Boris Johnson has a mammoth task on his hands as soon as he enters No.10.
Brexit, climate change and ensuring the UK has a safer, high-quality built environment must be priorities.
— RIBA
The assumption of Boris Johnson to the prime ministership of the United Kingdom has come with no honeymoon period, it seems. This week, as Johnson's selection was formalized, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) issued a pointed and lengthy list of concerns facing the nation's building... View full entry
Forensic Architecture has announced its decision to withdraw from the 2019 Whitney Biennial. The London-based research group has also requested to replace its 10-minute video about the global spread of tear gas and bullets produced by companies linked to Whitney Museum vice chairman Warren Kanders, with new evidence they’ve found that directly links the weapons manufacturer to violence on the Israeli-Palestinian border in Gaza. — Hyperallergic
The fallout over the unethical business ties of certain members of the Whitney Museum of American Art's board of trustees continues unabated. Forensic Architecture's decision to join seven other exhibitors in withdrawing from the prestigious 2019 Whitney Biennial exhibition comes as the art... View full entry
Italian practice Mario Cucinella Architects (MC A) — together with AICOM, RINA Consulting, GAE engineering, Enzo Rizzato, and the consultancy of Mobility in Chain — was recently commissioned by the city of Lecce's Local Health Authority to design the new "Sud Salento" hospital in... View full entry
The world’s first solar road in Normandy, northern France, which opened in 2016, has failed to meet expectations.
The 2.8 square km of solar panels is in part damaged beyond repair and the 1km road did not produce the power the manufacturer Wattway had promised.
Panels were worn out by traffic and joints between the panels were shattered.
— Energy Reporters
After less than three years in operation, the high-profile 1-kilometer trial stretch of the world's first photovoltaic road in northern France has failed to meet expectations. Instead of delivering the promised 790kWh per day, the first year's actual daily power output was only half that amount... View full entry
A quasi-Gothic, Kengo Kuma and Associates-designed 40-story mixed-use skyscraper could be headed to downtown Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. The project, developed in collaboration with architects Ankrom Moisan, landscape architects Berger Partnership, and developer Pacific Virginia, will... View full entry
An organization that relies upon individual goals or performance benchmarks to evaluate employees...needs to be careful to design competitions and structure comparisons that thwart the efforts of some workers to sabotage their colleagues. Otherwise, saboteurs may bring down everyone’s numbers — including their own. — Stanford Business
Associate professor, Szu-chi Huang at the Stanford Graduate School of Business has been studying how competitions within the workplace materialize among larger teams. She explains that competition inside companies "is something that needs to be carefully structured and managed." And that while... View full entry
The Dodgers [...] will unveil plans for a $100-million renovation of Dodger Stadium that will provide a new center field plaza as well as elevators and bridges that will connect the outfield pavilions to the rest of the stadium. [...]
The stadium will maintain its league-high capacity, which is listed at 56,000. And despite all the changes, club officials say the picturesque view of Chavez Ravine fans have become accustomed to will not be disrupted.
— Los Angeles Times
"The new Centerfield Plaza will create a stadium 'front door' with almost two acres of unique food offerings, entertainment and kids areas, retail locations, sponsor activations, more social and standing room areas and greater access for those with special needs," states the description of the... View full entry
Companies want employees to share what they know. After all, research has found that this leads to greater creativity, more innovation, and better performance, for individuals, teams, and organizations. Yet despite companies’ attempts to encourage knowledge-sharing, many employees withhold what they know — a phenomenon known as knowledge hoarding or knowledge hiding. — Harvard Business Review
A team of researchers have been exploring the dynamics behind knowledge sharing in work environments. While this is something many leaders encourage, their study has found that sometimes individuals within a team have certain reasons for hiding knowledge that might be able to help the rest of the... View full entry
The institutions have been jointly awarded £8m from Research England’s Expanding Excellence in England fund to establish the world’s first research Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE). It will lead to a whole new concept of the way we design and construct our buildings. — Northumbria University Newcastle
Maybe buildings of the future don't need to be AI filled structures face mapping our every move. Perhaps they need to be self-sustainable and responsive structures infused with a bit of biology. Architecture author, lecturer, and researcher Dr. Martyn Dade-Robertson shares new discoveries diving... View full entry
Funding in US-based construction tech startups totals just $196.5 million across 44 deals halfway through 2019.
Still, $192.6 million across 44 deals is still significantly lower than the $1.274 billion raised by US-based construction startups in the first half of 2018.
— news.crunchbase.com
The bustling world of construction technology start-ups is off to a slow start in 2019, as mid-year funding statistics point to a marked drop in investment for these insurgent companies over 2018's blockbuster year, Crunchbase reports. Whether or not 2018's record investment, including Katerra's... View full entry
The Urban Land Institute (ULI) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on education and research initiatives supporting responsible land use and sustainability practices. This year the J.C. Nichols Prize has been awarded to Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. In a recent press release ULI... View full entry
[...] when the residents of a 12-story loft building in Chelsea learned that a proposed tower next door threatened to darken most of their windows and block their Empire State Building views, they tried a less confrontational approach.
They banded together to make the developer an unusual offer: $11 million not to build.
— The New York Times
A group of Chelsea condo owners have shown that a million-dollar view can actually be worth $11 million. As J. David Goodman writes in the NYT, "The owners used a typical developer strategy and turned it on its head: They bought the developer’s air rights — normally used to allow for... View full entry
California communities are approving residential building permits at a slower rate than they did last year, a sign Gov. Gavin Newsom faces an even bigger hurdle to reach his housing goals than when he took office in January.
In the first five months of 2019, cities and counties issued permits for an average of 111,000 residential building units per year, according to data released Friday by the California Department of Finance.
That’s a decrease of 12.2 percent from the same period in 2018.
— The Sacramento Bee
The news is mostly bad for California governor Gavin Newsom's plan to build 3.5 million new housing units by 2025, as high land costs, a labor shortage, the effects of President Trump's tax cuts, and virulent NIMBYism threaten to stamp out regulatory reforms enacted over recent years. ... View full entry
The lives and work of England's first practicing women architects are being highlighted in a new update to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in Britain (DNB), the country's standard reference of notable figures from British history. Crafted by Dr. Elizabeth Darling, reader in... View full entry
The Trump administration has not installed a single mile of new wall in a previously fenceless part of the U.S.-Mexico border in the 30 months since President Trump assumed office, despite his campaign promise to construct a “big beautiful wall.” — The Washington Examiner
According to The Washington Examiner, while the Trump administration has replaced over 51-miles of existing border wall fencing, the administration has not actually added any new lengths of wall along the US-Mexico border. In President Donald Trump's two years in office, the administration... View full entry
