In 2016, the Berlin-based US artist Ryan Mendoza and Rhea McCauley, the niece of Rosa Parks, teamed up to save the civil rights activist’s Detroit home from demolition. Now, the structure is heading to another block: the New York auction house Guernsey’s, where it is due to be auctioned tomorrow (26 July) with an estimate of $1m-$3m. — theartnewspaper.com
Park's house is part of the 700-lot of African American Historic & Cultural Treasures up for sale at the New York auction house Guernsey’s. McCauley initially bought the house for just $500 back in 2016 reaching out to Mendoza to help preserve the house. In 2017 the structure was safely... View full entry
Earlier this summer I sat down with Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee to discuss their practice, Johnston Marklee, in front of a live audience at this year's LA Design Festival. We discuss the origin of their practice, their relationship to LA, the eclectic group of collaborators they have worked with... View full entry
Liverpool City Council (LCC) has announced a new partnership with a blockchain platform company to offset more than 110% of its carbon emissions, with the city announcing its bid to become the world's first climate-positive city by the end of 2020. LCC will conduct a year-long trial with the Poseidon Foundation to use a blockchain platform to offset the carbon impact of all products and services in the city by supporting global forest conversation projects. — edie.net
Liverpool's ambition to become the world's first climate-positive city by 2020 has been announced with the city's blockchain technology partnership. Committing to a year-long trial of this sustainable technology, Liverpool City Council strives to reduce its carbon impact by installing more than... View full entry
MAD Architects' new China Entrepreneur Forum Conference Centre has broken ground in the rugged, snow-capped mountains of Yabuli, located in northeastern China. China Entrepreneur Forum Conference Centre by MAD Architects, located in Yabuli, CN. Image: MAD Architects. The new centre will act as... View full entry
Having to work through a flurry of logistical challenges from 3,700 miles away, Lucerne-based Roeoesli & Maeder Architects (or ro.ma) led an international design team to successfully complete the new Swiss Embassy in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. The architects describe the design as “an... View full entry
In the past — or in schools with higher proportions of white students — a student acting out might garner an intervention by their principal, or a concerned teacher’s phone call to parents. But today, throughout the US, discipline in many schools has become a matter of law enforcement, rather than education. In New York, the majority of school guards — 5,000 School Safety Agents patrolling 2,300 public and private schools — are civilians employed by the School Safety Division of the NYPD. — urbanomnibus.net
Out of fearful reaction to school shootings and other safety concerns, many school environments look and feel like prison to the students attending. Through an extensive background on how school design has gotten to this point, "Where School Meets Prison" examines the impact prison-like design has... View full entry
Visions of the future [autonomous vehicles] will bring have already crept into City Council meetings, political campaigns, state legislation and decisions about what cities should build today. That unnerves some transportation planners and transit advocates, who fear unrealistic hopes for driverless cars — and how soon they’ll get here — could lead cities to mortgage the present for something better they haven’t seen. — The New York Times
With new technologies emerging, cities are debating the most effective transportation systems to fund. Caught in the midst of this struggle is the proposition of paving over the New York subway in order to create an underground highway for autonomous vehicles. Those championing the idea believe... View full entry
The New Museum announced today the appointment of V. Mitch McEwen as Curator of IdeasCity, the museum's initiative exploring the future of cities. McEwen is the principal and cofounder of A(n) Office, a collaborative of design studios in Detroit and New York exploring the... View full entry
Engineer Ryan Martinson uses his cartooning skills to explore why and how to better incorporate social equity goals into transportation planning Equity & Mobility, a 12-page comic article published in the Summer issue of Transportation Talk," the Canadian Institute of Transportation Engineer's quarterly newsletter. — planetizen.com
The Canadian Institute for Transportation Engineers newsletter showcases a comic strip addressing social equity in transportation design. The article looks at how planning decisions can be affected by a biased user experience design process affecting who is included in our transportation... View full entry
Changing the mindset behind short-term wooden constructions is MIT. A group of researchers at the university are leading an initiative to investigate new mass timber designs- wood-based buildings designed to be more efficient and cheaper than, yet just as durable as, concrete and steel buildings. The team proposes building mass timber longhouses - large wooden engineered houses built from massive pieces of timber. — interestingengineering.com
Mass Timber Design, MIT's architecture workshop exploring sustainable building design at the intersection of architecture and technology, has developed a Longhouse prototype. Mass timber, a wood-based building design and construction technology, has continued to be explored for its... View full entry
Bernstein hopes the research will offer empirical evidence that will help managers consider the possible trade-offs of moving to an open office plan. In seeking a lower cost per square foot, they buy into the idea that it will also lead to more collaboration, even if it’s not clear that’s true.
“I don’t blame the architects,” he said. “But I do think we spend more of our time thinking about how to design workspaces based on the observer’s perspective” — the manager — “rather than the observed.”
— The Washington Post
If you're not a fan of open offices, you now have some empirical evidence in your favor. In two field studies recently published by Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban, they found that face-to-face interaction decreased by approximately 70 percent in both cases, while digital... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding student projects on various Archinect People profiles. (Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect profiles!)... View full entry
Eric Baldwin kicked off a new series, Designing Practice. lt kicked off featuring chats with Evelyn Lee (of AIA’s YAF and Practice Innovation Lab) and Lola Sheppard (of Lateral Office) regarding Alternative or Expanded practice models in the 21st century. Plus, Duo Dickinson (architecture critic... View full entry
When complete, the 25,000 sq ft Well Living Lab, the first scientific research centre in Asia to focus on the indoor environment, will feature a range of simulated homes and offices. The facility will make small variations to the environment – in lighting, air quality and noise levels, for example – and monitor how they affect workers’ health, happiness and productivity. The research findings will be used to change the way future buildings are designed. — The Guardian
This partnership between human and machine is what lies ahead as automation tools permeate our lives at a quickening pace. As many worry about the potential for robots to steal our jobs (or lead a violent overthrow of society), the reality may be more nuanced: They may end up being something more like creative collaborators [...] We must re-tool the workforce, be ever learning, and open to rapid change to reduce the negative impact. — citylab.com
Brooks Rainwater asserts urban spaces as the testing grounds for the impending automation revolution and asks whether this will simply eliminate jobs or create new, better ones. While job displacement estimations vary, there is no denying the tremendous impact emerging technologies will have on... View full entry