New Public Hydrant uses design to overcome public misperceptions of the city’s hydrant water. The design prototypes bring attention to possibilities for improvement of overlooked, local water infrastructures on the one hand, while simultaneously engaging what it means to drink locally...How might publics reimagine these small-scale urban elements to serve in day-to-day situations, rather than solely in the case of emergency? — Urban Omnibus

After receiving bids from twelve groups that included some of the planet’s top architectural talent, Chicago has narrowed its search down to five teams hoping to design a $8.5 billion terminal expansion of O’Hare International Airport. — Curbed Chicago

Local leaders hope the bridge will expand the potential for growth in the area, by easing access to cheaper land on the western side and ports and other infrastructure to the east.

Critics of the project say its goals are more political than economic, aiding efforts by China’s central government to bind the former colonies of Hong Kong and Macau more tightly with the rest of the country. — The New York Times

In the language of climate change, “adaptation” refers to ways to blunt the immediate effects of extreme weather, such as building seawalls, conserving drinking water, updating building codes, and helping more people get disaster insurance. [...]

But some researchers are going further, calling for what some call the “deep adaptation agenda.” — Bloomberg

The architect of the unbuilt Chicago Spire is among the designers vying for the massive O’Hare International Airport expansion project.

The Zurich-based firm of Santiago Calatrava, whose projects include an airport in Bilbao, Spain, and the over-budget World Trade Center transportation center in New York, was one of 12 teams that responded to the city’s Thursday deadline to submit qualifications for the $8.7 billion expansion [...]. — Chicago Tribune

The collapse of the bridge — a signature of the port city, a source of deep civic pride, and an indispensable daily transportation link for thousands — has scarred Genoa and set off a bitter debate in Italy about who bears responsibility for the disaster and precisely what caused it.

Those questions remain under investigation by the chief magistrate of the region, Francesco Cozzi, and a team of engineers, security and government officials. — The New York Times

From ground level, greater Miami looks like any American megacity—a mostly dry expanse of buildings, roads, and lawns, sprinkled with the occasional canal or ornamental lake. But from above, the proportions of water and land are reversed. [...]

Barring a stupendous reversal in greenhouse gas emissions, the rising Atlantic will cover much of Miami by the end of this century. The economic effects will be devastating [...]. — Bloomberg

With the cloud being increasingly lifestyled and infrastructured into a range of everyday social and economic practices and processes, data centres continue to grow in size. Far from a massive database in the sky, it is the planet’s surface and our everyday lives that are gradually being colonised by the cloud.​ — Failed Architecture

Chicago’s City Council on Wednesday approved a multibillion-dollar expansion plan for O’Hare International Airport, after an earlier dispute between the airport’s two largest carriers had previously threatened to snarl the project. — Reuters

The clown king of novelty infrastructure fantasies has once again stolen the limelight with his preposterous plan for a 22-mile bridge across the Channel. [...]

But none of this matters. In a world where Johnson got as far as flushing £37m of public money into the Thames on another fantasy project, the Garden Bridge, a great Channel crossing could easily be conjured into being. — The Guardian

I’d been assigned to write a story about Pennsylvania Station, but I wanted to get a caboose-eye view of the decaying tunnels leading up to it, because the only imaginable way the station could be any worse is if it were underwater. Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined. — Bloomberg Businessweek

The value of all this for engineering is currently hypothetical. But what if transport engineers were to improvise design solutions and get instant feedback about how they would work from their own embodied experience? What if they could model designs at full scale in the way choreographers experiment with groups of dancers? What if they designed for emotional as well as functional effects? — The Conversation