Elon Musk has plenty of other ideas. If anyone asks and he has a moment to explain, he'll talk distractedly of as-yet-unrealized concepts—a vertical takeoff-and-landing supersonic electric jet for long-distance travel; an entirely new form of transport that he's named the Hyperloop... He is a man with the rare problem of having more ideas for how to radically change our world than the time to realize them.
Still, you do what you can. And so this Monday evening, his mind is on space suits.
— GQ
Related:A look inside Tesla's growing Gigafactory: "It will blow your mind."Unpacking the Hyperloop's lofty promisesElon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to university students and engineersChallenging the space-age Manifest Destiny narrative, as Elon Musk vies to move humans to MarsDid... View full entry
Concern is growing over the threat to the Roman antiquities of Sabratha after Isil supporters temporarily occupied the Libyan town. [...]
After the recent destruction of antiquities by Isil extremists in Iraq (Mosul, Nineveh, Nimrud and Hatra) and Syria (Palmyra), there is great concern about Libya. Sabratha, a Unesco World Heritage Site, was a Phoenician trading centre in the fifth-century BC and later became an important Roman port.
— theartnewspaper.com
Previously in the Archinect news:The new Monument Men: with 3D cameras and GPS data against cultural annihilation in Syria and beyondISIS militants have reportedly blown up Palmyra's Arch of TriumphISIS blows up 2,000-year-old Baalshamin temple in PalmyraISIS beheads leading archaeologist in Palmyra View full entry
When [Jonathan] Solomon asked Hadid about the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which features more than 100 works of contemporary design, including socially conscious works like Jeanne Gang's proposal to remake a Chicago police station in order to build trust between police and residents, the visitor damned the exhibition with faint praise.
"I think it's a cute show," she said ... The exhibition, she added, "doesn't give me an idea of what to expect in the next 10 years."
— chicagotribune.com
Hadid's comments on the Biennial resonated with what her office director and partner, Patrik Schumacher, had expressed earlier via a Facebook post, criticizing the lack of digital design work in favor of exhibitions that he said show "guilt and bad conscience" in the profession. After Hadid's... View full entry
The policy, limiting building heights of 75 to 240 feet within a half-mile radius of the Disneyland Resort, isn’t meant to keep outsiders from getting a peek at the rides and attractions.
Rather, the Disney Cone is aimed at limiting views of the outside world for the 25 million-plus annual visitors who walk into the parks for a sense of escape and fantasy – just as Walt Disney had first envisioned on Disneyland’s opening day, more than 60 years ago.
— ocregister.com
Chinese citizens have for decades been limited in public services they can access by their household registration [...]
The problem is especially acute for the millions of migrant workers who are often forced to either leave their children in the countryside or place them in unregistered and often sub-standard schools in the city. [...]
“The move is to improve basic public services in urban areas and provide conveniences for residential permit cardholders”
— theguardian.com
More news from China:Touring China's past, present, and future: an examination of "Architectural Guide China"Beijing's latest "airpocalypse" is bad enough for city to issue first ever red alertFour O Nine's Andrei Zerebecky shares his must-see architectural sites in ShanghaiExploring China's urban... View full entry
If you are trapped in the dream of the other, you are fucked. — LARB
ON 4 NOVEMBER 1995, Gilles Deleuze committed suicide by jumping from his Parisian apartment window. He left behind a philosophical legacy that went on to influence numerous academic disciplines: continental philosophy, cinema studies, literary theory, cultural criticism, social and political... View full entry
Over Skype from their homebase in Beijing, WAI Architecture Think Tank partners Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski spoke with Paul Petrunia, on our latest Mini-Session for the Next Up series. Their contribution to the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a rumination on manifestos, looks to the... View full entry
But if L.A. is going to remain a creative capital, its civic and cultural leaders are going to need to do more than offer really great talk about how great we are...This can start with the Otis Report on the Creative Economy...If this report is to be more than just a feel-good data dump, it could use some solid recommendations on how L.A. compares to other cities culturally and how we might improve the situation for artists and cultural organizations, both small and large. — Los Angeles Times
More about arts districts on Archinect:Venice Beach's ongoing grapple with the tech titan invasionDowntown LA's vision of an architecture and design super clusterHow one urban planner is helping revamp a Miami suburb "without gentrification"With a little compromise, illegal urban squats like... View full entry
A purple pedestrian bridge between two terminals that link Tijuana International Airport and San Diego over the U.S.-Mexico border opened to passengers Wednesday morning.
The Cross Border Xpress is the first project to join a site in the U.S. with a foreign airport terminal. [...]
The $120-million private venture aims to serve about 2.4 million fliers each year who usually would have to queue up in busy border crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa on the California side.
— latimes.com
Health warnings have been issued this week as atmospheric pollution is set to rise to dangerously high levels on Thursday and Friday, with levels of breathable toxic particles reaching 100 micrograms per cubic meter.
In a bid to stop pollution reaching dangerous levels, the council is making the city's buses and metro free on Thursday and Friday to reduce the emissions caused by Turin's heavy traffic.
— thelocal.it
Other cities coping with mitigating air pollution:Beijing's latest "airpocalypse" is bad enough for city to issue first ever red alertCar-free events significantly improve air qualityDelhi’s air pollution is worse than Beijing's. A new app measures the air quality in real time.Giant bubbles... View full entry
If you’re asking yourself, “What should I give the architect(s) in my life?” the answers are here: we came up with a slew of architect-appropriate gifts, ranging from clothing to furnishings to apocalyptic salvation, for that special detail-oriented someone. The best part? Absolutely no... View full entry
College officials say 1950s-era buildings that are peppered across the Costa Mesa campus — many of them designed by renowned architect Richard Neutra — are no longer able to accommodate the school's rising population. [...]
"We appreciate the Neutra buildings for what they were and what they meant to the campus, but times do change," trustee Mary Hornbuckle said. "We have to be responsive to the needs of the 21st century student."
— latimes.com
Wi-Fi goes through walls, but it isn’t so great at getting through human bodies. Based in this piece of knowledge, a team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has built a detector that can see people through walls using Wi-Fi signals. It can recognize individuals and can even track the movement of their limbs with spooky accuracy. — Fast Company
If you've been trying to duck the information age by keeping a low online profile, not getting a smartphone, or even living off the grid, you are now officially out of luck: your body itself is a source of information thanks to its relative impenetrability by WiFi signals. Although it's a blow for... View full entry
Dr. Gerald Brett Weiss ... was killed when he was hit from behind while riding his bicycle in the community of Indian Wells, CA. [...]
his family won a $5.8 million judgment against Indian Wells, claiming that the city was negligent in not providing sufficient width for bike lanes or lighting [...]
California is one of thirteen states that follows the Pure Comparative Fault Rule, meaning that even if the city is only partially at fault—even only one percent—the plaintiff can recover damages.
— ssti.us
Weiss was hit from behind by an allegedly drunk driver in June of 2012, on a road that, previous to a redesign in 2005, had been marked as a bike route and had bike lanes.More news on cycling design and safety:Senator proposes mandatory helmets for California cyclistsProtected bike lanes... View full entry
Canada's national theme for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale will be a multimedia investigation of the country's resource extraction industry, as announced earlier this week by the Canada Council for the Arts. Titled "Extraction", the project profiles and "radically rethinks" Canada's rise as... View full entry