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The American Institute of Architects has released a statement urging action on a number of key priorities related to architecture and the built environment for the 2024 presidential elections following Tuesday’s debate between candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. "Architects... View full entry
Organizing at the community level and putting pressure on politicians can go a long way, but it’s not enough. Architects have to start seeing themselves as political actors with high stakes in the same way communities and unions do. Architects are workers and they depend on work.
The fight for climate justice, resiliency, and workers’ and tenants’ rights are only going to get harder in an era of political decay, cronyism, and systemic crisis.
— The Nation
The fight over congestion pricing and residential building retrofits in New York City are just a couple of the many flashpoints architects should involve themselves in heavily in order to better advocate for the profession, critic Kate Wagner writes. Rightly, she states, “The field’s most... View full entry
Reflecting upon her activities during the recently passed Architecture Week in Detroit, AIA President Kimberly Dowdell outlined the need to engage with the key K-12 demographic in order to cultivate and better prepare the next generation of American architects to match the challenges they and the... View full entry
The new AIA President and Principal in HOK’s Chicago office, Kimberly Dowdell, talked with Crain’s recently, stating diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts must be sustained in the face of the latest anti-DEI pushback parroted by Elon Musk and other business leaders that contributed to the... View full entry
Philadelphia’s Center for Architecture and Design has revealed its rebranding as DesignPhiladelphia, according to an announcement the educational nonprofit made public recently. The name change heralds an expansion of services as an organization, which has been open to the public since... View full entry
A group of 11 AEC industry groups in the United Kingdom, including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Chartered Institute of Building, and UK Green Building Council, have joined together in urging the government toward taking action on restricting embodied carbon emissions in the... View full entry
New York City teens have launched an initiative, born out of a 2019 citywide climate walkout, to urge Mayor Adams to "speed up plans to retrofit school buildings to make them safer, healthier, and more climate-friendly." The student-led environmental coalition named, TREEage is "asking... View full entry
"Do you believe in infrastructure?” asks Norman Foster, with challenge in his voice. He does. Infrastructure, he says, is about “investing not to solve the problems of today but to anticipate the issues of future generations”. [...]
“I have no power as an architect, none whatsoever. I can’t even go on to a building site and tell people what to do.” Advocacy, he says, is the only power an architect ever has.
— theguardian.com
Related news on Archinect:Prairie futurism: designs revealed for the new Chicago Apple storeThe In Crowd: review of "Conversations with Architects: In the Age of Celebrity"The selective amnesia of Foster + Partners' Maspero Triangle District Masterplan View full entry
Join us for an uninvited Chicago Biennial installation consisting of scenarios depicting the absurdities of architectural practice/labor/work. We seek to expand the current conversation about architecture to include an actionable critique of the real, often tragic circumstances that precarious creative workers face on a daily basis. — - The Architecture Lobby
Alongside the official installations and programmed events, a host of uninvited and unofficial events have coalesced around the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the first major architecture biennial in the United States. One of the most promising comes from the Architecture Lobby, "an organization... View full entry
Inside the soon-to-be-demolished A+D Museum in Los Angeles, a small group gathered last week for a conversation with Susan S. Szenasy, the Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis Magazine, followed by a signing of her new book of collected writings, Szenasy, Design Advocate. The talk is likely the last the... View full entry
While there is indeed real cause for anxiety, and new crises continue to emerge, the most pertinent stance young (and for that matter, established) designers can take is to translate the wealth of research emerging from design schools into further activist engagement and new research opportunities — and to advocate for that central role for designers in solving the profound dilemmas that define our time. — Places
The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art describes his efforts to expand MoMA's role to support experimentation and advocacy in architecture and design. For several years now, through exhibitions and workshops MoMa has explored how designers can... View full entry
