It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband...
The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial.
But this country has an infrastructure crisis.
— the New York Review of Books
Elizabeth Drew considers several recent books on American infrastructure, with an eye to both the material reality and the political system producing it. She concludes that fixing our infrastructural systems "may require even more widespread paralyzed traffic, the collapse of numerous bridges, and... View full entry
...centralized urban water systems throughout the world are now under significant stress from increasing population density, water-resource competition, changing precipitation patterns, and new sources of pollutants, such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Even without these pressures, centralized water is, by design, a fracture-critical system—one that is susceptible “to complete and sudden collapse should any part of it fail,” writes Thomas Fisher, Assoc. AIA... — Architect Magazine
"Faced with an excessive price tag, municipalities may welcome decentralized water as the only feasible choice for future water delivery. Architects should therefore develop more expertise related to these net-zero water systems, as they will have direct implications for building design... View full entry
The Society of Architectural Historians has received a $123,000 grant from the Alphawood Foundation to hire Harboe Architects to develop a conservation management plan for Charnley-Persky House. Designed by Adler and Sullivan in 1891–1892 when Frank Lloyd Wright was an apprentice in their... View full entry
What I like and what I believe about those sketches and models is that they’re distillations of ideas ... They could become art installations, or they could become buildings. They’re sort of hybrid pieces in the world of visual ideas before they become buildings [...]
I always go see the site and try to discern what the energy, nature, and character of the place are—the possibilities of a place. Then I start drawing.
— Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, via fastcodesign.com
More from the Portland, OR and NYC-based firm:Clemson scraps its modern building planCharleston groups sue over approval of Clemson architecture center's proposed designNew Clemson University architecture building set to test Charleston's limits on contextArchitect Brad Cloepfil: On architecture... View full entry
Until recently, though, Mr. Meier had never broken ground in South Korea. He checked that off his list with the newly opened Seamarq Hotel, a towering white complex overlooking the East Sea in the city of Gang-neung. “Our client chose a really magnificent site,” Mr. Meier said from his New York office. — The Wall Street Journal
In a fresh bid to confront a problem that has confounded lawmakers for decades, Los Angeles city and county officials approved sweeping plans Tuesday aimed at getting thousands of homeless people off the streets.
But one crucial question remains unanswered: Where will most of the money come from? [...]
The renewed government attention to homelessness was spurred in part by a 12% surge in people living on the streets [...] pushing the total to more than 44,000 homeless people countywide.
— latimes.com
Previously in the Archinect news:"It’s about recognizing someone as existing": Photo exhibit depicts L.A.'s homelessness crisisLA's freeway system is becoming an increasingly crowded 'neighborhood' for the city's homelessLos Angeles to declare homelessness in the city an 'emergency' and pledge... View full entry
MCP: How would you characterize the President and First Lady’s architectural taste, as best as you can tell up to this point?
PG: Modern and refined. They like modern things quite genuinely. They do not want a traditional building... there’s a certain kind of, let’s say tailored modernism, that they respond best to. But they’re interested in a range of things, and they’re also very interested, as they should be, in somebody who they will feel comfortable talking to.
— commonedge.org
Paul Goldberger was first offered to advise the Obama Foundation in the selection of the Presidential Center's architect by Penny Pritzker, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who also happens to be the niece of Jay Pritzker – founder of the Pritzker Prize in 1979.Get caught up on the selection... View full entry
Tens of thousands of hard-working families will be forced to leave their council homes and find themselves unable to afford a local alternative as a result of government plans to restrict social housing to the poorest, according to research obtained by the Observer.
The devastating figures...show that almost 60,000 households in England will be unable to afford to remain in their council properties from April next year, as a result of George Osborne’s reform, called “pay to stay”.
— the Guardian
The economy, coupled with concerted political efforts to dismantle what's left of the welfare state, has birthed a veritable housing crisis in London and the rest of the UK. According to new figures, "pay to stay", a plan crafted by George Osborne, the Conservative MP for Tatton, will leave an... View full entry
The inequity built into The Lyric Theatre's very architecture is a painful reminder of [Birmingham's] ugly past as one of the most segregated places in America. But it also serves as a living history lesson [...]
Across the South, people are struggling with similar questions: What does a changing region do with the vestiges of back-alley service windows, segregated waiting rooms, dual water fountains and abandoned schools that once formed the skeleton of a society built on oppression?
— abcnews.go.com
Wait long enough, and anywhere can become a dark tourism site. More from the tricky territory of architectural preservation:"Too old to be hip but too young to be venerated" – say good-bye to the brutalist Fogarty building in downtown ProvidencePreserving a Home in All Its Marred Glory"Never the... View full entry
Young children read books and watch videos about doctors, builders, chefs, mechanics, pilots, and businesspeople. But not urban planners. Why? [...]
why is urban planning so under-celebrated, and why doesn’t it emerge as a field of study prior to the college level?
— planetizen.com
Pete Sullivan, a planner in Chapel Hill, NC, shares his experience explaining his job to his son's preschool class. Initially worried about communicating a profession as abstract and complex as planning to an audience of squirming five year-olds, Sullivan finds a simple engagement strategy –... View full entry
In line with this month's "Furniture" theme, I speak with Galen Cranz, an architecture professor at UC Berkeley specializing in body-conscious design. Cranz is trained in the "Alexander Technique" – a method for "correcting" the body's poor habits of movement, that can limit self-awareness in... View full entry
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti summoned his inner crooner and released a music video Thursday to warn drivers of an impending 40-hour traffic headache -- the #101SlowJam.
Flanked by the Theodore Roosevelt High School Jazz Band, Garcetti sings a tune reminiscent of the "Slow Jam the News" segment on "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon."
— latimes.com
"See we're bringing down the 6th Street Bridge, making way for something new and the demolition will cause delays," Garcetti says in the video. "But sometimes, just sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty to build something beautiful." – Infrastructure never felt so sexy. Related... View full entry
Taiwan's Government has ordered an investigation into the collapse of a high-rise building in an earthquake after it emerged tin cans had been used in its construction.
Rescue workers found the cans as they searched for survivors two days after the 6.4-magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 37 people.
— independent.co.uk
However, an engineer speaking to Taiwanese TV news channel CNA explained how using cans in construction was not necessarily illegal: “For such purposes in construction, it was not illegal prior to September 1999, but since then styrofoam and formwork boards have been used instead.”Related... View full entry
what exactly does housing justice look like in a metropolis where the wealthiest commute via helicopters while the poorest live in shantytowns perched on riverbanks? [...]
“The new master plan tries to resolve one of São Paulo’s biggest challenges, which is its decentralization" [...]
The master plan calls for ... transit-oriented development ... [and] expanding and honing the controversial Zonas Especiais de Interesse Social... swaths of the city defined as having “special social interest.”
— nextcity.org
More news from São Paulo and housing crises the world over:Relocation or Adaptation: São Paulo Nears Collapse as Drought ContinuesActivism targeting London's housing crisis bubbles to the surfaceUnaffordable cities: this criminal lack of housing is a global scandalBrazilian engineering companies... View full entry
FA investigators take standard architectural and digital tools such as telemetry, video-footage syncing and shadow clocks, and repurpose them to reveal the secrets of conflict zones. Weizman's team has also pioneered plume analysis...Weizman and his colleagues' brief is as wide-ranging as man's cruelty to man: they mine the information seam where enemies clash, where migrants drown, natives are dispossessed and civilians bombed. — Wired
For the January 2016 issue of WIRED magazine, Michael Hodges profiled the work of Forensic Architecture (FA) and the organisation's director Eyal Weizman. View full entry
