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Calling on lawmakers to do away with the "outdated laws and regulations that made it harder to build homes for working people," former U.S. President Barack Obama thrilled audience members with an impassioned plea for mass-scale housing production at the 2024 Democratic National Convention... View full entry
Regulations passed in Florida after the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers condominium have helped fuel the drive by developers to buy out and replace older residential buildings. The new rules have increased costs for residents in many older buildings, sometimes requiring sizeable special assessments that may be unaffordable. — NPR
The rush to improve building safety in the wake of the 2021 Surfside condo collapse has since produced some unintended and expensive consequences for residents of Florida condominiums, three-quarters of whom live in structures that are now more than 30 years old. While the laws’ intent is... View full entry
Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. [...]
It’s become hard to shake the feeling that America has simply lost the capacity to build things in the real world, outside of an app.
— The New York Times
Stephen Smith, through the New York nonprofit Center for Building in North America, has been exposing variables that undermine the housing market's intricate calculus in the form of building codes, cost of labor, zoning regulations, and the construction industry. He says: "Elevators in North... View full entry
Several leading design and construction firms in the UK have signed onto a new appeal urging Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to halt his program of delayed implementations of key environmental building regulations in the interest of protecting a net-zero carbon emissions future in the... View full entry
The simplest takeaway from Seattle’s new report is that ADU production is up. The city granted permits to 988 units last year, and more than 650 were built — not all projects are built during the year they get permitted — outpacing the construction of single houses for the first time — The Seattle Times
As the Seattle Times reports, a change in regulations in 2019 led to the ADU boom locally. The city will now permit up to two ADU developments per lot, leading to a better-than-predicted 1,336 units being constructed against a total of 554 single-family homes being razed over a two-year period... View full entry
The International Code Council is to revise its building code development process with changes taking effect in 2024. The new process for reviewing code change proposals will see a three-year rolling cycle encompassing Committee Action Hearings and a joint Public Comment Hearings / Online... View full entry
The Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|LA) has released an open letter to mayoral candidates Rick Caruso and Karen Bass suggesting 10 fixes to zoning requirements and the approval processes that would positively impact citywide efforts to tackle an ongoing housing... View full entry
Following last week’s look at an open opportunity for a Director of Design Entrepreneurship and Inclusion at Kent State University, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore a role for a Senior Architect at CHECKSET. The successful candidate will work with... View full entry
Montana has become the first state in the nation to adopt broad-ranging regulatory approval for the use of 3D printing in construction. The state’s building code regulators recently voted to approve local contractor Tim Stark’s request to 3D print walls as an equal replacement for either... View full entry
New regulations, called Part O, took effect in England in June, requiring that new homes are built with some measures to combat overheating. The regulations aim to reduce solar gain — the increase in room temperature caused by sunlight — ensuring the safety of occupants, even if it may remain uncomfortable. — The New York Times
Hundreds of UK residents died in this week’s “heat apocalypse” that posed particular challenges to those living in the country’s many recently-converted office buildings and council housing. Brick masonry remains the predominant residential construction material, though Low Energy... View full entry
Here’s a sobering fact: The building sector is dragging down global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. [...]
The good news is that, according to the report, up to 61% of building emissions could be cut by 2050, and we have all the solutions at our disposal today, from passive cooling technologies and denser multifamily homes to retrofits. All we need to do is implement them—or better yet, introduce regulations and policies to will them into implementation.
— Fast Company
The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that emissions from buildings doubled between 1990 and 2019 despite the widespread adaptation of environmentally-friendly construction methods and materials like recycled concrete. Increases in population and the total... View full entry
For reasons both tragic and optimistic, 2021 was a year where regulations and policy were never far from the media spotlight. While this is true for instance due to the overhanging impact of COVID-19 on everything from school operations to international travel, 2021 was also a year that saw both... View full entry
In the wake of the deadly Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside, Florida in June, several groups are calling for improvements to building safety standards. The groups include a statewide association of contractors calling for steps to improve building structural safety, and a task force from... View full entry
California is set to mandate the inclusion of solar panels and battery storage for new buildings. Following a unanimous vote of approval by the California Energy Commission, the measure is expected to be included in an overall revision of the state’s building code in December of this year... View full entry
Officials in Los Angeles are reconsidering closing a legal loophole that exempts tall buildings built between 1943 and 1974 from fire sprinkler requirements after an unsprinkled high rise apartment tower on the city's Westside caught fire yesterday for the second time in recent years, injuring a a... View full entry
