Responding to recent works by Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels, Rowan Moore interrogates architecture's obsession du jour. With each recently unveiling their "most striking landmark to date"—for Heatherwick, the Vessel and for Ingels, the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy power plant—Moore is... View full entry
An estimated 600 million birds are killed by buildings every year. Especially during spring and fall migrations, birds are attracted to the glow of residential homes and skyscrapers alike. Sometimes the birds crash directly into their windows. Other times, it seems to throw off their internal compass, causing them to circle until exhausted. — Fast Company
The saddening statistic comes from a 2014 study led by Scott Loss, an assistant professor of global change ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. More recently, a new study from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology found that Chicago, Houston, and Dallas are the top three U.S. cities... View full entry
In China, a media company has been ordered by the court to cough up $30,000 to a real estate developer for accusing one of their buildings of having bad feng shui, CNN reports. In the post published by Zhuhai Shengun Internet Technology, a Chinese blogger warned of the building's inauspicious... View full entry
Join us in celebrating New Investigations In Collective Form: The Open Workshop, the latest book by Neeraj Bhatia at Archinect Outpost on Friday, April 26, 7–9pm. Keith Krumwiede will give a short introduction to kick off the event, followed by a panel conversation between Neeraj Bhatia... View full entry
If you're an architect - or even simply a fan of architecture - you probably try to poke your head into every building that catches your eye. As difficult as it can be trying to get away with this in your home country, it becomes exponentially more so when traveling abroad. Global Architect... View full entry
The non-profit organization responsible for developing building codes has sued the startup UpCodes, alleging the company of copyright infringement for republishing the many laws and regulations around buildings. UpCodes is a searchable platform for building codes intended to make the... View full entry
The latest proposal for the LACMA campus, under the watch of famed Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, was unanimously approved by county supervisors earlier today. However, it is this latest iteration that received the harshest criticism: LA Curbed's Alissa Walker shared a general sentiment when... View full entry
Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Architecture recognized Frank Gehry with the Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence, so Mackenzie Goldberg wrote up his conversation with Orhan Ayyüce. Aram Guiragozian was grateful "I’ve always admired Gehry for how human he is. He speaks a language... View full entry
House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry—was the world’s first large-scale collaborative investigation into the chemistry of indoor air. [...] The experiment’s early results are just now emerging, and they seem to show that the combined emissions of humans and their daily activities—cooking, cleaning, metabolizing—are more interesting, and potentially more lethal, than anyone had imagined. — The New Yorker
In this New Yorker piece, writer Nicola Twilley observes one of the experiments of HOMEChem, who investigates the atmospheric chemistry of our indoor environments and how everyday activities can greatly affect its air quality. “Dozens of the chemicals measured by the HOMEchem team are known to... View full entry
“For us, [Vriesendorp] has always been a central figure in the production of architectural ideas and discourse,” says Eva Franch i Gilabert, the director of the AA. Between 1982 and 1992, Vriesendorp taught at the AA. In 2015, the school hosted her 70th birthday. “She is a seminal voice of the institution,” Franch says. “She is all about opening up people’s imagination, regardless of age, disciplinary labels or expertise.” — The Guardian
When accepting the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize that recognizes women who have made significant contributions to architecture, the 2018 winner Madelon Vriesendorp shared of having to defend her legacy. Like many women in the profession, the artist and co-founder of OMA has been written out of the... View full entry
Hudson Yards may appear to be a made-in-NYC development, but in actual fact, it took its blueprint from a similar neighborhood in Tokyo known as Roppongi Hills, which broke ground in the 1990s and opened in 2003. While there are a few notable differences—you won’t find any rice paddies on the roofs of Hudson Yards’ buildings, for one—the similarities are striking. But in many respects, this is no surprise—architectural firm KPF played a hand in the design of both developments. — 6sqft
Faced with the threat of rising sea levels said to jeopardize 90% of the world's largest cities by 2050, UN Habitat convened its first roundtable to discuss potential adaptation strategies. In particular, the dozens of experts, investors, scientists, and officials, were there to explore new... View full entry
Few artists have dedicated their work to architectural space quite as much as Olafur Eliasson. His objects transform walls by their luminescence; his projections cast structure on structure; his geometry bends over backyards to multiply the qualities of sites. It is without doubt that one can... View full entry
The crowded field of competitors who’ve proposed solutions for the ailing Brooklyn-Queens Expressway has gotten another entrant: Bjarke Ingels Group, which has unveiled a proposal that it calls “BQP.”
The “P” stands for park, and in BIG’s plan, green space takes center stage. [...] the vehicles that use the BQE would be moved to a roadway that would be covered and topped with as much as 10 acres of new parkland.
— Curbed NY
"Though a cost and time estimate for BIG’s plan has not yet been made public, the firm claims it will be less expensive, and less time-consuming, than what the DOT has proposed," reports Curbed NY (click here for their detailed explainer of what the massive Brooklyn-Queens... View full entry
Tuesday marked Equal Pay Day, the point in the year when the average woman's salary catches up to what white men made in 2018. For women of color, for whom the gap is far greater, it won't be until November that each of their earnings match men's salaries from 2018. These statistics are a stark... View full entry