On Sept. 16, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell signed three bills that make it a misdemeanor (punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a maximum $1,000 fine) to sit or lie on sidewalks in the bustling tourist district of Waikiki and outlaw relieving oneself in public islandwide.
Homeless advocates say the new laws unfairly target Hawaii’s most vulnerable residents, especially since Waikiki has only one 24-hour public restroom in the crowded district.
— Al Jazeera
In a 2014 report, Hawaii was ranked as the state with highest population of homeless residents, who provoke the ire of local businesses. Some opponents of the new law claim it breaks the traditional "law of the splintered paddle," introduced by King Kamehameha circa 1797. The law states: “Let... View full entry
Recently, a team of pathogen hunters at Columbia University...conducted a survey of the viruses and bacteria in Manhattan’s rats, the first attempt to use DNA to catalog pathogens in any animal species in New York City [...] Although the scientists examined just 133 rats, they found plenty of pathogens. Some caused food-borne illnesses. Others, like Seoul hantavirus, had never before been found in New York. Others were altogether new to science. — NY Times
New York's notorious rat problem is just one of the many complex human-animal interactions that can lead to disease outbreaks. Ebola, which has decimated West Africa and is now appearing in the US, likely spread to humans from contact with infected primates. Avian flu (H5N1) spreads from contact... View full entry
Throughout the past decade, Portuguese artist VHILS – born Alexandre Farto [Lisbon, 1987] – has been making a name for himself by taking apart and reassembling found objects. He uses a multitude of materials and formats to voice his stance on the city, which he bases on his experience of... View full entry
In the Dutch town of Spijkenisse, the Theatre de Stoep designed by UNStudio recently celebrated its grand public opening, not long after the theater was completely realized. Inspired by the type of liveliness only experienced through live theater performances, the new cultural theater features undulating edges and a striking color palette of white and vivid purple, and circular LED lights on its façade. — bustler.net
Check out a timelapse video of the theater's construction below. More details about the project on Bustler. View full entry
Sunday, October 12:A classic American look, feng shui notwithstanding: Investigating the impact of wealthy Chinese immigrants on suburban Seattle's real estate boom.Saturday, October 11:Indiana Ponders Abolishing Licensing for Architects: Part of a state-wide reconsideration of more than "... View full entry
It is a fractal of contemporary Los Angeles architecture, the fragment that both contains and helps explain the whole. [...]
What gives the $165-million project its unusual symbolic power is that it takes the generic stuff of a typical L.A. apartment building — a wood frame slathered in white stucco and lifted above a concrete parking deck — and expands it dramatically to urban scale. [...]
The design takes banality and stretches it like taffy in the direction of monumentality.
— latimes.com
“Seattle was a better opportunity for me than China right now,” Mr. Wang said. “A lot of Chinese families are planning to move here.” — NYT
Robert Frank reports in from Seattle, where wealthy Chinese seeking to relocate and/or invest are driving up the real estate market in eastern suburbs. View full entry
The city’s board of supervisors voted to legalize and regulate short-term stays through a controversial piece of legislation that has been two years in the making [...]
The key changes include a limit on non-hosted rentals for up to 90 days per year. [...]
[The hosts will] also have to pay the city’s hotel taxes. They — not Airbnb — are responsible for certifying that they’re only hosting 90 days a year and for keeping records that prove this.
— techcrunch.com
For two days on the cusp of fall, a gaggle of mayors, journalists, technologists, and civic-minded entrepreneurs convened for The Atlantic’s CityLab 2014 conference in still-balmy downtown Los Angeles. The full title, "Urban Solutions to Global Challenges", jumps off of the presumption that... View full entry
Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, asked eight different designers to submit their proposals for the redesigned currency, to be put into circulation in 2017, and the winning design features images by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta on one side and Oslo-based graphic design firm The Metric System on the other. — theatlantic.com
More details and designs also on Bustler. View full entry
"In all modern cultures, cleaning up merely involves moving “dirt” from one place to another. Five decades ago, cleaning up may have been easier. It would have meant restoring the predominantly organic and compostable discards in the waste stream to its rightful place – namely, the soil –... View full entry
The 10-to-1 vote by the National Capital Planning Commission represented a significant milestone for the tribute to the World War II general and 34th president, which has been stalled since 2011. The vote allows the Eisenhower Memorial Commission to take its new design to the Commission of Fine Arts, the other federal agency that must give a green light before construction can begin. — washingtonpost.com
Of course, the Aspen Art Museum is far more inviting than most edifices when it comes to climbing. The museum exterior is built from Prodema, a composite made of wood and paper pulp, bound by resin, and coated in a wood veneer. The long woven strips that encase the building are placed at regular intervals, creating a ladder-like structure that almost calls out to be scaled. — news.artnet.com
The farther up you look in the world of architecture, the fewer women you see. In this chart, we’ve rounded up some common and publicly available metrics behind this claim. Like thousands of aspiring architects, we’ll start at the bottom and work our way up—while also pausing on the way to consider what these measures mean. — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
Lian Chikako Chang, ACSA's Director of Research + Information and prolific Archinect blogger, has created a series of infographics charting the progress of women's roles in architecture. The statistics are, at a glance, both depressing and hopeful: compared to overall representation in the... View full entry
Wanting to stretch one's fascia, the wood wanting to expand, and the people inside being very minute in comparison with the wood's needs. It's almost as if the house itself is turning and emptying out all the residue of the people, wanting just to be free, free of the people, free of... the spoilage is the word that I'm getting, I just want to keep pushing out further and further and further, and as I do my own body just feels much much more relaxed. — Asher Hartman
Aside from being an emblem of the Arts and Crafts movement and an historical landmark, it turns out the Gamble House in Pasadena, California is also haunted. Or, so it would seem according to performance artist Asher Hartman, who communed with former generations of Gambles in his "psychic reading"... View full entry