An 800-foot-tall centerpiece is coming to Detroit's resurgent downtown as the city continues to build momentum about three years after exiting the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. — Chicago Tribune
Detroit continues its steep climb back to normalcy and growth. As one of America's hardest-hit areas by the Great Recession, Detroit unemployment was running nearly three times as high as the national average in 2009 at a staggering 28 percent — and the city was bleeding population, losing... View full entry
Last month, Archinect released the very first issue of “Ed”, our new print quarterly journal. Filled with engaging visuals throughout, this issue — “The Architecture of Architecture” — features thought-provoking essays by Troy Conrad Therrien, the Feminist Architecture... View full entry
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently awarded several grants in support of preservation of collections at small institutions, innovative digital projects for the public, and advanced humanities research. Among the many awarded projects was a new tool which uses digital analysis... View full entry
The Serpentine Pavilion 2017, designed this year by Germany-based architect Francis Kere, will be moved to Malaysia by early next year.
“Thanks to the generous donations by a group of philanthropists, Ilham Gallery now has a prestigious architectural commission in its collection.
“It was a surprising yet very welcome bit of news to be the new custodian of this exciting work,” said Ilham Gallery director Rahel Joseph.
— The Star Online
In an exciting and unexpected outcome, Francis Kere's serpentine pavilion will be given renewed life with a permanent move to Kuala Lumpur next year. With the final site still unknown, the transition was made possible by a plethora of donations and support. The short shelf life and physical... View full entry
In the East End, a plan for a home on Mobley Drive off Warm Springs Avenue spurred a group of neighbors to start organizing what the city calls a conservation district. The house would have been two stories and narrow, while most nearby homes are single-level ranch-style structures built in the 1950s. — Idaho Statesman
A 16-year-old ordinance in Boise that allows for the establishment of conservation districts is coming back in favor as neighborhood groups have figured out they can use it to quash projects they don't like. Conservation districts are similar to historic ones in that they define development... View full entry
This isn’t a new phenomenon for 2017–see Tiananmen Square, North Korea’s totalitarian buildings, Nazi architect Albert Speer. But this year we were reminded of architecture’s enduring power to be used as political propaganda thanks to Trump’s proposed border wall. — Fast Co Design
Architecture has played a fundamental role in the propagandized rhetoric of the Trump Administration. The aim of any kind of propaganda is to promote an idea or an ideology, and Trump and his administration have used architecture to promote their own program and ideology with an... View full entry
As the end of the year quickly approaches, many architecture schools from coast to coast are wrapping up their Fall 2017 lecture events. As you may have seen from Archinect's ongoing Get Lectured series, the graphic design of these posters are as diverse as the institutions they represent. The... View full entry
Architecture, like contemporary art in the 1990s and legal theory a decade before, faces a critical moment in theory and practice. What do black citizens of major U.S. cities and global cities have to look forward to in the coming century in terms of urban conditions and their agency in determining how these conditions change and transform? What does an approach to cities that takes into account black agency, social codes and aesthetics have to offer to city-making as such? — CNN
CNN Style highlights USC architecture dean and CriticalProductive editor, Milton S. F. Curry, and his recent role as lead organizer behind Spatializing Blackness, a three-part panel discussion on "contemporary thinking and creative work related to black aesthetics, urbanism and the lived... View full entry
Can you tell the difference between a Brakdak and an Afdak, a Sekwere or a Caka? Do you know your Domba hut from your Zulu one? An Inqolobane from an Indlu yezikhali?
Give yourself a pat on the back if you do. Truly, you deserve it. However, don't worry too much if you can't, as there's a new English-isiZulu architectural dictionary, just published by UKZN Press, which contains more than 1200 entries of local architectural terms.
— HuffPost
"I set out to study independent vernacular architecture in the 1970s, not realizing that a multitude of readings and meanings would emerge out of it," the book's co-author Franco Frescura, a former Professor and Chair of Architecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, tells HuffPost South... View full entry
Mayor de Blasio’s recent pledge to close the Rikers Island jail complex within ten years was met with celebration by many — and skepticism by others. After 85 years in the public imagination, it has become hard to believe that the East River behemoth could ever really be slain. But the reality of a post-Rikers future is coming into focus [...]. Rikers is toxic, and its era is done. A change is on the wind, it seems, and the island’s aura of inevitability is finally dispersing. — Urban Omnibus
In their Urban Omnibus essay, "A Jail to End All Jails," authors Jarrod Shanahan and Jack Norton take a closer look at the history and a potential future of one of the nation's most notorious prisons and the greater jail infrastructure of a city where the average daily incarcerated population was... View full entry
China’s State Council announced that “weird architecture that is not economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing or environmentally friendly will be forbidden.” Many architects and members of the public understood the frustration and bewilderment, even if they questioned the subjective nature of the official instruction. — The Economist
That was a close call, thankfully 'Weird Architecture' that is economical, functional, aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly is still completely accepted and encouraged. China may be forcing itself into a semantically and conceptually charge subjectivism that could potentially bring... View full entry
MacDonald Becket ’52, former chairman of the board and CEO of the architecture firm Welton Becket and Associates, died in Phoenix, AZ. He was 89. Becket, who graduated from the USC School of Architecture, was a driving force in the development of architecture in Los Angeles. Two of his major roles in California were coordinating the master planning and architectural implementations of the 260-acre Century City project and in the successful renovation of the state capitol building in Sacramento. — news.usc.edu
Among his many achievements, Becket was a founding contributor to MoCA's Architectural and Design Endowment in Los Angeles. He also designed the personal homes of former US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford attesting to Becket's far reaching influence. View full entry
“Deals are my art form,” reads the opening paragraph of Donald Trump’s memoir, The Art of the Deal, and yet the US President seems to have produced quite a few sketches over the years, too. — The Art Newspaper
FreelandBuck has recently completed an 8,000-square-foot (or square-cubed) office interior/exterior for Hungry Man Productions headquarters in Los Angeles. Hungry Man asked FreelandBuck to potentially think outside the box and evaluate the traditional organization of an office. The result being a... View full entry
After an unconventional launch in 2014, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Miami has opened its first permanent home—a new 37,500 sq. ft building in the city’s Design District. The privately-funded institution began operating in temporary quarters nearby in December 2014, shortly after it was founded by the former board of the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MoCA NoMi) following a legal battle with the city. — The Art Newspaper
The new building in Miami's Design District was designed by Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos from Madrid and includes 20,500 sq. ft of exhibition space. View full entry