Noah's Ark will be brought to life once again in the upcoming Children's Museum on the Jewish Museum Berlin campus. The Jewish Museum Berlin Foundation launched an invite-only international competition this past January wherein participants added their own spin in incorporating the biblical story... View full entry
Prime Minister Theresa May recently announced that the newly-formed government will delay making any decisions about building a major nuclear power plant—the first in a generation—until the fall.Economists reacted with alarm to the announcement, according to Bloomberg, since the deferral... View full entry
Just in time for Friday's Rio Olympics, it's time to take a look back at former Olympic villages: specifically, what good are they post-games? In London, the 560 acres of the East End that was transformed into the grounds for the 2012 Olympics have undergone the Olly Wainwright examination in his... View full entry
“One day at around eight in the morning, I was returning from the market when six of the developer’s thugs tackled me outside my home and pushed me into a car,” remembers Xi.
Several others, she says, climbed a ladder to her balcony. Xi says she screamed for her husband, but it was too late. There was a scuffle inside, and then black smoke poured out of their balcony window before the house went up in flames. Xi’s husband burned to death, and the developer’s men escaped.
— marketplace.org
Related stories in the Archinect news:How Chinese families are handling the country's ongoing mass evictionsPhotographer captures the changing face of ShanghaiNow THAT's a skywalk! Jin Mao Tower to open world's highest fenceless, all transparent walkway in Shanghai View full entry
Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's daughter introduced him as a man who has overseen the construction of skyscrapers, thereby qualifying him to somehow take stead of the vastly more complex civic architecture of the United States. Never mind that Donald Trump... View full entry
Searching for a new job? Archinect's Employer of the Day Weekly Round-Up can help start your hunt amid the hundreds of active listings on our job board. If you've been following the feature on our Facebook, Employer of the Day is where we highlight active employers and showcase a gallery of... View full entry
Just months after its spectacular design was unveiled, the Transit Explore Bus had its inaugural run this week on 300 metres of specially constructed test track in Qinhuangdao [...]
The vehicle, which goes up to 60km/h (37mph), runs on tracks with passenger spaces standing two metres above the road so that two lanes of cars can pass undisturbed underneath, helping to alleviate the notorious traffic jams of China’s biggest cities.
— theguardian.com
More transportation News on Archinect:China plans to build an underwater "space station" in the South China SeaTake a look at the rapid urbanization of China's Pearl River Delta'Jet-like' maglev pods are coming to Abu Dhabi's Yas IslandBjarke Ingels Group + AECOM join forces with HyperloopAerial... View full entry
We are overloaded daily with new discoveries, patents and inventions all promising a better life, but that better life has not been forthcoming for most. In fact, the bulk of the above list targets a very specific (and tiny!) slice of the population. As one colleague in tech explained it to me recently, for most people working on such projects, the goal is basically to provide for themselves everything that their mothers no longer do. — Allison Arieff | the New York Times
Last year Allison Arieff served as a juror on our competition, Dry Futures. Revisit some of the winners of the competition:And the winners of Archinect's Dry Futures competition, "Pragmatic" category, are...And the winners of Archinect's Dry Futures competition, "Speculative" category, are...And... View full entry
San Francisco's Millennium Tower has been sinking at a rate of two inches per year since it was completed in 2008, which is about ten inches more than the builders had anticipated the building settling for its entire lifetime. Not to be boring, the tower is also tilting slightly to the northwest... View full entry
Nearly 40 percent of Detroit residents live below the poverty line. In many cities, poor people rent — but the home ownership rate here is high. After the 2008 housing crash, it took the city of Detroit five years to start reappraising homes — and poor homeowners like Hicks, who lives on disability, struggled to pay their taxes. Over the past decade, there have been more than 100,000 tax foreclosures in Detroit. — Marketplace
For more news from the Motor City, check out these links:Previewing the 2016 Venice Biennale: the United States' "Architectural Imagination"Dispatch from the Venice Biennale: a healthy dose of dissent from Detroit Resists, The Architecture Lobby and more"Bleeding Rainbow"... View full entry
The introduction of ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft hasn't had any impact on the number of fatalities related to drunken driving, a newly published study finds.
Researchers at the University of Southern California and Oxford University looked at the 100 most populated metropolitan areas, analyzing data from before and after the introduction of Uber and its competitors, and found that access to ride-sharing apps had no effect on traffic fatalities related to drinking alcohol.
— npr.org
Uber has claimed previously that its services help decrease instances of drunk-driving, by providing an easy alternative to inebriated drivers. Uber cites a study it did with MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, that found "anecdotal evidence" in line with this popular belief, as well as a report... View full entry
To live in New York means to get habituated to the noise of everyday life here...As a neighborhood becomes more homogenous, and its residents sync their noise patterns, noise complaints tend to go down. This may explain why, controlling for other factors, gentrifying areas of the city display higher levels of noise complaints. City residents stop consciously recognizing noise as novel, and it becomes background, even if their bodies don’t always recognize it as such. — Nautilus
“We all love to hate the noise. And yet sitting in silence, I do not feel as if I’ve found an escape from pain: I have simply traded it for a new variety. Shockingly, I realize I want to trade back.”Writer Susie Neilson delves into the pros and cons of urban noise pollution, a truly defining... View full entry
Special traffic regulations giving priority to athletes and VIP visitors to the Rio 2016 games have caused 20km (12.5 mile) traffic jams in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, days ahead of the opening ceremony.
Since the new dedicated Olympic lanes opened on Monday, traffic during the morning rush hour has been reduced to a crawl with average speeds of less than 15 km per hour, according to O Globo.
— the Guardian
Opening on Friday, the Rio Olympic Games aren't exactly going smoothly. Athletes are refusing to move into the apparently-incomplete Olympic Village. The city's favelas are "rapidly gentrifying", —displacing families, in the meantime. Workers are dying. Construction... View full entry
According to the Los Angeles Times, the sunny city of Phoenix, Arizona might become a little cooler, as the city develops a plan to give 25% of the city a tree canopy by 2030. Currently, the city has about half as much shade.The city plans to use a mix of steel 'trees', native plants like... View full entry
While zoning is a perfectly fine strategy to map new suburban cul-de-sac subdivisions and to stop growth, it backfires when we try to use it to guide the future of an evolving, dynamic city like Los Angeles. Zoning is a 20th century relic designed to “protect” existing residents from the encroachment of people and buildings they see as “undesirable.” [...]
we should be following Chicago’s approach by focusing on public spaces, infrastructure and other common assets.
— latimes.com
Related on Archinect:Frank Gehry's Sunset Strip mixed-user approved by LA City Planning Commission, with 15% affordable unitsCalifornia lawmakers turn to "granny flats" to help ease housing shortageMichael Maltzan proposes greening L.A.'s 134 freewayIs Los Angeles becoming a "real" city?LAPD... View full entry