The track will only have two weeks to set and cure before the February 6 weekend race, which is about half the normal time, but he doesn’t expect any issues.
Temporary barriers, like those used on a street circuit, will be installed to define the oval, which was designed with help from simulations conducted on the iRacing platform. A pit lane won’t be required as the Clash will consist of several short heat races and a non-stop main.
— The New York Post
The quarter-mile track project cost about $1 million (which is apparently the going rate for a mile of paved road in the US). 1,560 tons of high-performance asphalt was poured to make the track after a protective layer of plywood and other materials was placed over the original natural grass... View full entry
The fire was started by a malfunctioning space heater in the bedroom of a third-floor apartment on Sunday. Fire officials say the door of the apartment did not close as residents fled and that allowed smoke to spread throughout the building. — The New York Times
The deaths and injuries in Sunday’s tragically avoidable accident were exclusively the product of smoke inhalation as the fire itself was contained to the apartment and outside hallway. The blaze came just days after another horrible incident in Philadelphia that claimed the lives of... View full entry
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) called for an end to the use of natural gas in new buildings in a policy blueprint released Wednesday ahead of her State of the State address. — The Hill
The governor's plan will require that there be zero on-site greenhouse gas emissions from new construction by 2027. It would also require energy benchmarking, a process that requires large buildings of similar sizes or occupancy levels to compare their energy consumption. Hochul’s blueprint... View full entry
The first mass timber academic building in Ontario is taking shape at Toronto’s Centennial College. Located at the college’s Progress Campus in Scarborough, the A-Block Expansion Building will have the potential to be the province's first net-zero carbon, mass timber, LEED Gold higher... View full entry
Kendall A. Nicholson, penned Architecture Gave Me a Black Eye: A Note to Architectural Educators. Therein he argues "Power structures are not dismantled by provocations and open letters, such as this, but by education and deliberate design interventions…Recognizing race as a social... View full entry
A large chunk of aluminum cladding fell off the Hancock building earlier this week, frightening neighbors. The piece of cladding fell about 3 p.m. Wednesday, landing atop a planter on the building’s south side off Chestnut Street. No one was injured. — Block Club Chicago
The incident is eerily reminiscent of the tragic 2019 death of architect Erica Tishman in Manhattan, which has resulted in recent criminal charges in addition to a host of lawsuits brought against the property developers and city by the architect’s family and Department of Buildings. ... View full entry
Two patrons of former Texas Tech University professor Robert Bruno’s famous Ransom Canyon are up in arms over the fate of one of American architectural history’s most significant self-built structures. Texas Monthly is reporting that plans for the corten steel creation have caused an outcry of... View full entry
The Datong Art Museum has opened to the public in northern China, having recently been completed by Foster + Partners. The firm describes the new museum as a “landscaped terrain with a series of interconnected pyramids emerging from below the earth.” Image by Yang Chaoying for Foster +... View full entry
A 5-story, 122,000 office and retail building, set to be one of the largest Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) buildings in Los Angeles, is taking shape. For 843 N Spring Street, this month continues the installation of what will be 82,000 square feet of CLT panels in the hybrid timber structure... View full entry
Architects have known how to prevent their buildings from becoming bird killers for more than a decade: Patterned glass, exterior screens and turning the lights off at night can all significantly reduce bird deaths. But those standards clash with the big glass and big views that clients associate with big money. — Bloomberg CityLab
The problem stems from the way glass reflects green spaces surrounding them. Recent advancements in data and social media tracking have combined with architectural studies have been able to successfully produce guidelines which recommend a wide array of interventions like ceramic frits, visual dot... View full entry
Adjaye Associates’ $41.7 million Winter Park Library & Events Center in Winter Park, Florida is now complete. The library debuted to the public on December 13th during a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony. Developed through a public-private partnership with the City of Winter Park, the... View full entry
The wait is over for one of the most hotly-anticipated editions to the cultural landscape of Los Angeles in recent memory. OMA has announced the official completion of its much-heralded Audrey Irmas Pavilion for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown. The new building offers a unique center... View full entry
A new computer program powered by artificial intelligence takes mere minutes to determine whether homes and buildings have been destroyed by wildfires once the smoke has cleared.
Developed by scientists at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and Stanford University, DamageMap evaluates the destruction by scrutinizing post-wildfire aerial and satellite images.
— Santa Cruz Sentinel
The team worked to fix a major flaw in existing modeling systems that required exact lighting and photographic angles in order to produce an accurate survey of structural damage in a specific area. 50,000 images from various fires across California were used as a baseline for the software, which... View full entry
UCSF has released images of their proposed Helen Diller Medical Center, designed by Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with HDR Architecture. The 15-story hospital will be constructed on UCSF’s Parnassus Heights campus, with 336 inpatient beds, diagnostic and treatment services, clinical... View full entry
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has completed a 158-meter-tall, 33-story tower, located at the center of one of Shenzhen’s key business districts. The structure responds to the region’s tropical climate through a series of biophilic and sustainable design solutions. SOM was commissioned by... View full entry
