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Dallas Area Rapid Transit has joined a national effort to explore how autonomous buses could shuttle people around cities in the future.
It is one of about a dozen transportation agencies that are part of the Automated Bus Consortium, which will research driverless buses and run pilot projects to better understand how they could be rolled out nationwide.
— Dallasnews.com
The consortium, whose membership includes the transit agencies of Los Angeles County and Atlanta, and the Michigan Department of Transportation, was created by AECOM and aims to begin testing a fleet of 75 to 100 full-sized automated buses in major cities by 2021 or 2022. Todd Plesko, Dallas... View full entry
Texas, one of the gems of the Southwest, offers beautiful landscapes and a one of a kind history. As far as notable buildings are concerned, Texas is home to Renzo Piano's Menil Collection, I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall, and Tadao Ando's The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. With structures as... View full entry
The tinted world of tomorrow is coming, and airports—mini-cities of steel, concrete and lots and lots of glass—are interested. In a test last fall, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport outfitted one of its gates with a new type of “smart glass” that can adjust for sunlight exposure. The obvious point is to keep travelers from getting overheated—but the exercise also brought a more lucrative benefit. — Bloomberg
A Cornell-led study at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport found that implementing a new type of electrochromatic 'smart glass' at one of its gates not only led to cooler, more pleasant surface temperatures in the waiting area, but the tinted glass, and the resulting dimmer light in the neighboring bars and... View full entry
The Margaret McDermott Bridge was supposed to be open to pedestrians and bicyclists by now, but the arches over the Trinity River remain closed partially over concerns about broken cables.
The issue centers around problems with the cables -- and their resistance to heavy winds -- that connect the arch to the base of the Dallas bridge, which was designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava and his firm.
— Dallas News
The $113-million (partially) Calatrava-designed Margaret McDermott Bridge carrying Interstate 30 is part of Dallas' ambitious Trinity River Project. "City officials are hoping to open the bridge to pedestrians and cyclists in March," Dallas News writes. Meanwhile the finger-pointing between... View full entry
Dallas police were at Cathedral of Hope [...] investigating graffiti painted onto the church’s Interfaith Peace Chapel. The building was vandalized at about 11 p.m. on Wednesday night, according to the Rev. Neil Cazares-Thomas, CoH’s lead pastor. [...]
The spray-painted message included a Louisiana phone number and referred to a car as a “Brown Chivy Suburbin.” The name “Johntion Kimbrou” — possibly “Kimbrow” — was also painted on the church, along with a reference to “kitty porn.”
— dallasvoice.com
Image via Dallas Voice View full entry
The Trinity River Park, which will be 10 times the size of Central Park in New York, will be made up of 7,000 acres of the Great Trinity Forest, 2,000 acres of space between the Trinity River levees and 1,000 acres of already developed space.
MVVA’s design will build on municipal efforts to connect the river with the city. It envisions the space as a “beautiful and naturalistic network of trails, meadows and lakes living in harmony with the river”.
— globalconstructionreview.com
Related stories in the Archinect news: Results of the Dallas Connected City Design ChallengeA look at some cities revitalizing their blighted riversNational Geographic takes a closer look at the world's great urban parks View full entry
Accurately tracking a population that has no permanent home has always been a challenge for those who attempt to put together figures on homelessness. Many studies elect to count transients one night each year in order to create some form of consistency. Using that method, a study by the... View full entry
bastardized visual language has become the de facto standard of Dallas residential architecture development. The explanation for its ever-increasing prevalence, however depressing, is fairly straightforward. Developers find something that’s profitable and want to reproduce it. Risk-averse banks are happy to lend them money given their track record, at least in the short term. Architects, stuck with low budgets, tight schedules, and conservative developers, serve to please and follow convention. — artsblog.dallasnews.com
"But Dallas architecture shouldn’t be a joke, and it doesn’t have to be. A look at recent developments in Los Angeles, a historically auto-centric city faced with similar growth challenges, suggests how Dallas might break the vicious cycle in which it is mired."Related stories in the... View full entry
This year, Chinese families represented for the first time the largest group of overseas home buyers in the United States. Big spenders on new homes are helping prop up local economies in the Midwest...The interest from Chinese buyers is reshaping demographics in Texas. — NYT
As Part II of a series of articles exploring how China's financial heft and economic clout influence the world, Dionne Searcy and Keith Bradsher illuminate how Chinese real-estate investors are driving prices and development not just for "luxury condos in Manhattan and McMansions in Silicon... View full entry
“My growing interest in how cultural districts can shape cities led me to this new, exciting opportunity in New York City.” — New Cities Foundation, NY Times
Maxwell Anderson is returning to New York, to be Director of Grant Programs at The New Cities Foundation. Dallas' loss (and formerly Indianapolis' deeply felt loss) is good urbanism's gain. I am excited about this change in focus by someone who I know to be a great thinker.Press release from... View full entry
Here is a constant refrain: Why is so much new building junk? [...]
The truth is that architects don’t have that much power. Architects don’t design most buildings; they are designed by developers or contractors working from cookie-cutter plans. Perhaps an architect signs off. [...] In any number of ways—our building codes, our housing policies, our preservation statutes—we systemically encourage bad building.
— artsblog.dallasnews.com
Related:Rachel Slade dares to ask: "Why is Boston so ugly?"The new 5 over 1 Seattle, where "everything looks the same"Blair Kamin not impressed by Chicago's latest housing developmentsJeff Sheppard calls downtown Denver's new housing developments "meaningless, uninspiring" View full entry
This post is brought to you by Facades+ Dallas.The Facades+ conference series is only one week away from holding its first event in Dallas, Texas on October 30 and 31. If you haven't registered yet, now is the time!Presented by The Architect’s Newspaper and Enclos, Facades+ Dallas is the ninth... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Facades+ Dallas.Registration is now open for Facades+ Dallas, happening on October 30-31, 2014. Presented by The Architect’s Newspaper and Enclos, Facades+ Dallas is the ninth event in the ongoing Facades+ conference series and is the first time it will take place... View full entry
Since 3xLP by Christopher Romano and Nicholas Bruscia won the most recent TEX-FAB SKIN Digital Fabrication competition, the installation was exhibited at TEX-FAB 5 in Austin and will travel to Houston and Dallas along with the other competition finalists this fall.
The SKIN competition paired emerging design research practices with fabrication industry leaders to create innovative solutions for facade systems using digital fabrication and parametric design tools.
— bustler.net
Find out more on Bustler. View full entry
A city that is connected -- in all senses of the word -- is a good city. The finalists of the Dallas Connected City Design Challenge offered numerous solutions in how Downtown Dallas can be linked to the Trinity River.
To guarantee a variety of ideas for Dallas' future development, the competition invited submissions in a Professional Stream and an Open Stream. Three Professional and 4 Open entries won.
— bustler.net
Professional Stream finalists (selected by jury):Stoss + SHoP, Boston, MA: "HyperDensity/HyperLandscape"Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, Barcelona, Spain: Dallas: "Downtown & Trinity"OMA*AMO, New York, NY: "2Rivers/2Datums"Open Stream finalists (selected by jury and public voting):Kohki... View full entry
