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The maddening hum of safety slats on the pedestrian handrails of the Golden Gate Bridge will finally be silenced under a recently released proposal by the Bridge District.
The fix — devised and tested by bridge engineers in consultation with aerodynamic and acoustic experts — calls for attaching U-shaped clips containing a thin rubber sleeve to all 12,000 vertical slats on the railings.
— The San Francisco Chronicle
The haunting acoustic hum is the direct result of a $12 million wind retrofit project authored by the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. A few enterprising locals have made the most of the deafening din, although the majority of drivers in the Bay Area were vocally against it... View full entry
The single image published Dec. 8, 1922, resembles the industrial Carquinez Bridge, except at 20 times the scale. It’s the kind of bridge one designs when all they have to work with is Popsicle sticks and string. — The San Francisco Chronicle
An engineer turned newspaper editor named James Wilkins was the first to propose the bridge in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article. Joseph Strauss' early plans called for a cantilever-suspension hybrid but were later changed due to eight-figure cost concerns. Illustration of the... View full entry
As the world heats up and sea levels rise, communities in the U.S. could spend more than $400 billion on seawalls to try to hold the ocean back over the next couple of decades. But there’s a catch: Building a seawall in one area can often mean that flooding gets even worse in another neighborhood or city nearby. — Fast Company
A new paper from The Natural Capital Project at Stanford University that examines how seawalls might impact California's Bay Area was published this spring, adding to a slate of similar scholarship surrounding seawalls that have cropped up in recent years. Other efforts have seen a... View full entry
A campus-wide renovation of the Bay Area Discovery Museum is finally complete, providing a much-needed upgrade to the 30-year-old institution that emphasizes a new approach to museum programming and early childhood education. The $18.5 million project was overseen by Olson Kundig, who transformed... View full entry
A settlement has been reached in the strange case of a homeowner who fought her California town to keep a famous Flintstones motif installed. The curious legal dispute has kept the Bay Area suburb in the headlines for the past two and a half years. Florence Fang will receive $125,000 from the... View full entry
Facebook plans to invest $150 million to build 2,000 homes for low-income residents in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Silicon Valley-based social media giant said Wednesday the money would support the development of affordable homes for families making less than 30 percent of the region’s median income.
— The Real Deal
According to The Real Deal, "the funds will be available to local governments and nonprofit groups in the form of low-interest loans. Projects in San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties are eligible. " The investment is due for full distribution by... View full entry
Google unveiled on Wednesday its most detailed vision yet for a transit-oriented neighborhood in downtown San Jose [...]
Google’s village would add 7.3 million square feet of offices, 4,000 homes, shops, restaurants, a hotel, 10 parks, cultural and entertainment hubs, and immersive and interactive educational elements near downtown San Jose’s Diridon train hub.
— Mercury News
Google's ambitious 80-acre, transit-oriented Downtown West plan first appeared on Archinect in October 2019 and involves a number of prominent architecture and urban design firms, including Kohn Pedersen Fox (related), Heatherwick Studio, Grimshaw Architects, SHoP Architects, Solomon Cordwell... View full entry
Just because prominent technology companies, including Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and others, have announced plans to extend work from home policies into 2022 and beyond, it doesn't mean they aren't planning for a return to the office somewhere down the line. A case in point is Google, which... View full entry
A development team that includes architects Steinberg Hart has topped out the first of two mixed-use residential towers in San Jose, California, part of a 630-unit development called MIRO that will rise as the city's tallest buildings. Designed for Bayview Development Group and... View full entry
Bay Area health officials issued a sweeping new order on Tuesday banning a range of commercial and residential construction that had previously been exempt from stay-at-home mandates. The move could swell the record number of Californians seeking unemployment by putting some construction workers out of jobs. — San Francisco Chronicle
After issuing a shelter-in-place order for six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area on March 16, health officials now increased the measure by also restricting construction activity on market-rate housing projects which was exempt until now. Related on Archinect: Not all construction projects... View full entry
[San Jose] became biggest city in the US to adopt all-electrification requirements on new residential buildings and gas bans on commercial construction.
By early next year, developers may have to opt for electric appliances and other infrastructure in single-family homes, backyard cottages, low-rise buildings, apartments and condos. [...] the changes could cut greenhouse gas emissions in new buildings by up to 90 percent and save owners and tenants money on utility bills.
— San Jose Inside
San Jose, California's third largest city, is implementing its Paris Accords-aligned Climate Smart San Jose plan as part of a municipally driven decarbonization effort. The plan relies on a series of "reach codes" to go above and beyond existing sustainability requirements. View full entry
The four-person California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, or CaRLA, has one reason for being — to sue cities that reject housing projects without a valid reason. The litigious nonprofit with YIMBY roots struck again last month, suing Los Altos after the city rejected a developer’s bid to streamline a project of 15 apartments plus ground-floor office space. — The Mercury News
CaRLA continues its aggressive efforts to get San Francisco Bay Area cities to stop denying by-right housing developments. “Something, by hook or by crook, has to make these cities actually build housing,” Sonja Trauss, co-executive director of CaRLA, told The... View full entry
This post is brought to you by the Urban Confluence Silicon Valley UPDATE: Urban Confluence Silicon Valley has extended the entry deadline to July 1, 2020.San José Light Tower Corporation invites visionaries, place-makers, architects, artists, designers, students, and dreamers to help... View full entry
The co-living startup Starcity plans to build an 800-unit, 18-story “dorm for adults” to help affordably house Silicon Valley’s booming workforce. Dishotsky, the co-founder/CEO of the co-housing start-up Starcity, is now working to fill America’s housing-strapped cities with a scaled-up version of his childhood idyll. — CityLab
Said to be the an 18-story "dorm for adults" the co-living startup Starcity aims to "redefining the meaning of home." The co-founder and CEO Jon Dishotsky is an advocate for co-living due to his upbringing in suburban Palo Alto. If asked about his upbringing, Dishotsky will share the story of... View full entry
He designed the Shard in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but for his latest project, Italian architect Renzo Piano has taken his impressive legacy to the unsuspecting city of San Ramon in order to build a suburban shopping center. Completed for a reported cost of $300 million, City... View full entry
