It has also been remarkable to watch Amazon pursue a dramatically different strategy. Its plans for a second headquarters suggest that in terms of architecture and campus planning it wants to be everything Apple is not. It wants to lean into the city — and thorny questions about gentrification and housing prices, to the extent that they will be a natural byproduct of this process — rather than away from it. — Los Angeles Times
"Though he took a very different path to get there," Hawthorne writes in his LAT opinion piece analyzing Apple & Amazon's lofty headquarters ambitions with a focus on urban integration (or the complete lack thereof), "Bezos ultimately reached the same conclusion Jobs did: that the wealthiest... View full entry
Ueberall International, an LA based design firm, in partnership with E Ink created DAZZLE, an interactive work of public art at the San Diego airport's new rental car station. DAZZLE. Image: E inkThe interactive facade is created with e-paper, a technology similarly used in e-readers, but... View full entry
Apple’s iPhone X event yesterday wasn’t just about its latest pocket computer. It was also its first opportunity to show off its ambitious new Apple Park “spaceship” campus to the hundreds of journalists, industry executives and “friends of Apple” in attendance. — recode.net
Photo by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerPhoto by Recode's Dan FrommerCheck out the article on Recode for the full photo gallery. View full entry
“I’m looking for subtle signifiers of an exuberant bygone optimism,” [Photographer Tag Christof] said. “Whether people realize it or not, the things I photograph are the direct result of a system that defines progress only in economic terms.” Christof...has spent the last five years crisscrossing the country in an effort to document architectural sites vanishing from the landscape. — The Outline
Whether you spent your teenage years moodily occupying the food court or have experienced malls primarily as ruin porn, the architectural significance of these former bustling commercial centers can't be overstated. A kind of high water mark of capitalism, the shuttered and demolished malls... View full entry
Amazon has set off a scrum among cities that are hoping to land the company’s second headquarters — with the winner getting the prize of a $5 billion investment and 50,000 new jobs over the next two decades.
(Denver's) lifestyle and affordability, coupled with the supply of tech talent from nearby universities, has already helped build a thriving start-up scene in Denver and Boulder, 40 minutes away.
— The New York Times
The New York Times suggests Denver for Amazon new headquarters as it offers a large and growing labour pool, access to universities, high quality of life and enough space to build eight million square feet of office space. If Amazon was to follow the New York Times advice it could drastically... View full entry
Chicago is one of the global centers of the architectural world, not only for its rich history, but also as a stage for continuous innovation and design exploration. This lineage is a major part of why The Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) has decided to create the Chicago Architecture Center... View full entry
The first commercial passenger elevator was installed by Otis Elevator Company in 1857 and climbed at a glacial pace of 40 feet a minute, though it felt staggering at the time. Since then, we have come a long way both in terms of elevator speeds and in terms of the heights these elevators are... View full entry
While the new Apple Campus still remains incomplete, Apple is moving forward with hosting the launch of their new iPhone 8 on site. The company sent out a media invite last Thursday with the tagline, "Let's meet at our place," confirming the location of the event. It will be the first time Apple... View full entry
Design Topology Lab founder Joseph Choma continues to put his fiberglass hand-folding technique to the test in a new larger scale structure called “Chakrasana”, which is currently on display at Clemson University, where Choma is an architecture professor. Weighing in at only 400 pounds, the... View full entry
The 3D Printed Habitat Challenge—NASA's three-phase, $2.5 million competition—tasks architecture firms to generate and advance the construction technologies necessary for off-world habitats. Each stage of the challenge asks the teams to design and test an individual prototypical building... View full entry
In the meta news category, Bjarke Ingels' full-scale "Lego House," inspired by the titular rectangular building blocks and slated to open later this month in Denmark, now apparently has a miniature version in the form of real Legos that will be available for sale only at the Lego House. According... View full entry
“The Structure of Design: An Engineer's Extraordinary Life in Architecture” examines the long career of Leslie Earl Robertson, one of the most celebrated structural engineers in modern architecture. Thanks to publisher The Monacelli Press, Archinect is giving away five copies of the book to... View full entry
Take a walk through BIG's controversial 2,800 m2 Bunker Museum that opened this summer in Denmark— View full entry
Amazon says the new fulfillment center will create some 2,000 jobs “with benefits and opportunities to engage with Amazon Robotics in a highly technological workplace.
The company will spend $177 million to build the new fulfillment center, and job listings will start appearing six to 10 weeks before the facility opens.
— Gizmodo
Amazon says workers at their new 855,000 square feet warehouse in North Randall, Ohio, “will pick, pack and ship smaller customer items such as electronics, toys and books.” In other words, the new employees will be filling Amazon-branded boxes with the exact same sorts of goods that were... View full entry
But what if there were a way to see gentrification long before the coffee shops, condos and Whole Foods appear? What if city planners and neighborhoods had an early warning system that could sniff out the changes just as they begin?
[...] neighborhood advocates would have the opportunity to implement policies ranging from reserving affordable housing units to educating residents of their renting rights to helping small businesses negotiate long-term lease extensions.
— NPR
In his NPR piece, astrophysics professor Adam Frank explains how various big data sets, like housing prices, eviction records, census data, or social media usage, can be utilized for "predictive analytics" to detect early onsets of gentrification for specific neighborhoods at an increasingly high... View full entry
