MVRDV is known for their interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary architecture and architecture's impact on urban issues. Designing innovative structures like the Tianjin Binhai Public Library and Glass Farm MVRDV will discuss their firm's design ethos and approach in an upcoming exhibition... View full entry
Main Street Renewal is an arm of Amherst Holdings, a real estate investing firm with $20 billion under management. It owns or manages some 16,000 single-family homes, scattered across the Midwest and the Sunbelt. That portfolio makes Amherst one of the biggest, fastest-growing players in institutionally owned rental homes, a $45 billion subsector of the real estate industry that barely existed before the Great Recession. — Fortune
Shawn Tully profiles Amherst Holdings and it's CEO Sean Dobson a "Texan data savant", who plans to use "digitally driven bargain hunting" and "Economies of scale" to "get to 1 million homes in the next 15 years or so." View full entry
After the discovery of inhumane living conditions at a south Texas temporary detention facility made headlines last week, the United States Department of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has moved to relocate upwards of 300 detained migrant children to other sites. The Associated Press reported... View full entry
Olafur Eliasson has been commissioned to make a permanent lighting installation for the Arc de Triomphe, which is due to be inaugurated in 2020. Costing €3m, the project is being financed by the Fonds pour Paris, a foundation set up in 2015 by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo to restore Parisian heritage and support contemporary art. — The Art Newspaper
Eliasson's proposal is still under wraps, and details won't be available until later this summer or early fall, reports The Art Newspaper.It will be a busy year for the iconic landmark on the Champs-Élysées, as artist Christo also announced to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in 2020. View full entry
Six LGBT historic sites have received official designation as local landmarks from the New York City Landmarks Commission, The Villager reports. The sites represent an ongoing effort to expand historic preservationprotections to sites that are significant to the civil rights struggles of the... View full entry
Technically, the sand wasn’t intended for public use. But Manhattan is not your usual island, and beaches are whatever Manhattanites say they are: sidewalks, tar-paper roofs, the hoods of cars or, in this case, acres and acres of landfill. — The New York TImes
Though Manhattan skyline has been the focus of countless photographs, movies and television shows, there are still images out there that can defy expectations. For a brief period, between the late 1960's and the 1980's, the lower West end of Manhattan (known as Battery Park City) was an "ersatz... View full entry
The Los Angeles Public Library wants to make it easier for you to make stuff. The new Octavia Lab maker space/audiovisual studio at the L.A. Central Library is 3,000 square feet designed to help you make your thing. It lets you do everything from 3D printing and using a laser cutter to filming on a green screen and using fancy sewing machines. — LAist
The Los Angeles Public Library launches a new creators studio that brings creative tools to the people of LA. The Octavia lab is named after the pioneering science fiction author Octavia Butler. City Librarian John Szabo told LAist, "she was a dedicated bibliophile and a great user of the Los... View full entry
Copenhagen is the rare city that can have an amusement park at its center, complete with anatopic pagodas, paper mâché mountains and wooden rollercoasters, and still be known as a world class destination for tasteful architecture and design. Tivoli Gardens has seen the city modernize around it... View full entry
A sea of canary yellow office pods is taking shape on a dusty lot off of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. There, Spanish architects Selgascano and global co-working platform Second Home are busy finishing out the group’s new 90,000-square-foot Hollywood outpost, a mesmerizing construction site... View full entry
Join us in celebrating the launch of Single-Handedly: Contemporary Architects Draw by Hand, the latest book by Nalina Moses published by the Princeton Architectural Press. The event will be held at the A+D Museum, with copies of the book sold at Archinect Outpost, on Saturday, June 29th, from... View full entry
It’s because I love my Los Angeles full of texture and a little untamed that I worry in these days of rapid displacement and rampant development.
One of the first things I noticed as the rents in my Hollywood neighborhood went up was that the fluttering silk flags and drawings on torn cardboard and other random street art projects that often would appear overnight suddenly became more and more rare.
— The Los Angeles Times
How does a city maintain its identity under the pressures of global brands and developers hungry for real estate? Though Los Angeles is a city known for destroying its recent past for the elusive present, there are only so many buildings and details this city can turn over before it's a different... View full entry
The head of the Serpentine Galleries has resigned after the Guardian revealed she is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents.
On Tuesday, Yana Peel announced she was stepping down as the chief executive of the prestigious London art gallery so the work of the Serpentine would not be undermined by what she called “misguided personal attacks on me and my family”.
— The Guardian
Announcing her unexpected departure from the Serpentine Galleries in a statement, Yana Peel said, “I have decided I am better able to continue my work in supporting the arts, the advancement of human rights, and freedom of expression by moving away from my current role.” Peel added, “The... View full entry
In the face of increasingly destructive climate collapse, the University of Pennsylvania's McHarg Center for Urban Ecology is launching Design with Nature Now, a sprawling survey of some of the most inventive ecologically-driven landscape infrastructure projects from around the... View full entry
Under a plan announced last week by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, thickets of trees will soon appear in what today are pockets of concrete next to landmark locations, including the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s city hall; the Opera Garnier, Paris’s main opera house; the Gare de Lyon; and along the Seine quayside. — citylab.com
"Islands of freshness" are on the way to Paris, according to a recently-unveiled plan by mayor Anne Hidalgo. The environmentally-aggressive mayor is aiming to have 50 percent of the city's land area taken up by permeable surfaces and planted areas, Citylab reports, and so, she is turning spaces... View full entry
Though the majority of the over 37,000 McDonald's outlets around the world hardly rise to the definition of "architecture," the company is no stranger to spectacular design: some of its first locations, built throughout the Midwest as early as 1955, were remarkable demonstrations of... View full entry