Maa2too3a, or ‘Happin’ in English, is a free app that uses news and crowd-sourced information to geo-tag disruptive events in the city as they occur, allowing users to mitigate risks or simply save time by avoiding them. Launched in May 2013, the app now has over 100,000 users, according to the developer, Mohammed Taha. “It’s a tool to keep people safe,” he says. And on calmer days, it can be used to simply avoid traffic jams or other routine problems. — nextcity.org
Proponents of unpaid internships say the jobs help aspiring professionals get on-site experience and résumé entries that can spur their careers. Detractors insist that unpaid positions exploit workers, take jobs from would be entry-level employees, favor the privileged who can afford to make no money, and perhaps most importantly, break longstanding labor laws... employment defense lawyers are increasingly advising clients to start paying interns at least the minimum wage... — forbes.com
Obscene was the Venice Biennale of Rem Koolhass
On one side the fetishism of the industrial products and components (Italian International Pavilion) and on the other the celebration of the political failure of the world… as a naive agitprop able to wrap the architect with politically correct conscientiousness… self-complaisance for this comfortable dualism.
— new-territories.com
We are in the pursuit of the diagrammatic hoax he himself promoted 20 years ago, same arrogance of reductionism to avoid embracing and gathering complexity in a productive way, in an aesthetic way, for a critical production, not for a simulation of a critical behavior… sponsored by Rolex. View full entry
The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, "Fundamentals" -- a.k.a. the 2014 Venice Biennale -- officially opened on a festive note with the awards ceremony that took place on June 7 at the Giardini at la Biennale.Awards and Special Mentions were given to national pavilions and individuals to... View full entry
Not unlike his buildings—with their uncompromising linearity, precise use of natural light, and stark white facades—Richard Meier is a striking figure. In his signature round spectacles, a perfectly pressed suit, and with that recognizable shock of white hair, the Pritzker Prize-winning modernist invited filmmaker Barbara Anastacio on a tour of the newly opened Richard Meier Model Museum. — NOWNESS
Richard Meier’s Models on Nowness.com View full entry
Cars offer more than just convenience: they can give lower income Americans an economic leg up. [...]
While tracking households that had participated in two federal housing voucher programs, [a study] found that car owners were twice as likely as transit users to find jobs and four times likelier to retain them. Car-owning households were also able to locate near better neighborhoods and schools. This reaffirmed previous work ... arguing that car ownership plants the seeds for upward mobility.
— thedailybeast.com
In 2002, CINTRI, a branch of Canadian firm Cintec Environment Inc., was granted an exclusive 50-year contract to collect commercial and residential waste in Phnom Penh and keep the city’s main streets clean. The exact details of the company’s agreement with city hall have never been made public, but since the deal was inked, Phnom Penh’s population has swelled from just over one million to two million people. The population boom and its attendant urban sprawl seem to have caught CINTRI off-guard — nextcity.org
"Time Space Existence" tells the story behind La Fabrica, the well-known headquarters of Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura that is located in a repurposed cement factory in Barcelona...By reimagining La Fabrica in new locations -- particularly in Venice -- the exhibition serves as a case study that goes beyond the structure's physical presence and explores its timelessness throughout the last century. — bustler.net
As one of the many Collateral Events at the 2014 Venice Biennale, the exhibition opens to the public at The Palazzo Bembo starting June 7 through Nov. 23, 2014.Check out more details on Bustler. View full entry
Ask almost any of the local architects in this Mexican border town and they will tell you Tijuana has become a hotbed of building activity.
The growing demand for designer homes, they say, is being driven primarily by Tijuana natives returning to the city...
Most of the developments in Tijuana are for upper-middle-class families ... but the spare designs and basic building materials, especially concrete, used by Mr. Medina and others make it possible for more residents to have designed homes.
— nytimes.com
Architectural anomalies which delight skaters, as captured by Spain’s journeyman snapper. — redbull.com
City policymakers will have objective standards to compare their services and performance with other cities around the world. And just as significant, the people of cities — civic, business organizations, ordinary citizens — will be able to access the same new global standards. — Citiscope
This is a big, global deal. The International Organization for Standardization, based in Geneva, has issued a list of standards dictating the precise kind of data cities should be collecting, to gauge performance and character. Previously, comparisons between supposedly identical data points in... View full entry
A new Tumblr showcases predictions of signage in our future. View full entry
An exploded false ceiling and a lineup of lavatories become the stars as Koolhaas delves into the overlooked innards of today's buildings – and shows how architecture has become nothing more than cardboard — theguardian.com
Last week we reported on NCARB's announcement that it would offer a path to licensure through academic programs, making it possible for architecture students to be licensed upon graduation. The proposal prompted a pretty divisive set of reactions from Archinect commenters, some excited by the... View full entry
Forty years after "Reyner Banham loves Los Angeles" another architect with the gaze of the foreigner takes us on a ride through the City of Angels, or as the Turkish architect Orhan Ayyüce likes to refer to it: "La Citta Capitalista". [...]
An ‘exclusive industrial town,’ Vernon borders on the cosmopolitan downtown of Los Angeles... Are alternative forms of housing, agriculture, and nature imaginable in a town that relies solely on industry and transport?
— IABR
Los Angeles architect Orhan Ayyüce takes a weekend drive through a vacant Vernon, in the following short film for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Submitted by the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and run by Ayyüce, The Vernon City Project is being featured in... View full entry