Architect Christopher Downey came to Miami to present a lecture as part of a local exhibit called Listen to This Building. The exhibit is organized Exile Books, a pop-up artist’s book store, and is meant to show the architecture of downtown Miami through the senses of touch and as stated in... View full entry
A New Zealand man has set out to document and photograph former Pizza Hut locations across the planet, specifically looking for the pizza chain’s dine-in locations with the familiar red roof. [...]
“The strangest thing may be the funeral homes or mortuaries. It's probably the last thing you'd expect to see a Pizza Hut become but there are several dotted around”
— chron.com
residents are taking aim at the disruption caused by construction, the uprooting of cherished institutions, the buildings’ designs and the ever-higher prices attached to the housing that they fear will alter neighborhoods fundamentally. — NYT
C. J. Hughes examines how some NYC residents are reacting to an ongoing boom in construction, enabled/exemplified by the rezoning of 37 percent of the city under the Bloomberg administration. From filing noise complaints, pushing for height moratoriums, to fighting against the loss of public... View full entry
Looking for exciting things to do in New York City this month? Lucky you, Archtober is back for another year with a rich program of engaging exhibitions, lectures, conferences, films, tours, parties, and other activities to celebrate the value of architecture and design in everyday life!From the... View full entry
at least some part of architectural practice needs to move on from having buildings as the only output. The answer to every urban question cannot always be a building, clearly. Whilst buildings may be part of some solutions, there are broader, deeper questions in play—good architects see this, but the practice (from education up) is still not exploring this implied question broadly enough. — cityofsound
A call for architecture, for architects, their schools, their buildings and their cities via the technology they still struggle to grasp regardless of their software driven shaping skills, a valuable read by Dan Hill of City of Sound. Technological effect is elsewhere. View full entry
Among the many writers of disasters and crisis – from Barthes to Blanchot to Ballard – there is a strain of thinking that rejects the normative and reductive assumption that a disaster must be met with an austere temper or melancholic pragmatism. Rather, disasters can breed their own wild... View full entry
In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, there was a flurry of news about the Chinese government's attempt to seed clouds in order to engineer the weather. In fact, the technology – while largely considered imperfect – both exists and has been implemented. The SEEDING MICRO-CLOUDS. Power... View full entry
Researchers estimate that driverless cars could, by midcentury, reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90 percent. Which means that, using the number of fatalities in 2013 as a baseline, self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year. In the United States alone, that's nearly 300,000 fatalities prevented over the course of a decade, and 1.5 million lives saved in a half-century. — CityLab
Accidents happen. But do they have to? Researchers estimate that driverless cars could save up to $190 billion in health-care costs and 50 million lives worldwide over five decades. For more of Archinect's coverage on changes in driving and car culture, check out these stories:• Traffic Lights... View full entry
[...] Team China beat out Team Kazakhstan to host the games. Zhangjiakou, a city of 4 million people in the mountains of Hebei province, will host the games alongside Beijing. [...]
They're worried I'll talk to people like Lu Wanku, who will be forced to move to make way for the region’s investment boom. Lu herds cattle and has lived in his tiny brick home for more than 20 years. His home is now in the way of a Four Seasons Town Dream Resort ski run. [...] Lu has two weeks to move out.
— marketplace.org
Related in the Archinect news:Olympic Displacement: Atlanta 1996 to Rio 2016Putin's Olympic steamroller in SochiOlympic Infrastructure Displaces Brazilian Families View full entry
In the face of events that exceed our capacity for comprehension, humans tend to invent myths and stories that render things palatable. The passage of the sun across the firmament, the surge of the oceans in a storm, the crash of thunder that follows the flash of lightning – these all have been... View full entry
Consuming disproportionately-vast quantities of water for the recreational pleasure of a small (typically elite) group of people, golf courses often become a first line of attack during droughts. But what if they could be appropriated in order to help mitigate the effects of a water shortage?... View full entry
"What we propose here is a different format for making architecture," Camille Lacadee states in a deadpan tone, "with multiple clients, multiple users, backers, lovers, following a bottom-up mode of exchanges and desire." A robotic arm extends into the frame and offers her a bowl of bird's nest... View full entry
Neighborhoods across the west side of San Francisco could see thousands of new housing units under a measure Mayor Ed Lee is proposing that would allow builders to exceed current height restrictions in exchange for including more affordable units. — San Francisco Chronicle
The Mayor's proposal would allow builders to add two stories of additional height to the current building height restrictions to help the notoriously expensive metropolis of San Francisco become more affordable to middle-class denizens (unlike federal or state sponsored initiatives, which target... View full entry
Archinect is excited to announce the Chicago installment of our two-part live-podcasting series, Next Up, hosted in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Biennial! Taking place on the Biennial's opening weekend, the (live!) marathon set of interviews, panels and discussions with Biennial... View full entry
While the current drought is likely linked to larger issues like climate change, California has always had cycles of dry and wet seasons, as well as regular drought periods. But, for thousands of years, the inhabitants of the region were (for the most part) able to survive times of water scarcity... View full entry
