The appointment of military engineer Thomas Austin as the next Architect of the Capitol has been announced by a 12-member bipartisan commission of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. Austin, a retired Army veteran and the former Director of Engineering at Arlington National Cemetery, will assume... View full entry
No criminal charges will be filed against defendants in the ongoing Grenfell Tower fire investigation until at least late 2026, according to the latest from the BBC and other UK outlets. London's Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service, which is responsible for administering criminal... View full entry
One major consequence of this difference in design is that the North American double-loaded corridor buildings are much worse at providing family-sized units. To illustrate the point, we’ll go through the different sized apartments one by one, and compare the floor area and design. You’ll notice that the American plans have significantly more floor area for the same number of bedrooms, and have much more lightless interior space up against the common corridor to fill. — Center for Building in North America
Stephen Smith is a former journalist and the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Building in North America. His analysis of spatial challenges created by multifamily apartments and zoning conditions was featured recently in Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. This is an adroit relaying... View full entry
Houston’s iconic Rothko Chapel is expanding for 2026 and recently broke ground on Phase 2 of its $42 million campus plan. The initiative will yield two new buildings designed by Brooklyn-based Architectural Research Office (ARO) and an outdoor garden from Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects... View full entry
In case you missed it, we recently launched a survey to check in on the community’s feelings about the current business conditions in architecture. If you haven’t had a chance to fill it out yet, we’d love to hear from you! Your insights are invaluable in helping us gauge the current state... View full entry
Niall Patrick Walsh wrote the final (of 26 features) chapter of Archinect In-Depth: Artificial Intelligence. Therein “New contributions on the topic from Autodesk's Mike Haley and Superusers author Randy Deutsch are joined by earlier reflections from throughout the series by Richard Saul Wurman... View full entry
BIG Partner Kai-Uwe Bergmann has posted an update to the firm's new contribution to the Toronto skyline, KING Toronto. The scheme is being developed at over 600,000 square feet alongside Diamond Schmitt Architects for clients Westbank Corp and Allied Properties. The project, which began... View full entry
The Texas Society of Architects has selected 15 projects in the Lone Star state as winners of the 2024 Design Award. The annual contest judged this year by Gordon Gill, Roberto de Leon, and Celia Esther Arredondo Zambrano drew 251 entries of “incredible caliber.” The winners will be... View full entry
New York City's recently launched Office Conversion Accelerator Program has drawn interest from 64 building owners in Manhattan as planning officials mull changes to help speed up the process intended to deliver 20,000 new units of housing by 2033. The market for conversion in Lower... View full entry
This week's edition of our curated jobs roundup from Archinect Jobs highlights seven employers with exciting career opportunities for architects, designers, and marketing professionals in Philadelphia. For helpful guidance on how to get that next job, make sure to check out Archinect's Guide to... View full entry
The Berkeley Rupp Prize has been awarded to Sandhya Naidu Janardhan, the Mumbai-based architect and founder of Community Design Agency (CDA). Janardhan has garnered praise for her democratizing work bringing important design ideas to marginalized communities. She has been involved in several... View full entry
The Tulane School of Architecture has received an anonymous $2.91 million gift to help establish a new Center on Climate Change and Urbanism. The cornerstone donation will be put towards supporting five years of research initiatives as well as new faculty and fellowship positions for an... View full entry
Over the past decade or so, bleacher stairs have become a ubiquitous marker of contemporary public architecture. It’s time for the trend to stop.
Its subsequent proliferation serves as a good example of how avant-garde design, or at least a consumerist version of it, filters down to the mainstream.
The broader point is that architects need to be more inventive as they plan new public spaces, and their patrons need to demand that those spaces are accessible for the entire population.
— The Dallas Morning News
The ubiquitous “bleacher stair” feature can be seen in designs for the Studio Museum of Harlem, Perez Art Museum Miami, and the new Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History (just by my count) and can be traced to Rem Koolhaas’ design for Prada’s NYC flagship in 2001, says... View full entry
Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) has announced architect, urban planner, and academic Jose Castillo as its next Department of Architecture Chair. Castillo, the co-founder of the Mexico City-based studio a|911, has taught previously at UPenn, Tulane... View full entry
University of Stuttgart professor Achim Menges has shared details of a new research-led observation tower project called Wangen Tower after its realization earlier this month at the regional garden showcase Landesgartenschau Wangen im Allgäu in southern Germany. The project is a collaboration... View full entry
