Beginning on Monday, March 7, 2016, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will no longer prosecute most violations or infractions, and the NYPD will no longer arrest individuals who commit these offenses – such as littering, public consumption of alcohol, or taking up two seats on the subway – unless there is a demonstrated public safety reason to do so. This initiative will enable the NYPD to devote its resources to investigating serious crimes... — Manhattanda
New Yorkers rejoice! A new initiative announced by the Manhattan District Attorney, the NYPD Commissioner and the Mayor means that you're now less likely to get arrested for sipping on a tallboy on your way back from a bodega.While you still may get a summons and have to pay a fine, the... View full entry
Twelve firms, including Greg Lynn Form, MOS Architects, Preston Scott Cohen Inc., and Zago Architecture have been selected by curators Cynthia Davidson and Mónica Ponce de León to create speculative architectural presentations for the 2016 U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The presentations... View full entry
Unlike industries such as automotive, which spend big bucks hiring branding and naming experts, architects often name themselves – sometimes on the fly.
There’s the story about ARO (Architecture Research Office) in New York. The name is generic, but what can you expect from the partners who named themselves on the way to a meeting, said Christian Unverzagt, design director at Detroit-based M1/DTW, a multidisciplinary studio specializing in design.
— Crain's Detroit Business
Architects spend years designing a single project, so it may come as a surprise that they sometimes name themselves in only a few minutes. While some firms have chosen a more clever approach to naming—Design, Bitches and BIG (with web address BIG.dk) spring to mind—many firms seem to choose... View full entry
“It’s Drake, "Hotline Bling". It’s what I’m listening to right now. I don’t know why.” — Dame Zaha Hadid, Desert Island Discs
I don't think anyone would have predicted her love of Midnight Cowboy. Hadid and Kirsty Young, host of BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs", discuss the Pritzker Prize-winning architect's childhood in Baghdad and London, how she deals with conflict, and the evolution of her career, pausing... View full entry
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery wants to create a public space that could rival Canalside while expanding and remaking one of the city’s most recognizable institutions.
And gallery officials are looking to some of the most respected architects in the world to make it happen.
They have narrowed the list of potential architects for the gallery’s upcoming expansion project to five firms with experience building in challenging urban environments.
— the Buffalo News
Located in the historic, Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Delaware Park, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery is one of the major cultural hotspots of New York State's second largest city. Now, the contemporary and modern art gallery plans a major expansion of its facilities, which originally opened in... View full entry
...eye-catching edifices began as China’s way of announcing its arrival as a powerful player on the world stage. Now, however, the Chinese government has changed course: It has officially declared this to be “weird” architecture that must be stopped. Chinese leaders have turned their backs on these structures, a shift that underscores China’s new conception of itself and its ambitions for the future [...] — the New Republic
"But the government’s mandate explicitly addresses both the function and form of new buildings, and the planning imperative seems designed to go beyond improving the quality of life. The end of “weird” architecture ties in to the government’s recent efforts to champion frugality... View full entry
While cities like Dallas and San Francisco have rebounded strongly since the recession, many other places are still struggling for economic growth and prosperity. As time goes on, we're seeing a divergence between successful parts of the country and the non-successful parts.
More than 50 million Americans live in "distressed" ZIP codes, according to a new report from the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington D.C. think-tank.
— Fast.Co Exist
"These areas—largely concentrated in the South, Southwest, and the Rust Belt—are suffering a "recovery gap" driven by low home investment, shuttering businesses, and poor job opportunities."According to the report, economic opportunities are intimately tethered to geography in the United... View full entry
For a while I’ve held the belief that identifying oneself as an architect is a kind of drag, a mannered persona donned for effect. How else to describe the clichéd sartorial signifiers: extreme eyewear, black daywear and designer footwear? As the education of an architect is so historically weighted to a canon of male practitioners, theorists and educators, a woman entering the field often operates as a kind of architectural androgyne... — Mimi Zeiger | Architectural Review
"...we are trained to see world of design through black-framed, male-coloured glasses. Gender differentiation, then, comes with a thorny rhetorical question: ‘What’s the difference?’ If the goal is to recognise talent, experimentation and innovation, there seems no reason to create a binary... View full entry
Google said on Monday it bears "some responsibility" after one of its self-driving cars struck a municipal bus in a minor crash earlier this month.
