Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
I’m not saying America’s cities are turning into dystopian technocapitalist hellscapes in which corporations operate every essential service and pull every civic string.
But let’s take a tour of recent news from the metropolises.
— New York Times
Farhad Manjoo unpacks the extreme impact big tech companies have on US city construction citing cases from Amazon, Elon Musk's Boring Company, and Bird's electric scooters. Are these innovations simply breaking through the red tape of local government or are they dominating with no input from the... View full entry
Taken as whimsical follies by the design press and broader culture, Amazon's architectural and logistical patents are altogether more sinister, signalling new, automated urban ambitions. [...]
While some of these patents could be marked as routine publicity stunts, lurking beneath Amazon’s bravado is an obsession with organisation and productivity: oriented towards abstract users, measured in data, and governed by algorithms.
— Failed Architecture
In his piece for Failed Architecture, designer and writer Matthew Stewart investigates the implications of the overwhelming flood of architectural and logistical patents filed by Big Tech, and Amazon in particular, on our cities and expectations of the world of the future. "We’ve been treated... View full entry
Jeff Bezos has been quietly jetting into Washington over the past few years, becoming quite the hobnobber around town [...]. Soon, Washingtonians may see even more of him. In 2016, the Amazon founder and Washington Post owner paid $23 million in cash for the former Textile Museum in Kalorama (yes, his neighbors are the Obamas and Kushner-Trumps). At 27,000 square feet, the mansion was already the biggest home in Washington before he began a $12 million renovation and expansion last year. — Washingtonian
"Overseen by the Barnes Vanze architecture firm, the reno project covers 191 doors (many either custom mahogany or bronze), 25 bathrooms, 11 bedrooms, five living rooms/lounges, five staircases, three kitchens, two libraries/studies, two workout rooms, two elevators—and a huge... View full entry
With the rise of online shopping, we have all been watching the dead mall epidemic for many years now. Addressing those left hanging on in today's world, Bloomberg now brings us the The American Mall Game: A 2018 Retail Challenge. Try your odds at managing a failing mall in this retro 90's... View full entry
Amazon’s Spheres, a botanical gardenlike workspace for the retail giant’s employees, are primarily a private space.
But the company has set up a few ways for the public to access the geodesic domes — in downtown Seattle on Lenora Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues — starting Tuesday, when the Spheres officially open to visitors and employees.
— The Seattle Times
The Amazon Spheres, designed by NBBJ, will now be open to the public; however, getting in may be tricky. There is the option of entering from the ground floor to see an exhibition about the Spheres, and the much more difficult option to join a guided tour of the entire headquarters. Inside the... View full entry
Amazon recently released their "shortlist" of 20 cities, whose proposals to host the company's second North American Headquarters have successfully moved forward in the bidding war. Amazon will now spend the next few months diving deeper into each individual offer, no doubt utilizing the spirit of... View full entry
Now that it’s down to a final list, Amazon says that it plans to “dive deeper into their proposals” and evaluate whether these locations can actually support the company’s plan to add up to 50,000 jobs. The final list is full of mostly expected choices. Amazon is looking primarily at major metro areas with lots of people, transit options, and access to airports. — The Verge
Here are the 20 finalists: Atlanta, Georgia Austin, TexasBoston, MassachusettsChicago, IllinoisColumbus, OhioDallas, TexasDenver, ColoradoIndianapolis, IndianaLos Angeles, CaliforniaMiami, FloridaMontgomery County, MarylandNashville, TennesseeNewark, New JerseyNew York City, New YorkNorthern... View full entry
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a charming, new series put out by Amazon. Written by Amy Sherman-Palladino of the early aughts hit Gilmore Girls, the show tells the story of a 1950s, Jewish upper-middle-class housewife, Miriam Maisel (played by Rachel Brosnahan), as she finds her way into stand-up... View full entry
Amazon.com Inc has received 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America vying to host the company’s second headquarters, it said on Monday.
The number of applicants underscores the interest in the contest, which Seattle-based Amazon announced last month. The world’s largest online retailer said it would invest more than $5 billion and create up to 50,000 jobs for “Amazon HQ2”. The deadline for submitting proposals was Thursday.
— Reuters
While most cities, counties, and states eager to host Amazon's new 'HQ2' rolled out the expected tax-incentive red carpet, Reuters reports that the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest pulled out a trick from the ol' autocracy box and offered land to create a new city called, you guessed it, Amazon, while... View full entry
The overall look and the customer reviews are not so great, but, if you always dreamed of owning a container that has French doors, Amazon now has it for you! With the rising popularity of the tiny house movement, who knows, we might see those popping around our neighborhoods. Not available on... View full entry
It has also been remarkable to watch Amazon pursue a dramatically different strategy. Its plans for a second headquarters suggest that in terms of architecture and campus planning it wants to be everything Apple is not. It wants to lean into the city — and thorny questions about gentrification and housing prices, to the extent that they will be a natural byproduct of this process — rather than away from it. — Los Angeles Times
"Though he took a very different path to get there," Hawthorne writes in his LAT opinion piece analyzing Apple & Amazon's lofty headquarters ambitions with a focus on urban integration (or the complete lack thereof), "Bezos ultimately reached the same conclusion Jobs did: that the wealthiest... View full entry
Amazon has set off a scrum among cities that are hoping to land the company’s second headquarters — with the winner getting the prize of a $5 billion investment and 50,000 new jobs over the next two decades.
(Denver's) lifestyle and affordability, coupled with the supply of tech talent from nearby universities, has already helped build a thriving start-up scene in Denver and Boulder, 40 minutes away.
— The New York Times
The New York Times suggests Denver for Amazon new headquarters as it offers a large and growing labour pool, access to universities, high quality of life and enough space to build eight million square feet of office space. If Amazon was to follow the New York Times advice it could drastically... View full entry
Amazon says the new fulfillment center will create some 2,000 jobs “with benefits and opportunities to engage with Amazon Robotics in a highly technological workplace.
The company will spend $177 million to build the new fulfillment center, and job listings will start appearing six to 10 weeks before the facility opens.
— Gizmodo
Amazon says workers at their new 855,000 square feet warehouse in North Randall, Ohio, “will pick, pack and ship smaller customer items such as electronics, toys and books.” In other words, the new employees will be filling Amazon-branded boxes with the exact same sorts of goods that were... View full entry
For designers who love to draw by hand on real paper but want to store those sketches in the cloud, there is now a kind of a refined, tech-savvy etch-o-sketch in the form of the Rocketbook Wave Smart Notebook from self-described "notebook innovators" Joe Lemay and Jake Epstein. Using a special... View full entry
American e-commerce giant Amazon has filed a patent with the US patents office for a system for storing and retrieving goods in an underwater facility.
When an item is ordered for delivery, a sonic signal is transmitted from a buoy to the warehouse, which activates an air canister that inflates a balloon, allowing the chosen product to float to the surface where it would be dispatched to the customer.
— globalconstructionreview.com
Just last month, Amazon made headlines when it filed a patent for a drone tower design, essentially a multi-level fulfillment center for unmanned aerial vehicles in densely populated areas. Now a recent Amazon patent for "Aquatic Storage Facilities" has surfaced, allowing us a glimpse into the... View full entry
