It's hard to remember that just a few decades ago it was difficult, if not impossible, for a woman alone to take out a mortgage. Federal legislation changed that.
And yet, it's still surprising to learn how dominant single women have become in the housing market today: Their share is second only to married couples, and twice that of single men.
— npr.org
Related stories in the Archinect news:Millennials, not forming enough householdsA look at the growing influence of immigrants on the American housing marketLooking to buy a home in SF? Good luck View full entry
Bjarke Ingels' unfurling wall-based pavilion joins four summer houses—designed by Asif Khan, Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, and Yona Friedman—to create this year's Serpentine Architecture Program. Each of the four summer houses riffs on the adjacent Queen Caroline's Temple designed in... View full entry
Metro is negotiating an agreement with Lyft aimed at learning more about ride-share trips that begin and end at key Metro stations [...]
The relationship would last at least a year and would give Metro a rare peek at data typically kept private. The deal, one of the first of its kind in the United States, would shed light on the role that ride-sharing plays in ... the so-called "first mile, last mile" gap [...]
In exchange for Lyft's data, Metro would advertise the service to its riders
— latimes.com
Lyft's recent advertising has also been flaunting its connection with public transit – ads all over the US depict the local city's rail map with branching pink veins, suggesting how Lyft can extend existing public transit infrastructure (even though you're still definitely in a stranger's... View full entry
Most modern Chinatowns are serving less as a singular manifestation of Chinese-American life than as a central gathering place for people to experience Chinese culture...And indeed, Chinatowns themselves were often built on the ground of former ethnic enclaves that had organically dissolved...But as Chicago’s Chinatown demonstrates, this is not a predictable story. More than a hundred years after its founding, the neighborhood has a dynamism that can’t be neatly scripted. — Next City
As Chinatowns across the U.S. succumb to gentrification and shifting cultural preferences, writer Anna Clark spotlights the particular booming growth and expansion taking place in Chicago's Chinatown. More in relation to urban growth: Shocker: New York tops list of most expensive cities for... View full entry
Earlier today, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) announced that Graham Harman, Ph.D. will be joining its Liberal Arts faculty. Harman, who taught previously at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, has played a pivotal role in the development of "speculative realism"... View full entry
Masdar City, when it was first conceived a decade ago, was intended to revolutionise thinking about cities and the built environment.
Now the world’s first planned sustainable city – the marquee project of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) plan to diversify the economy from fossil fuels - could well be the world’s first green ghost town.
As of this year [...] managers have given up on the original goal of building the world’s first planned zero-carbon city.
— theguardian.com
Masdar City previously in the Archinect news: Get a drone's eye view of Foster + Partners' Masdar City in Abu DhabiFully Charged visits Foster-designed Masdar CityInside Masdar City: a modern mirage View full entry
A directive issued on Sunday by the State Council, China’s cabinet, and the Communist Party’s Central Committee says no to architecture that is “oversized, xenocentric, weird” and devoid of cultural tradition. Instead, buildings should be “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye.” The directive also calls for an end to gated communities.
The guidelines come two months after a high-level meeting to address some of the problems that have arisen as a result of China’s rapid urbanization.
— nytimes.com
The New York Times notes that this will most likely result in "stricter design standards for public buildings":Wang Kai, vice president of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, under the Ministry of Construction, said that functionality should take precedence in public buildings. “We... View full entry
The book is devoted to a specific case study of binationalism and its relationship to urbanity: a Turkish community in Germany. However, Bernd’s insights are quite universal. Since the methodology is clearly structured and easily replicable, it can be applied to most countries and to different... View full entry
The inaugural Conscious Cities Conference is a little over one week away. Happening at Arup's London office on March 1, the one-day conference is the UK's first event of its kind and is part of the year-long Health, Wellbeing and Architecture programming from the Museum of... View full entry
The [Taylor] family is part of a small subset of affluent homeowners who home-school their kids—but not for typical reasons of wanting to provide religious instruction or because they don’t like the public schools nearby. Instead, they say they can create their own optimal learning environments by buying or building homes in which almost every room is a classroom. [...]
“When you do a house from the ground up, you do it for how your family lives. Home schooling for us is a lifestyle”
— wsj.com
More at the intersection of space and education:Are English universities picking up "American habits" as campus construction booms?Building Design from the Inside Out: RISD’s Interior Architecture departmentChinese Colleges Are Trying to Look Like the Ivy LeagueTod Williams Billie Tsien... View full entry
The [Planning] department completed a draft report last month on how to expand the existing landmark designation to include aspects of the interior that date back to Wright’s 1948 design. [...]
“If anything, the inside is more important than the exterior,” said Turner, a professor emeritus of art at Stanford University. “It’s one of Wright’s most exquisite designs, and it’s almost exactly the way it was originally.”
— sfchronicle.com
More news on architecture's caped crusader, Frank Lloyd Wright:Watch (an animated) Frank Lloyd Wright talk about arrogance in this new shortSociety of Architectural Historians Announces Major Grant for Charnley-Persky House Conservation Management PlanFrank Lloyd Wright's Sturges House is for... View full entry
Ambition or talent: which matters more to success?
I think it’s probably ambition, because if you have talent without ambition, the talent goes to waste. But if you have talent and want to do something with it, you follow your intuition.
— Financial Times
The Society of Architectural Historians will induct Barry Bergdoll, Diane Favro, Richard Longstreth and Therese O’Malley as SAH Fellows at its 2016 Annual International Conference in Pasadena. Fellows of the Society of Architectural Historians are those individuals who have distinguished... View full entry
Given the threat of ongoing lead exposure and the community’s well-founded mistrust of government, should families be offered at least temporary resettlement while upgrades, repairs and enhancements are made to Flint’s badly contaminated water infrastructure?
I ask this fully aware of how unprecedented and complex such a policy would be. After all, some 9,000 young children may have been exposed to contaminated water.
— Washington Post
For more articles on urban health issues like the ongoing crisis in Flint, check out these links:America has an infrastructure problem – and it's getting criticalThe crisis in Flint and why architects should care about decentralizing our water systemsMore and more people are dying as a result of... View full entry
In December, Airbnb released a trove of data that showed about 95 percent of its hosts in New York City were playing by the rules. But an independent report released Wednesday cast a shadow on that rosy picture, claiming that the company “misled the media and the public” by removing more than 1,000 listings from its site in November before making available the data
[...]
The report portrays the December release as a cynical attempt to garner good press...
— New York Times
“Airbnb continues to show a blatant disregard for New York laws designed to protect the rights of tenants and prevent the proliferation of illegal hotels," said Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for New York’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman.For more on the "disruptive" influence of Airbnb... View full entry