In August, after a multibillion-dollar, year-and-a-half-long battle, Uber agreed to sell its business in China and depart the country.
It was a face-saving retreat for Uber, which got a 17.7 percent ownership stake in Didi and $1 billion in cash. [...]
Investors recently valued Didi at $35 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world. Uber, with operations in almost 500 cities on six continents, is worth $68 billion.
— bloomberg.com
More stories from the Uber-verse:The view from inside a self-driving Uber: "the technology is not quite ready"Uber and the future of on-demand public transitGoogle, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehiclesWomen-only Uber alternatives face pushback from... View full entry
Can cities be built not only to be harmonious with their environment, but to outperform traditional architecture? The residents of Arcosanti, Arizona, which is profiled in this video excerpt from the Atlantic, seem to think so. Part campus, part permanent dwelling, Arcosanti embraces the concept... View full entry
My issue is not with areas being improved, it is how gentrification is about one demographic of our society changing an area for themselves and not for the benefit of everyone. — the guardian
Portland, US: ‘We are currently building our way to hell’“I am a 70 year old carpenter and I have seen more decay in the quality of life in the last three years in Portland, Oregon – pearl of culture in the Great Northwest – with the one-term mayor ‘Chainsaw Charlie Hales’ who was... View full entry
The Architectural League started another cultural year on a high note at the 2016 Beaux Arts Ball, which took place at the new nARCHITECTS-designed A/D/O space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn last Friday. Co-chaired by architects Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown, this year's “Tabula Rasa” theme was... View full entry
CBS has given a put pilot commitment to "A Burglar's Guide to the City," a television series based off the book by BLDGBLOG founder Geoff Manaugh, who interviewed former bank robbers like Joe Loya to explore the role of architecture in crime, and the corresponding shifts in privacy in both the... View full entry
Take away the conceptual heft of Chris Burden's Metropolis II and substitute in a grade-school love for pre-fabricated plastic building blocks and you'd have something like Jorge Parra Jr.'s eight-years-in-the-making Lego model of Los Angeles, which portrays a detailed swath of the city's... View full entry
This week, the focus is on the hard stuff: concrete. Whether that is exploring the Barbican Centre's towering volumes, listening to the author of Concretopia, or learning about two award-winning projects who use concrete in an elegant way, there's plenty of ways to fall in love with the... View full entry
Mr Shan Jixiang, head of the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics, said many of the selected structures tell abundant stories and are witnesses to key events in the nation's history.
He added that the new list will make people aware of the need to preserve more recent architectural sites for future generations. [...]
"Masterpieces of the 20th century prove that Chinese architects' spirit and techniques are well inherited. And they deserve to be passed on to modern times."
— straitstimes.com
98 sites make up China's first 20th-Century Chinese Architectural Heritage List, issued by the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics and the Architectural Society of China. The announcement comes about half a year after the country declared an official end to "weird" architecture.It's not exactly... View full entry
The name of Herzog and de Meuron's proposed new development for downtown Los Angeles' arts district, 6 AM, seems like an hour/mindset that most of its current residents experience only because they stayed up much too late. But no one can stop the dawn of high-concept gentrification from breaking... View full entry
Spiro Kostof, concluding his history, tells us we need "to come to terms with our past and to take shelter and find pride in the continuities of time and place. This is not alone a professional imperative. All of us—architects and users, environmental policymakers and consumers of such... View full entry
In this thoughtful ode to the unexpected charms of brutalism, Felix Salmon explores why the formerly nightmarish architectural style is experiencing a renaissance, or at least a renewed appreciation. Salmon's observation that ubiquitous, unimaginative glass towers have replaced brutalism as the... View full entry
[Ralph Simons'] portrait is the earliest known example of what became the conventional manner of depicting an architect by having him holding one of these instruments of his profession. [...]
Needless to say, this tradition is dying – and not just because architects don’t use compasses, or draw, any more (how do you represent computer-aided design software in a painting?).
— apollo-magazine.com
More on the architect's image:“sensitive, but not girly” – pinning down the typical Hollywood architectWatch the official trailer for Tomas Koolhaas' upcoming documentary, 'REM'"Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect" documentary announced for 2016 View full entry
Studio Gang has worked with the museum before, on its 2003 Masonry Variations exhibition and as a part of the 2009 Transforming Skylines and Communities series. While designs for the installation won't be fleshed out until early 2017, it will most likely follow in the playful, accessible style... View full entry
Fungal biofilm and water sealant failure have added a black patina to the Salk Institute's iconic teak paneling, making the material vulnerable to decay. In order to save what is considered to be one of the world's finest architectural projects (and coolest structural alignment of the sunset save... View full entry
Architecture shapes our environment. But studying architecture shapes how we see, understand and interpret the world. A building, a neighborhood, a city — each is the result of particular priorities, circumstances and choices.It’s a startling realization, especially for young people, but also... View full entry