The Broad announced today that it will present a new work from Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923), in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Couleur Additive has been commissioned by The Broad as part of the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching... View full entry
It’s no paradise, as the rats, garbage, arson and violent backstories make clear. Yet against all odds, the men and women we meet in the film have managed to domesticate their underground wilderness. Hardworking and innovative, they cobble together the necessities and even a few small luxuries: a dartboard, toaster oven, dogs, cats and a gerbil named Peaches. — The Conversation
"The number of people facing housing insecurity, already on the rise, began to climb more steeply as a result of the Great Recession. This upward trend will likely be exacerbated if President Trump’s proposed cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and housing subsidies are enacted, which will force... View full entry
The county’s board of supervisors gave the green light to The Granny Flats Motion project on Tuesday, which would give homeowners up to $75,000 to build a backyard home—if they agree to rent it to a homeless family or individual. On top of that, the county will also streamline the permitting process, an arguably attractive incentive considering that most of these “accessory dwelling units” in U.S. cities are illegal. — CityLab
Los Angeles is undertaking a new effort to curb its ballooning homeless population—paying homeowners to build a 'granny flat' for a homeless family to inhabit in their backyard. According to CityLab, "The pilot, for which the county has earmarked $550,000, will grant two or three of such units... View full entry
In this article on the Huffington Post, Lance Hosey writes about the horror of watching white surpremacists marching in the Charlottesville Downtown Mall on August 11th and 12th of this year. The Mall, which was significantly redesigned in the 1970s, serves as a unavoidable visual reminder of the... View full entry
Very rarely does ethics become a selling point for a client or a selling point when you’re talking about a studio project. It’s very rarely the idea generator. I think most practitioners traditionally came from a comfortable or upper-middle-class. It’s the Jeffersonian ideal: the gentleman designer. Architects in this country tend to have clients who are in the upper income level. And I think that has really been a problem. Our students, many of them, come from underserved communities. — LA Times
Back in July, Archinect featured Woodbury's new dean, Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, as a part of the Deans List series, in an interview about the importance of economic diversity and the school's commitment to egalitarian and practical education. The Los Angeles Times recently conducted a similar... View full entry
So Yale's new residential colleges, which New York architect and former Yale architecture school dean Robert A.M. Stern designed according to the Rogers model, have a very high bar to meet and some tough questions to confront: Do they refresh the Gothic tradition, as Rogers did, or are they a pastiche? Does it make sense for Yale, which claims to prize diversity and inclusion, to replicate the physical world of Rogers' day, when the university's student body was largely WASP and male? — Chicago Tribune
When expanding, most university campuses follow the strategy of replicating the already established style of the existing architecture. Working on Yale's new residential colleges, A. M. Stern and his partner on the project, Melissa DelVecchio, are, too, striving to not stand apart physically or... View full entry
In the unofficial category of "Creative Pollution Solutions," the Dutch firm Studio Roosegaarde is angling to be the winner: the firm has several projects that introduce innovative solutions to existing infrastructural challenges. First up, in partnership with bike-sharing firm OFO, the studio... View full entry
The project, called Paper Monuments, will entail a series of posters plastered all over the city that detail the people, places, events, and movements of the city’s 300-year history.
“When we make decisions that do embody hatred, whether we mean to or not, it allows for society to grow along those frameworks. Our job should be to acknowledge them and counteract them and produce things that elevate the welfare of the constituents that we serve.”
— Co.Design
“It’s not simply about the ways individuals hold onto ideology, but it is more so about the way individuals embed their ideology into the spaces and places we all frequent. For us the Paper Monuments project is still rooted in the fact that these symbols of oppression need to be countered by... View full entry
As workers prepare to remove the charred debris from Grenfell Tower, the specially erected scaffolding and netting around the building that will block the view of their work from the public may be used as a kind of projection screen for local children's painting and art. At least, that's what site... View full entry
Slated to open in 2018, the Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama will seek to tell the truth. Six acres of land owned by the Equal Justice Initiative—the legal services nonprofit Stevenson founded in 1989—will memorialize the more than 4,000 victims of what Stevenson calls racial terror lynching in the American South between 1877 and 1950. A nearby museum will tell the history of slavery, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration as a single narrative. — Citylab
Designed by MASS Design Group—which has previously worked on the Kigali Genocide Memorial—the memorial stems from a comprehensive report on lynchings released in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative. The memorial will feature six-foot columns, each representing counties where lynchings took... View full entry
After fifteen years of development plans tailored to the creative classes, Florida surveys an urban landscape in ruins. The story of London is the story of Austin, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Sydney. When the rich, the young, and the (mostly) white rediscovered the city, they created rampant property speculation, soaring home prices, and mass displacement. The “creative class” were just the rich all along, or at least the college-educated children of the rich. — Jacobin Magazine
Richard Frorida's latest book, The New Urban Crisis, represents the culmination of this long mea culpa. Though he stops just short of saying it, he all but admits that he was wrong. He argues that the creative classes have grabbed hold of many of the world’s great cities and choked them to... View full entry
All 17 members of a White House advisory panel on the arts and humanities resigned en masse Friday in response to President Trump's divisive comments on the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va.
The move follows the mass exodus of major business CEOs who quit two White House panels this week to protest the president's response to last weekend's clashes between far-right groups and counter-protesters.
— LA Times
Last week as multiple CEO's began quitting both the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum in protest of Trump's response to Charlottesville, Trump has decided to not move forward with the Council on Infrastructure. On Friday, the entire Arts Committee resigned over the... View full entry
Melbourne, Australia has been ranked as the most “liveable” city in the world for the seventh consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The EIU’s benchmark annual report titled “The Global Liveability Report 2017,” ranks 140 cities in order of best living conditions.
Melbourne’s 97.5 score is down to perfect assessments in health care, education, and infrastructure, as well as hitting over 95 in stability, and culture and environment.
— qz.com
As in previous years, the top 10 list is mostly comprised of major cities in Australia and Canada, while Vienna — once again — barely misses the first spot by 0.1 percentage points overall. Auckland, Helsinki, and Hamburg manage to claim some coveted spots at the top for their respective... View full entry
After a three-year search that included more than 30 potential sites, the American Institute of Architects Houston Chapter selected the 1906 Riesner Building, to be the home of Architecture Center Houston, which is expected to open in mid-September.
Originally, the three-story Riesner Building was a typical commercial building for its time, complete with double French doors facing the street.
— Houston Chronicle
The winning entry for the 'Re-Imagine Architecture Center Houston' competition, designed by Murphy Mears Architects, proposed to devote the first floor of ReACH to flexible office and meeting space, restore the original brick and openings in the West façade, and re-purpose the Boiler Room for... View full entry
This week we're joined by Inga Saffron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. If you haven't read her latest piece on Henry Wilcots, the relatively unknown architect responsible for finishing Louis Kahn's masterpiece in Dhaka, go read it now. We talk with... View full entry