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According to The Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump is moving to escalate America's trade war with China by imposing new tariffs on all Chinese-made products imported into the country. Currently, the administration's tariff-loving trade policy has been limited mostly to... View full entry
The Architecture Lobby and ADPSR call on all design professionals to refuse to participate in the design and construction of any immigration detention and deterrence infrastructure, including but not limited to walls, Border Patrol Stations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, detention facilities, or juvenile holding centers. — The Architecture Lobby
The Architecture Lobby (TAL) and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) are calling on designers to boycott any efforts to design and construct infrastructure related to the immigration detention and deterrence. In a statement announcing their efforts, the two... View full entry
The Trump administration has not installed a single mile of new wall in a previously fenceless part of the U.S.-Mexico border in the 30 months since President Trump assumed office, despite his campaign promise to construct a “big beautiful wall.” — The Washington Examiner
According to The Washington Examiner, while the Trump administration has replaced over 51-miles of existing border wall fencing, the administration has not actually added any new lengths of wall along the US-Mexico border. In President Donald Trump's two years in office, the administration... View full entry
Despite recent warnings from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) of weakening billings numbers among architecture firms, the organization continues to forecast positive economic growth for the construction industry into 2020, with several caveats. According to AIA's Consensus... View full entry
In the 2018 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 396,448 people were booked into an ICE detention facility, up 22.5% from a year earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Between October and January, apprehensions along the southwest border rose to 201,497, up a third from the same period a year ago. — The Wall Street Journal
According to The Wall Street Journal, the private prison business is booming as a result of the hardline immigration policies of President Donald Trump. Despite the growing controversies surrounding the government's treatment of detained migrants in increasingly makeshift and inadequate... View full entry
The National Park Service is diverting nearly $2.5 million in entrance and recreation fees primarily intended to improve parks across the country to cover costs associated with President Trump’s Independence Day celebration Thursday on the Mall, according to two individuals familiar with the arrangement. — The Washington Post
The move from the National Parks Service (NPS) comes as the department works to find funding to help ease its nearly $12 billion maintenance backlog. NPS estimates that it needs over $2 billion to repair its building stock, as well as over $186 million to improve NPS-administered housing, for... View full entry
President Donald Trump issued an executive order that establishes a White House Council focused on "eliminating regulatory barriers to affordable housing." The council is to be chaired by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson. The order reads: "These regulatory barriers... View full entry
The Trump Administration has opted to use an Army base in Oklahoma to hold growing numbers of immigrant children in its custody after running out of room at government shelters.
Fort Sill, an 150-year-old installation once used as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, has been selected to detain 1,400 children until they can be given to an adult relative, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
— Time.com
As of April 30, 2019, the department of Health and Human Services has taken 40,900 children seeking asylum into custody along the southern border, a 57% increase from 2018, according to Time. The surge in detainees has overwhelmed existing and new temporary detention facilities in southern... View full entry
Some barriers along the southwestern border, including in Nogales, have been painted white, a color which border officials say makes it easier for them to detect migrants compared to the typical brown color. — CBS News
Members of the United States military will be dispatched to border regions in California over the next month in order to apply new coats of paint to the existing US-Mexico border fence. The effort, according to an email sent to lawmakers by the Department of Homeland Security, is being... View full entry
When Donald Trump opened the towering Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City in March 1990, he declared it “the eighth wonder of the world” and joined in the celebrations at a launch ceremony filled with portly actors dressed as genies brandishing tacky golden lamps.
When photographer Brian Rose arrived in the city in 2016, the bankrupt Taj was practically empty. His images of the building’s exterior look eerily quiet, as if all its workers had left in a sudden hurry...
— The Guardian
New Jersey's Atlantic City has rarely risen to the ranks of glitz and glamor attributed to other gambling cities. "The difference between Las Vegas and Atlantic City," the comedian Drew Carey said, "is the difference between getting conned by a beautiful call girl and getting mugged by a crack... View full entry
And the prototypes came tumbling down. [...]
They have been used most dramatically as a backdrop for a presidential visit last March and for protest art. [...]
On Wednesday, slabs from seven out of the eight prototypes fell in clouds of dust in under two hours, no match for a jackhammer. At the point of destruction, an owl fled from a steel tube atop one section.
— The Guardian
And just as quickly as they came, they're gone again: seven of the eight prototypes for a lofty 1,954-mile border wall project to Mexico were bulldozed and turned into piles of expensive rubble on Wednesday morning... View full entry
Put simply, there was an overwhelming amount of news this year, and June was no exception. It was a big month for the world of architecture, but it also marked the beginning of a significant step for the small team at Archinect, too. EVENTS: ↑ The Opening of Archinect Outpost Archinect Outpost... View full entry
The 20-foot-tall letters spelling “T-R-U-M-P” on the city’s second-tallest building prompted Chicago aldermen four years ago to regulate the installation of large signs on office buildings.
Now, Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to tweak that ordinance to help secure a huge expansion by software firm Salesforce in a new riverfront skyscraper.
The city’s Department of Planning and Development [...] unveiled a plan that would allow larger signs on office towers, depending on how high signs are placed.
— Chicago Tribune
Who could forget the epic 2014 spat between Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, backed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and New York-based real estate developer Donald Trump over the controversial "TRUMP" letters on his hotel and condo tower in the city (Kamin's tempestuous relationship with... View full entry
Trump is obsessed with the FBI building. For months now, in meetings with White House officials and Senate appropriators intended to discuss big-picture spending priorities, the president rants about the graceless J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C. — axios.com
President Trump has reportedly taken an interest in the FBI headquarters J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown DC, overseeing every detail of the project. While he recognizes the value of the property, the president is not a fan of brutalism. Trump complained, "Even the building is terrible... It's... View full entry
President Donald Trump boasted earlier this year that the US would spend only $200,000 to $300,000 on a new US Embassy in Jerusalem, but it seems the project will cost nearly $20 million more than that estimate. [...]
The US spent just under $400,000 on modifications to the consular facility that allowed it to open as the US Embassy in May, but the State Department told CNN at the time that it planned "for construction of a new extension [...] as well as for additional security enhancements"
— CNN
Back in March, the 'Builder in Chief' promised that the highly controversial new United States Embassy in Jerusalem would have to be built "very quickly and very inexpensively" at a bargain price tag of around $250,000. According to documents made public this month, the State Department however... View full entry
