In the 2014 deal, Forest City Ratner vowed to expedite affordable housing for the 17-building development, under threat of a lawsuit from neighborhood groups that alleged the firm had broken faith with a community benefits pact signed nearly a decade earlier. — The City
After years of delays and false starts, construction on Brooklyn's Pacific Park development is finally moving along. But, the number of affordable housing units that the developer—Greenland Forest City Partners—agreed to construct through the project is falling short of... View full entry
As the United States suffers through a summer of record-breaking heat, new research shows that temperatures on a scorching summer day can vary as much as 20 degrees across different parts of the same city, with poor or minority neighborhoods often bearing the brunt of that heat. — The New York Times
Using a series of dramatic, color-coded maps, The New York Times highlights the growing disparity between exactly which neighborhoods in America feel the ever-increasing urban heat island effect. The report details stark temperature differences between the neighborhoods of several major... View full entry
The Department of City Planning studied commercial corridors in 24 neighborhoods across the five boroughs and concluded that while shuttered storefronts plague some of the city's richest and poorest areas, the phenomenon is far from a pandemic.
"There is no single dominant trend in retail in New York City," the survey asserts. "Data did not indicate a pervasive vacancy problem across the city, but did identify a number of high-vacancy corridors."
— Crain's New York
Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting has been moved to a new room in the Louvre while its usual home is renovated. That’s causing some commotion for visitors. — The New York Times
This year, as the Salle des États, where the Mona Lisa painting has hung since 2005, is being renovated, a debate over how to address the growing number of tourists visiting the famous painting has come to a fore in Paris. The exhibition hall, according to The New York Times, is being... View full entry
Quilian Riano, currently a senior strategic design initiatives specialist for New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, Office of the Chief Architect, has been selected as the new associate director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) at Kent State University in... View full entry
Co-Arc International Architects director Catharine Atkins and architect Malika Walele are the leading women behind the 55-story building on Maude Street, which was designed by Co-Arc’s emeritus partner, Francois Pienaar. — TimesLIVE
In Sandton, Johannesburg stands the Leonardo, Africa's tallest building. Designed by the team of Co-Arc International Architects, the building stands at 55-stories tall and is set to be completed this year. Besides the record-breaking height of the building, there's another aspect to this... View full entry
Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland have introduced a multimedia app for architects and designers that identifies construction hazards related to building design elements using video and images. — Construction Dive
Led by Professor Billy Hare of Glasgow Caledonian University, the team of researchers tested the application among a pool of 40 designers that included "an even mix of experienced and novice architects and engineers." The team asked the group to review a set of CAD drawings for design-related... View full entry
All were built after World War II to cheaply house the masses in a way that jived with communist ideology. Near-identical two- and three-bedroom apartments included amenities like central heat, private bathrooms, and elevators. Standardization and mass production were paramount, though idiosyncrasies—a pop of color here, a geometric motif there—inevitably crept in. — Wired
David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka, the dynamic duo that make up the independent publisher/design studio Zupagrafika have trekked the Eastern Bloc in an effort to capture its hidden treasures. Their adventure has been published in a book called Eastern Blocks. "Eastern Blocks is a... View full entry
The palazzo itself is a combination of classical and Modernist elements — a fusion of Art Deco and Baroque flourishes, with sophisticated hand-hewn details, a historical pastiche that tracks both Borsani’s own aesthetic evolution as well as 20th-century Italian design. Made from a series of connected boxes — T Magazine
Nancy Hass pens a paean to Villa Borsani for T Magazine. View full entry
A trio of mid-rise residential towers proposed by Italian firm Stefano Boeri Architetti could help clean the air in Egypt's new administrative capital city, while also providing affordable housing for that city's residents. Of the verdant towers, dubbed "Africa's first vertical forest" by... View full entry
A proposed dormitory block headed to Downtown Berkeley has a few people scratching their heads. The beguiling, 254-bed student housing project, known as the Enclave and designed by Kirk E. Peterson & Associates, will bring 55 dormitory units to a site located just across from Berkeley's... View full entry
Rising high in the skies over New York City, Chicago, Hong Kong, and other great metropolises are tall towers that appear impossibly slender. Fueled mostly by market demand from wealthy clients who desire spectacular views, the design and construction of these superslim, generally residential skyscrapers also depend on engineering advances over recent decades in building materials and damping technologies as well as careful coordination by the design teams. — Civil Engineering Magazine
"Slender" towers are beginning to pop up all over the world, notably, in cities like New York, where real estate is scarce, but the desire to maximize ROI is strong. "The limited space for new buildings in places like New York City generally involves small parcels of land, which means that these... View full entry
Architecture firm Morphosis has unveiled its sleek and verdant designs for the new Korean American National Museum in Los Angeles. The two-story building is topped by a "displaced landscape" made up of plants native to the Korean peninsula and California, including maple and pine trees... View full entry
Last week, we received news of Kanye's plans to "build a new type of home" that he believes will separate barriers between the rich, middle-class, and the poor. Built on his 300 acres of land in Calabasas, CA, the ambitious egalitarian now seems to have left out one crucial step in the building... View full entry
But since late last month, the scent of wood and citrus has permeated the 101st floor.
The scent was made to resemble something that does not exist at the top of one of the tallest buildings in the world: trees, all native to New York State, including beeches, mountain ashes and red maples. It has some citrusy notes, for freshness. And it has a name: “One World.”
— The New York Times
The New York Times delves into what went into creating "One World," the "sleek" and "modern" fragrance developed by scent designers IFF, the company behind Abercrombie & Fitch's "Fierce" cologne and other notable scents, for the One World Trade Center tower's observatory. Keith Douglas, managing... View full entry