Barely built for a million people, Kabul, now has close to five million residents with the majority – 80% – still living in informal, unplanned areas [...]. More than one million properties still need to be officially registered, according to City for All, a government urban planning initiative. [...]
But while decades of war have destroyed much of the capital, an urban revolution is growing, creating small pockets of peace.
— The Guardian
The Guardian's Stefanie Glinski writes about the efforts residents and the local government in the rapidly growing Afghan capital are taking to cope with the overwhelming urbanization, turn informal settlements into formal ones, set urban planning goals, and rediscover architectural heritage and... View full entry
The skylight that crowns the spiky, $3.9 billion World Trade Center Oculus has sprung a leak.
A rubber seal that runs along the spine of the retractable skyline is believed to have ripped during its opening and closing on the 2018 anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, The Wall Street Journal reports.
— Curbed NY
"Some $30,000 by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was spent this winter to repair the tear using black strips of Flex Tape, but the skylight at the massive transportation hub and shopping mall leaked again on May 5," Curbed summarizes the WSJ's account. The Santiago... View full entry
What if we could weaponize air conditioning units to help pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere instead? According to a new paper in Nature Communications, it’s feasible.
Using technology currently in development, AC units in skyscrapers and even your home could get turned into machines that not only capture CO2, but transform the stuff into a fuel for powering vehicles that are difficult to electrify, like cargo ships.
— CityLab
“Air conditioning,” Eva Horn once wrote, “is one of the oldest dreams of mankind. It means creating a world without heat or cold, rain or snow, without suffocating humidity or dusty winds.” However, when considering the challenges facing the current era, air conditioning yields a... View full entry
On top of being known as a man of architecture and a man of letters, Le Corbusier can now also be known as a man of photography. View of Charles IV Bridge, toward castle, Prague, May 1911. Photo by Le Corbusier.LC Foto, a book released by Lars Müller Publishers, is an archive of the architect's... View full entry
Yves Béhar, the founder of the San Francisco-based design firm fuseproject, has teamed up with building startup ICON and housing charity New Story to bring about what they describe as "the world's first 3D-printed community." Last year, ICON and New Story went to SXSW 2018 and announced the... View full entry
The Administrative Court of Paris has approved Paris’ first skyscraper since Montparnasse in 1973, set to be located in the city's south. [...]
The ambitious building was first rejected in late-2014, and subsequently approved after some modifications by the Council of Paris mid-2015 by a narrow majority.
— The Urban Developer
Herzog & de Meuron's controversial Tour Triangle project is back from a lengthy legal hiatus and will—now officially backed by court approval—start construction later this year. Image: Herzog & de MeuronFirst unveiled in 2008, the 42-story triangle-shaped skyscraper wasn't an... View full entry
Orange, mango, strawberry, lime. If an apartment could be said to be bursting with fruit flavor it would be this three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district, renovated by Adam Nathaniel Furman, a British architectural designer, for a pair of very adventurous clients over the past two years. — The New York Times
Adam Nathaniel Furman has recently completed a spectacular new renovation for an adventurous couple's apartment in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district. Interior of apartment, designed by Adam Nathaniel Furman. Photo by Jan Vranovsky.The renovation is significant for its novel use of colors, textures... View full entry
Last year, residents of Atlantic Plaza Towers, a rent-stabilized apartment building in Brooklyn, found out that their landlord was planning to replace the key fob entry system with facial recognition technology. [...]
But some residents were immediately alarmed by the prospect: They felt the landlord’s promise of added security was murky at best, and didn’t outweigh their concerns about having to surrender sensitive biometric information to enter their own homes.
— CityLab
"Housing complexes of low-income residents may be one early testing ground for residential applications of facial recognition technology," writes Tanvi Misra for CityLab. "But they’re not the only ones. Amazon’s doorbell company, Ring, is coming out with a video doorbell that incorporates... View full entry
Joseph Choma, founder of Design Topology Lab and an architecture professor at Clemson University, is pioneering work into the field of foldable structures and materials. For the past few years, Choma has been focused on developing a fabrication technique that allows fiberglass to be folded by... View full entry
Following World War I, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) was tasked with the design of standard kitchens for a new housing project by city planner and architect Ernst May. The Great War left rubble and a desperate housing shortage in its wake, but it also opened the way for new ideas and new designs. — Citylab
Prior to World War II, the only homes to have complete kitchen spaces also typically had servants to make use of them, while apartments and tenement housing rarely had space for a room purely dedicated to cooking. The kitchen, in other words, was a luxury before a plan to make it more standard and... View full entry
When bad things happen, we look around for someone to blame. And when it comes to gentrification, which is loosely defined as somebody not like you moving into your neighborhood, there’s no shortage of things to blame. — City Observatory
Depending on where you live it isn't difficult to notice specific changes happening within your neighborhood. From trendy housing developments, boutique shops, and independent cafes gentrification affects more than a neighborhood's curb appeal. A buzzword many have become familiar with these... View full entry
The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts was designed by architect Harry Weese, with the surrounding landscape by Dan Kiley, and was completed in 1969. [...]
In December 2018, the Center announced an overhaul of the cultural venue, the culmination of a months-long strategic planning process. However, the proposal drew backlash for its insensitve treatment of the Dan Kiley-designed landscape.
— Docomomo US
At the center of the historic designation discussion is the planned replacement of the 36 horse chestnut trees in front of the Marcus Center with a lawn bordered by 18 honey locust trees. "Preservationists said removing the trees would harm the legacy of grove designer Dan Kiley, whose other... View full entry
As part of his Extra Extra series, Ryan Scavnicky admitted "I tend to bag on Bjarke Ingels a lot" following which he explains his beef with the BIG diagram. Will Galloway thought it was a nice essay but questioned "don't you think REM does the same thing, and if so does the same critique... View full entry
If this mass timber tower is built as originally envisioned, the tallest of its kind in the world, it could set an extraordinary precedent and benchmark for not only green building construction but also the future of development along Vancouver’s Central Broadway corridor. — Urbanized Vancouver
Daily Hive editor Kenneth Chan gives a detailed introduction of the Perkins+Will-designed Canada Earth Tower, a proposed timber tower that could rise up to 40 stories and accommodate around 200 residential units. "The structure would be predominantly made out of fire-resistant wood... View full entry
Everyone hates the Vessel, the stairway to nowhere for capitalism’s grifters at the heart of New York’s latest mirage of a neighborhood, Hudson Yards. Perhaps that’s why it’s so refreshing to see an observation tower that actually leads somewhere meaningful beyond an Instagram selfie frame: the Camp Adventure Observation Tower in Denmark. — Fast Company
While Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel has been a media darling (or pariah) for the last month, a similarly tall, arguably more elegant observation tower quietly popped up in a Dane forest. The Camp Adventure Forest Tower, by EffektThe Camp Adventure Forest Tower, designed by Copenhagen-based firm... View full entry
