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Part of the W Awards program, the annual MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice recognizes UK-based architects excelling in practice. Last year's prize was awarded to Alice Brownfield of Peter Barber Architects. Now in its third iteration, this year's award recipient is Fiona... View full entry
The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada has announced Jerome Markson as its 2022 Gold Medal Winner. The Toronto-based modernist is well known throughout Canada for his award-winning designs and contributions to the fields of architectural education and design theory. Markson’s social... View full entry
With expediency in mind, Los Angeles is looking to adopt a successful blueprint to solve the growing number of large homeless encampments that have been cropping up in the city since the beginning of the pandemic last spring. Silverlake-based Lehrer Architects is expanding on its... View full entry
You might remember Wandile Mthiyane from Archinect's recent profile on him, Undoing Apartheid Architecture. In that profile, Wandile talked about a pioneering new program his organization, Ubuntu Design Group, has developed. Called the Ubuntu Architecture Summer Abroad Program (UASA)... View full entry
New York City-based SO-IL has nearly completed work on the six-story Las Americas social housing project in León, Mexico that aims to offer a new "prototype for the development of vertical dwellings" in the city. The project, created in partnership with Imuvi Development and the City of... View full entry
A first-of-its-kind deal to sell the air rights at a Fort Greene NYCHA development is nearing completion after months of negotiation.
The deal would transfer nearly 100,000 square feet of building rights from the Ingersoll Houses to a yet-to-be-built private development next door. In exchange, developers would provide nearly $25 million for maintenance at Ingersoll as part of NYCHA’s new long-term strategy to leverage private funds for the repair of its beleaguered housing stock.
— The Brooklyn Eagle
The deal will help a 183-unit mixed use development located next door to Brooklyn's Ingersoll Houses grow to 400 units in size. In exchange, the number of affordable housing units designed into the project will increase from 79 to 100, New York YIMBY reports. The proposed 202 Tillary Street... View full entry
INFONAVIT, the federal institute for workers housing of Mexico, is the largest mortgage lender in Latin America. Founded in 1972, the Mexico City-based institute has played a critical role for families across Mexico attempting access decent housing. The institution, along with MOS architects, has... View full entry
Segregated play spaces are to be banned in all future London housing developments, the Greater London Authority (GLA) has revealed this week.
The policy, part of the London Plan for developers and local authorities across the city, follows outrage across the political spectrum at the case of the Lilian Baylis estate in Kennington. [...] families living in the social housing side of the estate were not allowed to use the play area or any communal spaces on the development.
— The Guardian
"It is disgraceful that children who live in the same development would ever be prevented from playing together," London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Guardian. The case of the segregated play areas at this London housing development (and several others) — only children from Lilian Baylis... View full entry
There is only a small handful of architects practicing today whose work can at once be described as lavish and another as altruistic - Michael Maltzan, Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma are a few of the names that come to mind. Vacation Home, by ELEMENTAL. Image via Chile Sotheby’s International... View full entry
A new social housing project by Hardel Le Bihan Architectes was recently completed this year in Paris near the Clignancourt University campus. The 63 housing unit structure is part of a larger development comprised of two apartment buildings and a university cafeteria. Croisset Social Housing by... View full entry
The recently completed Bolueta high rise by VArquitectos is now the tallest reaching Passive House building in the world. Located in Bilbao, Spain, the project includes an adjacent 9-story building with 63 apartments dedicated for social housing. Bolueta by VArquitectos, located in Bilbao... View full entry
With its affordable and attractive places to live, the Austrian capital is fast becoming the international gold standard when it comes to public housing, or what Europeans call “social housing” ― in Vienna’s case, government-subsidized housing rented out by the municipality or nonprofit housing associations. Unlike America’s public housing projects, which remain unloved and underfunded... — huffingtonpost.com
In Vienna 62% of its citizens reside in public housing, standing in stark contrast with less than 1% living in US social housing. The Austrian capital boasts regulated rents and strongly protects tenant's rights, while US public housing functions as a last resort for low-income individuals... View full entry
Artist Guido Zimmermann's Cuckoo Block series present a brutalist take on the traditional cuckoo clock design. Based in Germany, Zimmermann's pieces are largely inspired by local brutalist housing blocks found in Frankfurt and Berlin. He has also ventured out to create clocks based on notable... View full entry
If we are to take the housing crisis in the United States seriously,
after reviewing international models, we see only one conclusion—local governments, supported by the federal government, must build a
very large amount of affordable, mixed income, publicly-owned housing, initially by developing existing publicly-owned land.
— 3P
The People's Policy Project (3P) has put out a report making the case for Social Housing in the United States. The authors, Ryan Cooper and Peter Gowan, also published an adapted essay in Jacobin Magazine wherein they contrast their approach with previous programs like HOPE VI: "We support a... View full entry
The V&A will transport a recently demolished concrete section from Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, east London, to the Venice Architecture Biennale.
It will be delivered by barge to the biennale’s Arsenale site, where it will be reassembled on an outdoors scaffold, allowing visitors to stand on an original “street in the sky” – the elevated deck that was optimistically meant to foster healthy interaction between neighbours.
— The Guardian
The demolition of east London's Robin Hood Gardens has been ongoing since last year, which is why the V&A moved to acquire a three-story section of the brutalist icon. The museum's section will now be displayed in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale in order to revisit its original... View full entry