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Santa Ana is the latest to embrace the granny flat; earlier this month, its city council directed staff to rewrite city code to make it easier to have granny flats, and to allow them to be larger. [...]
"It really is meant to expand people’s ability to help their families and to reduce the overcrowding" [...]
Berkeley city officials relaxed regulations to encourage granny flats in March. Pasadena and Los Angeles have also flirted with the idea of loosening restrictions on such units.
— scpr.org
More on "granny flats", aka accessory dwelling units (ADUs):Accessory Dwelling Units / Granny Flats / Mother-in-law SuitesFinding "Shelter" in Los Angeles' housing chaosLos Angeles: Small Lot Subdivsion Ordinance View full entry
For the first time since the early 1970s, a highly venomous sea snake has turned up on a southern California beach—the latest in a string of unusual wildlife sightings, including hammerhead sharks and red-footed boobies.
Though a bite from this yellow-bellied snake can theoretically be lethal, shutting down all nerve signals to the respiratory system, “Jaws” this is not: the snake attacks only when provoked, and no one has ever documented a human fatality from Pelamis platura.
— the Economist
According to the Economist, the sea snakes and other unusual sea creatures popping up along the coast of Southern California are a symptom of the emergence of a mass of warm water, which may likely lead up to one of the most intense El Niño's in memory."This snake, which typically lives in... View full entry
How do designers experience their cities as locals? No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. There's no city that embodies that like the way Los Angeles does it. Beyond the ample sunshine and smog, juice diets, drought consciousness (or not)... View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2015Archinect's Get Lectured is ready for another school year. Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any... View full entry
this San Diego County jail, which houses everyone from petty criminals to accused murderers and was once known for its sickening decrepitude, is at the forefront of a new and, of course, controversial movement in prison design, one that manifests a counterintuitive idea: You could build a lockup so pleasant and thoughtfully devised that inmates would never come back. [...]
Welcome to Las Colinas Women’s Detention and Re-entry Facility.
— ozy.com
More on prison design from Archinect:Architecture of correction: Rikers IslandThe NYT on prison architecture and ethicsHow Prison Architecture Can Transform Inmates' LivesADPSP and the Architecture of IncarcerationPrison design faces judgment View full entry
The Stevens Institute of Technology of Hoboken, New Jersey won the 2015 Solar Decathlon with their storm-resilient SURE HOUSE this past weekend. One of the crowd favorites in this year's competition, the SURE HOUSE scored the highest in seven out of the 10 contests, which put the team in the lead... View full entry
The sun beat down onto the asphalt grounds of the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California, where a village of 14 solar-powered houses popped up for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. Multi-disciplinary teams of college students worldwide dedicate two years to designing and... View full entry
Sure, California has a lot more drinkable liquid water than Mars, and we hope it stays that way. But we couldn't help but notice some similarities between the landscapes of the Red Planet and the Golden State. After all, JPL scientists use California's deserts as a stand in for testing Mars rovers.
How well can you tell these two arid places apart? Take this quiz to find out. No space suit required.
— 89.3 KPCC
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2015Archinect's Get Lectured is ready for another school year. Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any... View full entry
Late in the day on Friday [Governor Jerry Brown] signed Assembly Bill 744, which allows affordable housing developers to build less parking than many local zoning regulations currently permit.
The bill is a victory for affordable housing advocates, who have been saying for a number of years that the burden of building more parking than tenants use has made affordable housing too expensive to build.
— cal.streetsblog.org
More on the politics of parking:Los Angeles has Created the Perfect Parking SignFlexible Parking Structures as Civic CatalystsTrading Parking Lots for Affordable HousingBuy Condo, Then Add Parking Spot for $1 Million"Graphing Parking" charts out of whack U.S. minimum parking regulations View full entry
Among the many writers of disasters and crisis – from Barthes to Blanchot to Ballard – there is a strain of thinking that rejects the normative and reductive assumption that a disaster must be met with an austere temper or melancholic pragmatism. Rather, disasters can breed their own wild... View full entry
In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, there was a flurry of news about the Chinese government's attempt to seed clouds in order to engineer the weather. In fact, the technology – while largely considered imperfect – both exists and has been implemented. The SEEDING MICRO-CLOUDS. Power... View full entry
In the face of events that exceed our capacity for comprehension, humans tend to invent myths and stories that render things palatable. The passage of the sun across the firmament, the surge of the oceans in a storm, the crash of thunder that follows the flash of lightning – these all have been... View full entry
Consuming disproportionately-vast quantities of water for the recreational pleasure of a small (typically elite) group of people, golf courses often become a first line of attack during droughts. But what if they could be appropriated in order to help mitigate the effects of a water shortage?... View full entry
While the current drought is likely linked to larger issues like climate change, California has always had cycles of dry and wet seasons, as well as regular drought periods. But, for thousands of years, the inhabitants of the region were (for the most part) able to survive times of water scarcity... View full entry
