President Donald Trump issued an executive order that establishes a White House Council focused on "eliminating regulatory barriers to affordable housing." The council is to be chaired by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson. The order reads: "These regulatory barriers... View full entry
...one issue stands out as particularly urgent and complex: housing. The lack of new supply, combined with the rising cost of living, has resulted in a severe shortage of affordable housing options for long-time middle and low income residents. As Google grows throughout the Bay Area—whether it’s in our home town of Mountain View, in San Francisco, or in our future developments in San Jose and Sunnyvale—we’ve invested in developing housing that meets the needs of these communities. — Google
Last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company's pledge to invest in the development of affordable housing across the Bay Area. With the multi-billion dollar tech company calling the San Francisco Bay Area home with its beginnings starting over 20 years ago, Google is aware of its... View full entry
Sidewalk Labs, Snøhetta, Michael Green Architecture, and Heatherwick Studio have unveiled a controversial $1.3 billion plan to reprogram a portion of Toronto's industrial waterfront into a new smart city prototype that envisions a wireless, data-driven, and mass timber-filled future for the... View full entry
Russian firm Syndicate Architecture Bureau won an architectural competition organized by the Garage Museum and Strelka KB to design a temporary summer movie theater space in Moscow's Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure. Aerial view of Garage Screen summer movie theater. Photo by Iwan... View full entry
Fieldwork, a new exhibition at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago by American artist Tara Donovan, presents an inventive and imaginative view into the nature of materiality. The dynamic exhibition, made up of a collection of sculptural works by Donovan interpreting a variety of... View full entry
Plans for the much-touted Pershing Square Renew project in Los Angeles appear to be shifting. Curbed reports that three years after being selected as the winning entry for an international competition to redesign the five-acre postmodern urban park, a team led by French landscape architects... View full entry
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has named preservation lawyer and National Trust chief legal officer Paul Edmondson as its new CEO. In a statement announcing Edmondson's selection, Timothy Whalen, chair of the National Trust Board of Trustees, writes, "Through the search, the... View full entry
Little by little, new biometric technologies are making inroads into the domestic sphere. The Wall Street Journal reports that digital fingerprint lock and facial-recognition systems have become a fact of life for some of the wealthiest homeowners and now come standard for many high-end... View full entry
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
