The second-biggest Italian city is offering a monthly payment of 350 euros ($376) to every resident willing to host a refugee, or an asylum seeker, in their home.
The city of Milan announced Monday with a post on its Facebook page that soon local residents will be paid for giving shelter to one or more refugees.
— Vice
Related:Architectures of the DisasterHow Architects Can Help Nepal (And Learn From Past Disastrous Mistakes/Successes)Ai Weiwei documents life in Greek refugee camp on social mediaThe vast majority of Syrian refugees are seeking refuge in cities, not campsViennese student dorms may Passively House... View full entry
Met with "unequivocal success", as described by Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Architecture Biennial will be back in fall 2017. The Chicago Cultural Center had a bustling three months serving as the venue of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, "The State of the Art of... View full entry
“People involved in building stadiums are usually very reliant on the firms who have demonstrated a strong record in understanding sports sites,” [Christopher S.] Dunlavey said. “BIG is known very well for very innovative architecture and design, but they haven’t been known for that kind of expertise.” — Washington Post
National Football League sports stadium design isn't usually a province of the starchitect, but in typical convention-defying style, the Bjarke Ingels Group isn't letting that deter them. In other parts of the world, starchitects have had mixed success with stadium design; Herzog & de Meuron's... View full entry
Elon Musk’s vision of the Hyperloop — a lightning-fast transportation system that would shuttle passengers at speeds nearing 700-mph using low pressure tubes and air compressors — is slowly coming to fruition in the Nevada desert.
In fact, the first ever Hyperloop tubes are neatly lined up in a ditch, waiting to be assembled and then later tested by Hyperloop Technologies at a site in North Las Vegas.
— Inverse.com
The design of the Hyperloop—an iterative, multi-team process which Archinect investigated in-depth last year—will have another big leap forward during the "Hyperloop Design Weekend" this upcoming January 29-30th at Texas A&M University.However, while CEO of Hyperloop Technologies Rob... View full entry
Governor Cuomo unveiled the sixth signature proposal of his 2016 agenda: transform Penn Station and the historic James A. Farley Post Office into a world-class transportation hub. The project, known as the Empire Station Complex.... is anticipated to cost $3 billion – will be expedited by a public-private partnership in order to break ground this year and complete substantial construction within the next three years. — State of New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced another piece of his proposal to revitalize New York's transportation infrastructure at Madison Square Garden this afternoon. Looking towards a private-public enterprise to develop the site, the proposal is budgeted at $3 billion and take three years to build.While... View full entry
Located in the middle of the Eurasian landmass 3,000km east of Moscow, with a climate that ranges from 30C mosquito-ridden summers to -40C snow-drenched winters, this isn’t the most obvious place for a tech startup hub...
The Academpark is not some random outpost in the middle of nowhere, but the latest part of a plan to revive Akademgorodok, the Soviet science town that was established here in 1957, and long since left to languish.
— the Guardian
Proclaiming that he "want[s] to kiss the earth Kevin Costner style" via Instagram, Jimenez Lai of Bureau Spectacular expressed his joy about being on the same bill as LCD Soundsystem and Ice Cube for this year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where he will be building what he describes... View full entry
For Katherine Craig, the mural is more than a marker of North End’s rising status. The so-called “bleeding rainbow” mural is a cornerstone of her career. And now, since the building’s owner aims to sell or redevelop the property, the artist is taking legal action to protect her work. [...]
The federal suit seeks an injunction that would bar the developer from destroying or otherwise altering The Illuminated Mural [...].
— citylab.com
Related news on Archinect:Muralists and the fragile relationship with the buildings they paint onDetroit issues arrest for "vandal" Shepard FaireyDetroit's struggle to distinguish between graffiti (boo!) and murals (yay!) View full entry
The newly opened portion is just 5km (3 miles)— but the completed highway is set to span over 100km and will connect 10 cities and four universities .... Almost two million people will live less than a mile from the new cycling autobahn [...]
the bicycle highway will be 13-feet wide—or almost double the width of normal cycle paths—and have no crossroads or traffic lights. [...]
it’ll also be greener. RVR estimates that the route will take 50,000 cars off the roads every day.
