The Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund clean-up projects in at least 15 years, nearly triple the number that were stalled for lack of money in the Obama era, according to 2019 figures quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency over the winter holidays.
The accumulation of Superfund projects that are ready to go except for money comes as the Trump administration routinely proposes funding cuts for Superfund and for the EPA in general.
— Associated Press
Under the current presidential administration, funding earmarked for cleaning up superfund sites has slowed to a trickle. According to an Associated Press report, the number of unfunded projects has ballooned from 12 in 2016, President Barack Obama's last year in office, to 34 this year. ... View full entry
Los Angeles-based architects Julie Smith-Clementi and Frank Clementi, former founding partners at multidisciplinary architecture office Rios Clementi Hale Studios (RCH Studios), have launched a new comprehensive design practice offering "the full spectrum of place-based design." Exterior of the... View full entry
The United States Pentagon is working to distance itself from a series of statements made US President Donald Trump threatening to target Iranian cultural sites were military conflict to break out between the two nations. According to The Associated Press, Defense Secretary Mark Esper... View full entry
Mark your calendars, Coachella 2020 has announced their line up of performers and artists participating in April! Besides the music, crowds, and overall desert festival ambiance, Coachella has been a breeding ground for emerging artists and designers showcasing their works. This... View full entry
Syd Mead, the legendary science fiction illustrator responsible for concocting the retro-futurist conceptual drawings that inspired movies like Blade Runner, Aliens, and Tron and other seminal sci-fi films, has passed away at age 86. Mead passed away in his Pasadena... View full entry
[...] a team of Canadian science and engineering graduates is pitching a dream to plant a billion trees by 2028 using drones. The project is dubbed Flash Forest and combines the use of drones with specially-designed pods and an accelerated seed germination process. According to Flash Forest, its technology can plant trees 10 times faster than a single worker and at a cost that is 80 percent cheaper than traditional tree planting methods. — New Atlas
On their Kickstarter page, the team behind the Toronto-based Flash Forest project explains what happens before and after heavy-lift drones pneumatically fire their custom-designed seed pods into the ground: "Before we plant our pods, we pre-germinate the seeds inside using our own 'secret sauce.'... View full entry
Hillsides, houses, airports and cathedrals; cityscapes, landscapes and the ocean rocking toward the horizon; courtrooms and bedrooms, bungalows and castles; gas stations, skyscrapers, apartment buildings; the roofs of Paris and New York, corridors, tapestries, train depots and a mineshaft burrowing into an icy mountain.
These are the 90 painted backdrops that remain of more than 200 saved through the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project
— The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angele Times takes a look at the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project, a two-year-long effort aimed at saving some of the industry’s remaining iconic scene paintings. Lynne Coakley, president of JC Backings, a Hollywood legacy scene painting company that produced iconic... View full entry
As scientists continue to advocate for further development of [geoengineering] technologies, the field’s demographics are drawing more scrutiny. Some researchers argue the lack of diversity affects both which geoengineering projects get discussed [...] and how their risks get calculated. — Wired
In a recent article, Wired writer Sarah Sax dives into the troubling demographics of the White male-dominated geoengineering field, a largely theoretical research program with the potential for global impacts, both anticipated and unforeseen. Explaining how the monocultural makeup of the... View full entry
The Champs-Élysées, often called the “most beautiful avenue in the world”, is not what it was. The pavements are cracked, the trees that line the cobbled, traffic-clogged road struggle to survive in one of Paris’s most polluted areas, and Parisians stay away.
Now local community leaders have unveiled an ambitious €250m (£212m) project to restore the celebrated 1.2 mile (1.9km) long avenue to at least some of its former glory.
— The Guardian
"The ambitious plans include reducing the space for vehicles by half, creating tunnels of trees and encouraging more aesthetic use of commercial spaces such as terraces," The Guardian lays out some details envisioned by Paris-based architect Philippe Chiambaretta of PCA-STREAM. So far, the... View full entry
A long-in-the-works plan to link Houston and Dallas with high-speed rail is making steady progress as backers for the project announce that they could be one year away from breaking ground. Earlier this year, Archinect reported that Texas CentralTexas Central, the group advocating for and... View full entry
Fragile and flammable, Eucalypti have been implicated in worsening wildfires across the world. But there's little consensus over their culpability, value, or future in California's landscape. Defenders and opponents each say that science and history are on their side. — The Guardian
A long-simmering battle over the current and future status of California's Eucalyptus trees is close to bubbling over again, as the increasingly present risk of catastrophic fire events pits Eucalyptus lovers against native plant enthusiasts who would like to see the tinder-producing groves... View full entry
The McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania has published a digital atlas that attempts to communicate the wide-ranging implications of both climate change and a potential Green New Deal for the United States. A color-coded breakdown of land uses across the country that includes... View full entry
A design team led by interdisciplinary, New York City-based architecture and landscape firm Weiss/Manfredi has been selected to reinterpret the La Brea Tar Pits and George C. Page Museum building in Los Angeles. The design team includes experiential designers Imaginary Forces... View full entry
Famed French architect Odile Decq reveals images of her first residential project in Barcelona. The studio is responsible for designing the interiors as well as the architecture for the luxury residential tower that is located along the Mediterranean Sea. According to Decq and her team each... View full entry
When thinking of an outhouse, the initial images that come to mind may not be as intriguing or luxe as the outhouse designed by Australian-based studio Madelein Blanchfield Architects. Don't be fooled by their disappearing outhouse structure that blends seamlessly with the lush landscapes of... View full entry
