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Architecture firms are billing more from reconstruction and renovation projects than they are from new builds for the first time; a milestone driven by soaring demand for office renovations. In the 20 years that the AIA has been collecting data on billings for renovations versus new build... View full entry
If I enjoy doing what I do, why would I change it? Of course, at any point with any of us, there’s always the other side of the coin […] I get the same buzz from designing buildings, working with people, educational workshops, working with the UN heading their Forum of Mayors, engaging with civic leaders, writing, drawing, sketching. I’m privileged to have many such opportunities […] I think they’re my lifeblood, yes.” — The Guardian
Norman Foster, who will turn 87 this year, was at the Guggenheim Bilbao to talk to The Guardian’s Tim Lewis about his lifelong love of cars and upcoming exhibition there titled “Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture.” Foster told the writer he sees the exhibition as “almost like the requiem for... View full entry
Most of the Empire State Building is dedicated to office space. With its mix of big and small businesses, the building is perhaps a better barometer of the state of office space in New York and the city’s economy than the towers dominated by global firms. — The New York Times
The building’s tourist and retail income has been essentially shut out for over 18 months because of the pandemic. As a result, tenants are being offered sharp discounts despite increasing signs that the remote work trend is here to stay. “We’ve found ourselves being able to work in... View full entry
The Times is reporting that Thomas Heatherwick has met with members of the British government as recently as March in what could be discussions surrounding a future memorial to COVID-19 victims in the UK. Heatherwick has done a number of high-profile commissions in London, the city of his birth... View full entry
Kenneth Gruskin, owner and principal of architecture and marketing firm Gruskin Group, has envisioned a new avenue for firms as businesses increasingly shift to virtual spaces. With remote work the new normal, Gruskin sees an opportunity for architects to play a role in how new virtual... View full entry
Individuals can now take their offices anywhere they want with the Denizen Architype, a 3D-printed, personal office pod, designed to provide an ideal remote work space. The prefabricated office can be set up in any location and is available by subscription. Designed “for the perfect day of... View full entry
Following almost two years of work-from-home orders, businesses and governments are seeking to bring employees back to traditional workplaces. While working from home will continue to form part of many businesses’ employment structures in the long term, a separate question lingers over... View full entry
For decades, ordinary residents have been pushed out of cities like London and New York to make room for offices and luxury apartments. But the pandemic has massively reduced demand for these same locations — turning city centers into ghost towns, full of shiny new buildings that no one needs. — Jacobin Magazine
Writing for Jacobin, Glyn Robbins dissects the pandemic's lasting effect on cities around the world where new luxury developments — too often favored over affordable housing solutions for the broader local community — are now faced with a sudden drop in demand. Related on Archinect... View full entry
The pandemic has underlined how broken the UK’s model for urban development is. [...]
It is hard to see now amid the depression and anger, but the pandemic did briefly show cities acting on the basis of general human need: rough sleepers being housed, mutual aid groups being set up, evictions being suspended. Yet the possibility of any long-term change is rapidly being lost.
— The Guardian
Tribune culture editor Owen Hatherly's new housing opinion piece for The Guardian. View full entry
The pandemic accelerated a need for digital menu boards, artificial intelligence, expanding drive-thrus into dual lanes and adding drive-thru only units where available. Many other fast food restaurants like Wendy's, Taco Bell, Del Taco, Burger King, KFC and McDonald's have also shown interest in developing many of these concepts. — Construction Dive
With indoor dining areas closed in many, if not most, restaurants since the beginning of the pandemic, the nation's fast food and fast casual franchises are rethinking fundamental design concepts of their operations that will likely become part of the American vernacular for decades to come, such... View full entry
Certainly New Yorkers’ revaluation of the countryside had begun long before the “Decameron”-style outflows of remote-working urbanites and their families, fleeing the coronavirus last spring. [...] The phrase “farm to table” has been a cliché for years, and Park Slope idealists long ago exported their Marie Antoinette rural fantasies to the Hudson Valley. — The New York Times
With the coronavirus eating its way through America's hinterlands and the election unmasking a deeply entrenched urban-rural ideological divide, NYT art critic Jason Farago takes a second look at the Rem Koolhaas-starring exhibition Countryside, the Future which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim... View full entry
[...] the European Union sees a chance to create a new common aesthetic born out of a need to renovate and construct more energy-efficient buildings.
The proposal for energy retrofits is part of the climate actions at the core of the EU’s 1.8 trillion euro ($2.1 trillion) coronavirus recovery plan and could result in a sweeping architectural makeover, one that leaders have compared to a new Bauhaus movement for the continent.
— Bloomberg
For Bloomberg CityLab, Kriston Capps and Laura Millan Lombrana contemplate how the European Union's bold $2.1 trillion coronavirus recovery plan, and its embedded measures to make buildings more energy-efficient, could shape architecture and urban design on much of the continent. A new Bauhaus... View full entry
Predicting the future of cities is risky, especially if one heeds the words of the American baseball legend, Yogi Berra, that “the future ain’t what it used to be”.
In the period since the start of the pandemic it might seem as if everything is different, but in the long term, I would suggest that rather than changing anything, it has merely hastened and magnified trends that were already apparent before the virus struck.
— The Guardian
In his opinion piece for The Guardian, architect Norman Foster ponders how current and past pandemics have influenced and will continue to shape the infrastructure, and subsequently culture, of our cities. Foster briefly touches on a number of trendy topics, including electric vehicles, ride... View full entry
What are architects and urban planners foreseeing as people cautiously gather? Streets “curated” for various uses and dynamic cityscapes that both advance wellness and knit communities together. [...]
Architects and other designers who have devoted efforts to creating public places that encourage gathering and sociability now say their task is to make congregating in these spaces possible again — and perhaps to achieve some community-enhancing goals in the process.
— The New York Times
Burger King has unveiled new restaurant designs that are due to better serve customers in a COVID-19 world. With a focus on mobile ordering and curbside pick-up, the new designs embrace a new way of serving visitors by offering drive-in and walk-up order areas, curbside pick-up areas, an enhanced... View full entry