— qz.com
More on cycling infrastructure:As bicycle ownership in North Korea rises, Pyongyang introduces bike lanesBoris Johnson greenlights London's "Crossrail" bicycle superhighwayGensler proposes "Underline" bike paths in London's abandoned tube tunnelsAtlanta plans big for bikes, and Atlantans turn out... View full entry
When three architecture students from Cal Poly Pomona, Kirill Volchinskiy, Hana Lemseffer and Necils Lopez invest their skills and resources with the community, the possibilities are endless.We are a team of 3 architecture students who have worked for a year to make this project a reality and... View full entry
The 1990 documentary "The Spirit in Architecture: John Lautner" screens in Beverly Hills on January 2, and it includes not only dramatic images of the buildings, but also interviews and insights from the builders, owners, and the architect himself. — Los Angeles Magazine
Like the fine wine of architecture, the work of John Lautner only gets better with age. Whether experienced in exhibition form (the Hammer Museum's 2008 show was a marvelous introduction for those unfamiliar with his canon) to documentary film, Lautner's fearless yet elegant exploration of space... View full entry
The people understood that the monster’s power was fed by liquid gold. It could go anywhere and set up a tower, even in the middle of an old neighbourhood where nobody had asked it to come. [...]
The city, however, was not about to go down without a fight. After all, it had survived many a bad period across the centuries, and was still alive – unlike those kings and queens and powerful companies of old. The neighbourhoods could see they had to get together and fight this monster.
— theguardian.com
Saskia Sassen and her son, Hilary Koob-Sassen, wrote and illustrated an urban fairy tale for theguardian.com, complete with villainous gentrifiers, Chinese skyscrapers, Jane Jacobs-style wisdom, and a cautionary conclusion on "smart" cities.More on Archinect:Fairy Tales 2015 competition winners... View full entry
The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is visiting Lesbos to document the plight of thousands of refugees who arrive daily on the Greek island by boat from Turkey. For the past two days, Ai has been photographing orange rubber dinghies coming into shore, families huddled around fires, people queuing to register at the Moria refugee camp and piles of discarded lifejackets, among other scenes [...]
It is understood Ai will be creating a work in response to the refugee crisis.
— theartnewspaper.com
Here are just a few of Ai Weiwei's recent photos from the Lesbos refugee camp; giving a human face to people and entire families escaping war and persecution in their home countries of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, as well as documenting humanitarian workers, such as the Norwegian group, Drop... View full entry
What they weren’t trivializing or coarsening with commerce, railroad executives were simply neglecting. Whether desperately or cynically, they seemed to understand that redevelopment of their money-losing, nine-acre station would be more palatable if the public could be made to forget the glories of Mr. McKim’s original design. Pink granite walls were allowed to turn gray. Straw-colored travertine looked nicotine-stained. Jules Guerin’s murals disappeared under veils of grime. — nytimes.com
The destruction of Old Penn Station in favor of its soulless, uninspiring replacement has garnered an ample share of outraged pixels—but what if the long-accepted narrative has a twist? Apparently, the inspiring sweep and elegance that is so often attributed to Penn Station had fallen victim to... View full entry
More than a century has passed since explorers raced to plant their flags at the bottom of the world, and for decades to come this continent is supposed to be protected as a scientific preserve, shielded from intrusions like military activities and mining.
But an array of countries are rushing to assert greater influence here, with an eye not just toward the day those protective treaties expire, but also for the strategic and commercial opportunities that exist right now.
— New York Times
Water, oil, krill: Antarctica isn't just an ice-locked science station any longer, but a giant potential resource center hotly pursued by several strategic-thinking nations. Is the pursuit of scientific inquiry being stripped away in favor of the extraction of raw materials? Um, it would appear... View full entry
