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Barack Obama was greeted by a packed house at the close of the Friday session of this year’s A’22 Conference in his adopted hometown of Chicago. Speaking to the capacity audience in a Q&A hosted by new AIA President Dan Hart, the two-term former U.S. President used his platform to touch... View full entry
A new report by NCARB and NOMA has found that women, particularly Black or African American women, face heavier challenges in architectural education than their male counterparts. As a result, more than half of Black or African American women surveyed state that they have considered a different... View full entry
The Architects Foundation has announced the launch of the Large Firm Roundtable (LFRT) ARE Scholarship, providing support for aspiring Black architects within the licensing process. Through the scholarship, the organization is aiming to double the number of licensed Black architects in the... View full entry
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) have released a report focused on disparities in architectural licensing examination. Titled Baseline on Belonging: Examination Report, the study seeks to explore factors... View full entry
The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has, for the first time, published data on Architect Registration Examination (ARE) pass rates that are broken down by demographics. The statistics show that white candidates are more likely to pass the ARE than candidates of color... View full entry
On today’s episode of Archinect Sessions Donna and I are joined by Karen Compton, a Los Angeles-based business consultant, business owner and podcast host. As the Principal at A3K Consulting, Karen oversees a team of professionals to help clients in the AEC industry grow and improve... View full entry
Shade is often understood as a luxury amenity, lending calm to courtyards and tree-lined boulevards, cooling and obscuring jewel boxes and glass cubes. But as deadly, hundred-degree heatwaves become commonplace, we have to learn to see shade as a civic resource that is shared by all. In the shade, overheated bodies return to equilibrium. [...] Shade is thus an index of inequality, a requirement for public health, and a mandate for urban planners and designers. — Places Journal
In this longform piece, writer Sam Bloch delves into the history of how shade has served as an index of inequality in the urban design of Los Angeles, and how the city (and perhaps other locations) should learn to consider shade as an important public health requirement. “People living in poor... View full entry
But instead of shying away from some of the challenges this type of work poses, the students decided to publish the results of the survey as-is, and highlight its flaws. They decided not to draw any particular conclusions from the data, and instead hope to use the exhibit as a conversation starter. “A large part of the exhibit was trying to get a more nuanced idea of sexism. Not just sexual harassment, but other sorts of derailing that occurs within architecture schools.” — Curbed
Two weeks ago, somebody untied Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s $40 million yacht from its mooring. It got me thinking about another opulent display of wealth owned by DeVos: her 22,000-square-foot nautical-themed summer mansion, located in Holland, Michigan. Just a few more years of climate change and it’ll be floating too. — vox.com
Kate Wagner critiques Betsy DeVos’s Michigan summer mansion on her humor blog McMansion Hell. Wagner unpacks not only the architectural design but also the greater social implications of why the education secretary's McMansion is so horrendous. The essay is dedicated to "all of the public... View full entry
Achieving pay equity is a foundational act of building an environment in which creativity can flourish. Taking the first step toward equality via pay empowers us to move forward, together, to address the more complex challenges that await. Comprehensive, math-based tools are available to assess the problem. Let’s put them to work. Follow the money (or lack thereof), and fix pay inequity now. — fastcodesign.com
Jeanne Gang's firm Studio Gang recently scrutinized their office for any existing pay gap. She explains that despite their prioritization of equality there was in fact a small gender pay gap in their office. Using her own practice as an example, Gang urges every architecture studio to go through... View full entry
The prevalence of gated communities may also reveal what South Africans think constitutes middle class life. As it did under apartheid, it often means avoiding the poor unless they are servants, nannies or gardeners. Instead of creating racial segregation, gated communities often broaden the economic gap in South Africa and restricts development to privatized progress. — Quartz
"As state institutions flounder, estate living has gone on to offer attached private schools and clinics," Lynsey Chutel writes for Quartz Africa. "Privatized amenities in gated communities mean citizens don’t have to hold the city accountable, which is a shame because these are the citizens who... View full entry
To most people, zoning and land-use regulations might conjure up little more than images of late-night City Council meetings full of gadflies and minutiae. But these laws go a long way toward determining some fundamental aspects of life: what American neighborhoods look like, who gets to live where and what schools their children attend.
And when zoning laws get out of hand, economists say, the damage to the American economy and society can be profound.
— the New York Times
"Studies have shown that laws aimed at things like “maintaining neighborhood character” or limiting how many unrelated people can live together in the same house contribute to racial segregation and deeper class disparities. They also exacerbate inequality by restricting the... View full entry
Too often children from low-income neighborhoods are called broken...That needs to stop.
“You keep telling kids that, and they actually begin to believe they are broken, that there is something wrong with them,” she said. “When in reality, it’s not the children that are broken, it’s the environment and area around them that is not working properly.”
— The Washington Post
Ananias Jolley was a high-school student in Baltimore who had a knack for building things with his hands, and he had dreams of becoming an architect. Living in a low-income neighborhood wrought with violence, his life was tragically cut short at age 17 when he was killed by a classmate. The story... View full entry
In any city, space is a commodity. In South African cities space is historical and emotional. A new photo series by an American living in Cape Town captures the dramatic inequality of South Africa’s most beloved city. From an aerial view, Cape Town’s scenic beauty gives way to a stark reminder of the country’s past and the continued racial segregation. [...]
“Looking straight down from a height of several hundred meters, incredible scenes of inequality emerge,” he writes on his website.
— qz.com
On his website, Unequal Scenes, the creator of the aerial imagery, Johnny Miller, writes:"Discrepancies in how people live are sometimes hard to see from the ground. The beauty of being able to fly is to see things from a new perspective - to see things as they really are. Looking straight down... View full entry
All of us, including myself have been engaged in catering to the 0.1 per cent through our work. Our training has always been in material and designing architecture for that one per cent.
The kind of world we live in today, we need to democratise architecture. I know that it may give an impression that I am saying this only because I am retired now, but I have become deeply involved in how architecture can provide social justice and (grounds) for an equitable society.
— TheNews on Sunday
Related stories in the Archinect news:Relocation or Adaptation: Earth Home Project Brings Relief to Pakistanis Reeling from FloodsSave the only Neutra In PakistanArchitect of Osama bin Laden's hideout discovered the fate of his designs on Archinect! View full entry
