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The rapid transformation of downtown Los Angeles’ skyline is being fueled in good measure by huge investments from Chinese companies eager to burnish their global brands and capitalize on L.A.’s real estate boom.
Now some of those projects have become a focus of federal agents seeking evidence of possible bribery, extortion, money laundering and other crimes as part of a corruption investigation at City Hall.
— Los Angeles Times
The FBI search warrant lists a number of high-profile property developers and real estate companies from mainland China that have considerably shaped the skyline of Downtown Los Angeles with monumental high-rise projects in recent years, such as Shenzhen New World Group, Shenzhen Hazens... View full entry
A Romanian man who used threats of violence and indebtedness to keep a group of his countrymen as slaves while he pocketed their wages from a London construction site has been sentenced to seven years in jail. — Global Construction Review
David Lupu, a 29-year-old Romanian, was found guilty of holding 15 of his countrymen in slavery or servitude in two small one-bedroom apartments in East London and sentenced to seven years in jail. Lupu had lured the men to work as demolition workers in the UK, falsely promising a wage of £... View full entry
Can design keep you safe from crime? Architects and urbanists have been making that claim since urban crime — or the threat of it — reached crisis proportions in the 1960s. [...] But with scant evidence to support those claims, at what cost do we build “defensible space”? Architectural historian Joy Knoblauch looks back at sixty years of attempts to secure space and asks whether safety lies in the design of the built environment, in our social structures, or in our heads. — Urban Omnibus
Two men were hit with 487 counts on Wednesday in a complaint alleging they spent years running a scam that has potentially left hundreds of homeowners across Southern California with homes that may not be structurally sound. [...]
Huntington Beach resident Ruben Gutierrez, 43, and 46-year-old Wilfrido Rodriguez of Downey each face numerous counts of forgery, identity theft and grand theft in a scheme involving falsified documents and fraudulent engineering services [...].
— KTLA
"Rodriguez was an engineering drafter and Gutierrez was an architectural designer at Palos Verdes Engineering. Neither Rodriguez nor Gutierrez were licensed architects or civil engineers," a news release published by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said. "Investigators... View full entry
The stamp, forged signatures, false paperwork — they were like the scaffolding of a building of his own design, one with no firm foundation. — New York Times
A fake architect named Paul J. Newman has been sentenced to 2 1/3 to 7 years in state prison for posing as an architect in eastern New York. Newman also was ordered Tuesday in Saratoga County Court to pay more than $115,000 to his victims in Albany, Rensselaer, and Saratoga counties. Newman... View full entry
Students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.” — The Harvard Crimson
Ten students who managed to beat out nearly 38,000 others to gain admission to Harvard lost their chance to attend the university after sharing offensive online memes in a private Facebook chat. After discovering the memes, which ironically were traded over a platform designed by a former alumnus... View full entry
Paul J. Newman, 49, is the president of Cohesion Studios. He’s also facing charges in three counties for pretending to be an architect. According to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Newman worked on numerous housing projects in the Capital Region despite being neither licensed... View full entry
Documents that Macedonia's Special Prosecution, SJO, seized on Tuesday with a court order from the Culture Ministry refer to a million-euros-worth tender to build the Museum of VMRO and Macedonian Struggle for Independence...The SJO [...] says it will reveal the start of two new investigations. If one refers to "Skopje 2014", it will be the first-ever serious criminal investigation into this costly project which, according to BIRN’s database, has cost 667 million euros already. — Balkan Insight
Balkan Insight reports that the hefty €667 million+ price tag (approx. $730 million+) of the grandiose revamp “was mainly due to the signing of 123 contracts with firms and individuals for its construction, many of which were annexes to the original contract.”Balkan Investigative Reporting... View full entry
CBS has given a put pilot commitment to "A Burglar's Guide to the City," a television series based off the book by BLDGBLOG founder Geoff Manaugh, who interviewed former bank robbers like Joe Loya to explore the role of architecture in crime, and the corresponding shifts in privacy in both the... View full entry
With the growing trend towards hostile architecture now openly admitting its political incentives, are we in an age of transparent hostility? [...]
Whereas other instances of hostile architecture are marked by their deliberate obscurity, the Camden Bench was developed, constructed and deployed in plain sight, making it an all too visible reminder of persistent negligence, raising the question: will hostile architecture become an accepted feature of the built environment?
— failedarchitecture.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Amid London's austerity measures, "defensive design" becomes even more hostileLAPD directs officers to treat homeless people “with compassion” in new vague policyArchitecture of paranoia View full entry
The Los Angeles Business Journal reports in this week's issue that the filmmaker, Steven Slomkowski, sought to get out of the project after the suicide of Mark Stahl, one of three siblings who control the property, also renowned in architecture lore as Case Study Home #22. Slomkowski sued in 2014, alleging that the surviving siblings, Bruce and Shari Stahl, got cold feet over depictions of Mark and their late father, Buck. The Stahls countersued... — LA Observed
When it's not involved in documentary-driven legal feuds, the iconic Stahl House frequently serves as a backdrop for a variety of fictional films, including Atom Egoyan's "Where The Truth Lies," and "Galaxy Quest:"For more on the intersection between architecture and cinema:"The Dessau Bauhaus"... View full entry
The thorny task of comparing crime rates across the world is tricky because legal interpretations vary. Sweden's definition of rape is not the same as America’s, for example. Murder however should be easier to record because there is an identifiable victim, something that can be counted. But the way in which this is done in poorer, often more corrupt countries makes truly comparable statistics hard to pin down. Where there are inefficient public health systems or police, it is even harder. — the Economist
"Latin American and Caribbean countries suffer disproportionately compared with elsewhere, mainly because of inequality, poor rule of law, impunity and corrupt institutions that are infiltrated by drug cartels. Only two countries outside the region feature on either chart, South Africa and the... View full entry
Burglary is a spatial crime: its very definition requires architecture...Indeed, burglary's architectural interest comes not from its ubiquity, but from its unexpected, often surprisingly subtle misuse of the built environment. Burglars approach buildings differently, often seeking modes of entry other than doors and approaching buildings—whole cites—as if they're puzzles waiting to be solved or beaten. — BLDGBLOG
More on Archinect:The Secret Service wants to build a fake White HouseArchitecture of paranoiaCurbing violence through better architectureSingapore's Sterile Authoritarianism View full entry
George Ranalli, 68, who has helmed the Spitzer School of Architecture since 1999, offered Ariella Campisi a ride home after the faculty holiday party at the Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in December 2013, Campisi claims in a Manhattan federal-court lawsuit. Campisi, now 23, was there because she worked part-time as an office assistant for the architecture school. — New York Post
Sad day for CUNY Architecture. View full entry
Article 25’s office manager and book keeper Scott William Golding has been charged with fraud and false accounting after £200,000 went missing from the charity’s accounts — architectsjournal.co.uk
Article 25, a UK charity that helps provide shelters in disadvantaged communities worldwide, had its future thrown into question in June, when £200,000 of its funds (equivalent to approximately $312,060) were found to be missing. This past Tuesday, Article 25’s book keeper and office manager... View full entry