The crash may be the first case of one of its autonomous cars hitting another vehicle and the fault of the self-driving car. [...]
Google said in the filing the autonomous vehicle was traveling at less than 2 miles per hour, while the bus was moving at about 15 miles per hour.
— reuters.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:U.S. says computers qualify as drivers in Google's autonomous vehicles; won't even have to go to the DMVThe U.S. just got $4 billion to spend on self-driving carsAdapting self-driving cars to the world of humansDawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's... View full entry
One in five women worldwide say they would not encourage a woman to start a career in architecture [...]
dissatisfaction among women is lower in practices where a significant proportion of management are women, and in practices with regular career development reviews and/or mentoring schemes, with mentoring the better of the two. [...]
Nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of women worldwide say they have experienced sexual discrimination, harassment or victimisation during their career
— architectural-review.com
Sigh. For more data on women in architecture, check out Archinect's Salary Poll.Other related news:Women in Architecture Awards recognize Odile Decq and Julia Peyton-JonesUn-Forgetting Influential Voices: Women in Architecture #wikiD Writing WorkshopZaha Hadid announced as winner of 2016 Royal... View full entry
In 1997 two architects set out to rethink Lagos, an African megacity that had been largely abandoned by the state. Amid the apparent chaos and crime, they discovered remarkable patterns of organisation. Two decades later, Rem Koolhaas and Kunlé Adeyemi discuss the past, present and future of the city – and reveal why their own project never saw the light of day — theguardian.com
"...it was the ultimate dysfunctional city – but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency." - Rem KoolhaasRelated stories in the Archinect news:Koolhaas guides viewers through bustling Lagos... View full entry
Vienna has once more been named the city with the best quality of life for business professionals by Mercer Consulting, the world’s biggest human resources company.
It headed a top 10 dominated by neighbouring cities in Germany and Switzerland, together with Auckland (3), Vancouver (5) and Sydney (10).
The survey is intended to give multinational companies a reference point when deciding how to compensate staff for postings.
— globalconstructionreview.com
According to the Mercer report, the world's most desirable cities for business professionals to relocate to are:Vienna, AustriaZurich, SwitzerlandAuckland, New ZealandMunich, GermanyVancouver, CanadaDusseldorf, GermanyFrankfurt, GermanyGeneva, SwitzerlandCopenhagen, DenmarkSydney... View full entry
Odile Decq has won the Jane Drew Prize and Julia Peyton-Jones has been awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in the annual Women in Architecture Awards.
The judges described Odile Decq as ‘a creative powerhouse, spirited breaker of rules and advocate of equality’. [...]
The judges celebrated Julia Peyton-Jones’ ‘incredible global impact achieved with limited resources – and as someone who has done so much to nurture architectural vision and make architecture available to many people’.
— architectural-review.com
Related on Archinect: 12 innovative architects (and women) of MarylandZaha Hadid announced as winner of 2016 Royal Gold MedalDiana Agrest gets profiled as one of NPR's "50 Great Teachers"Where are the women? Measuring progress on gender in architectureThe uphill climb to gender equity continues... View full entry
In 1980, for instance, fewer than 12 percent of American workers commuted for 45 minutes or more one way, according to the Census.
The Census didn't even bother separating out 60- and 90-minute commuters in 1980, since it was relatively rare. But they began tracking these mega-commuters in 1990. That year, 1.6 percent of workers commuted 90 minutes or more one way. In 2014, 2.62 percent of workers were commuting this long, an increase of 64 percent over the prevalence in 1990.
— Washington Post
More about urban mobility:So Cal has dumped a lot of money into transit projects, but there's been little pay-off so farThe Ehang passenger drone might be another way people will get around town somedayIs America actually shifting away from its car obsession? Not entirely.Think driverless cars... View full entry
“What I realized is that they have very little power,” Mr. Viet, 28, said of his fellow urban planners. “The fates of the buildings were being decided by someone else.”
[...] when Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings — spanning the colonial to modernist eras — were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
— nytimes.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Hanoi's alleys struggle to accommodate their new neighbors: high-rise developmentsAs Myanmar Modernizes, Architectural Gems Are EndangeredInside the famous Phnom Penh cinema that has become a living nightmare View full entry