In a recent column for The Dallas Morning News, architecture critic Mark Lamster proposes a new pedestrian-oriented vision for the district surrounding Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was murdered, and where the Dallas authorities are currently planning a new municipal... View full entry
The School of Architecture at Taliesin (SoAT), which maintains campuses in Scottsdale, Arizona and Spring Green Wisconsin, is closing down following an 88-year run as the institution tasked with carrying on the intellectual design legacy of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. ... View full entry
Since its founding, the National Register of Historic Places has helped to generate an estimated two million jobs and more than a hundred billion dollars in private investments. But, because many biases were written into the criteria that determine how sites are selected, those benefits have gone mostly to white Americans. One of the criteria for preservation is architectural significance, meaning that modest buildings like slave cabins and tenement houses were long excluded from consideration. — The New Yorker
Writing in The New Yorker, Casey Cep profiles Brent Leggs, director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The lengthy, eye-opening report delves into the work of preservationists like Leggs who are fighting to uncover... View full entry
Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has released a statement explaining his reasoning behind the decision to meet with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last week. In the statement, Ingels, founder and creative partner at the multi-national architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), explains... View full entry
Global pop star Akon and Senegalese government officials are readying to break ground on a new ground-up 2,000-acre sustainable tourism city near the country's capital, Dakar. Just finalized the agreement for AKON CITY in Senegal. Looking forward to hosting you there in the future... View full entry
It is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis, a landmark ruling by the United Nations human rights committee has found.
The judgment – which is the first of its kind – represents a legal “tipping point” and a moment that “opens the doorway” to future protection claims for people whose lives and wellbeing have been threatened due to global heating, experts say.
— The Guardian
The Guardian reports that the United Nations human rights committee has issued a landmark ruling that could establish a precedent for granting asylum rights to people displaced by climate change. The non legally-binding ruling is poised to inform how the global community handles up what could... View full entry
“The bottom line is this: The way people get around, the way people live is going to change,” [Texas Governor Greg] Abbott said, according to the Rivard Report. “As a result, this generation of roads that [Texas Transportation Commission Chairman] Bruce Bugg is in charge of building is probably the last major buildout of roads we’ll have in the state of Texas, even considering the fact that Texas is the fastest-growing state in America.” — D Magazine
Might Texas finally end its long-running love affair with highway infrastructure? According to the state's Governor, Greg Abbot, it's a possibility. In a recent speech, Abbot, who is a Republican, expressed doubt that the state's current transportation regime can last much longer as the... View full entry
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles has acquired two collections of drawings and sketches by visionary architect Lebbeus Woods. Woods passed away in 2012 after a long career as a radical, inventive architectural designer who created thousands of fantastical visions for... View full entry
Settled in an expansive northern Poland landscape, amidst nearby lakes, and inspired by the local regional architecture, Green Line, a home designed by Przemek Olczyk of Studio Mobius, embraces the grassy plains of Warmia, Poland. Photo: Paweł Ulatowski Photo: Paweł Ulatowski The... View full entry
Following reports that plans for the western Hudson Yards site would include a massive 700-foot-long wall separating the development from the High Line, Related Companies, the developer behind the $25 billion mega-development, has published a rendering in an attempt to contradict those previous... View full entry
The McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design of has launched Ian McBlog, a new online publication dedicated to uplifting the voices of "the rising generation of designers who will lead—and are already leading—the response to our overlapping crises... View full entry
The massive brushfires in Australia have damaged a large portion of the country's landscape. As of today, according to BBC News, "more than 100 fires are still burning in the states of New South Wales and Victoria." Many have lost their homes and family members in addition to the amount of... View full entry
City-focused reporting has suffered another setback this week as news that the Guardian Cities initiative at The Guardian will be shuttering has been made public. In a farewell letter published in The Guardian, Guardian Cities editor Chris Michaels writes, "Since its... View full entry
The Pleasant Green-Culbertson cemetery, which sits in northeast Houston behind roads peppered with concrete plants and trucking depots, is just one of thousands of eroding African-American cemeteries across the state, in danger of being erased as descendants of those buried have died out, moved out or been pushed out. Many of the cemeteries are long gone. For years, mainstream historians didn’t pay attention to them; now genealogists, historians and families are rushing to save them. — Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle takes a look at the growing movement to rediscover and preserve the forgotten African American burial grounds of Texas by highlighting the story of the Pleasant Green-Culbertson cemetery. The push to save and memorialize African American cemeteries is part of a larger... View full entry
Landscape Architect and educator Dorothée Imbert has been named as the new Director of the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. Imbert will take up a four-year term starting Fall 2020 and will follow in the footsteps of Michael B. Cadwell, FAIA, the current director... View full entry