situation has led a contractors’ group there to slam an education system that produces “too many over-qualified baristas and not enough bricklayers” as employers are forced to increase pay to attract skilled workers from a diminishing pool.
— Global Construction Review
Global Construction Review reports on the recent response by the Associated General Contractors of America to June's construction jobs numbers, which signaled a continued struggle for the industry to attract enough skilled workers — despite higher-than-average hourly earnings of now $... View full entry
Her newly resurrected 114-year-old Purse Building features a floor-to ceiling mural of the late Jacobs, an urbanist activist and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, superimposed on a downtown street grid. Above Jacobs’ striking bespectacled image, her mantra “New ideas need old buildings” blazes in neon lights. — Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News profiles Tanya Ragan, a Dallas-based real estate developer who is taking on commercial real estate's "boys club" mentality with a Jane Jacobs-inspired approach. Ragan's Wildcat Management is behind a series of new and forthcoming projects, including the... View full entry
In the 2018 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 396,448 people were booked into an ICE detention facility, up 22.5% from a year earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Between October and January, apprehensions along the southwest border rose to 201,497, up a third from the same period a year ago. — The Wall Street Journal
According to The Wall Street Journal, the private prison business is booming as a result of the hardline immigration policies of President Donald Trump. Despite the growing controversies surrounding the government's treatment of detained migrants in increasingly makeshift and inadequate... View full entry
Henning Larsen has completed work on a new 750,000-square-foot opera house and cultural center in Hangzhou, China. The opera-in-the-park-style complex is wrapped by a fractured metal panel and glass facade designed to reference the cracked ice that forms during the winter months along... View full entry
A slim hotel tower slated to rise on a Historic Core parking lot is slated to begin construction in spring 2020 and wrap up in 2022.
The Spring Street Hotel is developed by Lizard Capital and designed by Asap/Adam Sokol Architecture Practice. It would hold 170 rooms—20 of them suites—as well as a restaurant, bar, conference rooms, a screening room, and a gym.
— Curbed LA
Downtown Los Angeles has seen a significant revitalization in the last twenty years, with much of the change happening in its central Historic Core, the dense area of early 20th century buildings now largely occupied by wealthy residents. A striking new addition to the Historic Core might... View full entry
“We have this museum district,” says architect and theorist Dana Cuff, who oversees cityLAB, an urban research and design center at UCLA, “but the stuff that holds everything together is the part we call the city, and that is the part that Los Angeles has never gotten right.” — The Los Angeles Times
Carolina Miranda of The Los Angeles Times reports that despite a number of new and forthcoming institutional expansions coming to the Miracle Mile museum district in Los Angeles, the area's urban design is sorely lacking. The problem, according to Miranda, is worse by the fact that... View full entry
When the so-called House of the Century rose from the swampy earth back in the early 1970s, it arrived as a vision of the future, a biomorphic experiment in modern living. Back then it was a bright white jumble on the shoreline, and depending on your angle of approach, it looked like either a man's erect genitalia or a giant schnoz.
Today, this futuristic house is a decaying relic of the past, and its future is a subject of concern and conjecture.
— Dallas News
Though Ant Farm, the experimental architecture firm founded by Doug Michels and Chip Lord in 1968, is not among the most well known firms of that era, they produced a number of projects both famous and deserving of fame. They are perhaps best known for their early experiments with inflatable... View full entry
