Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Click here to see today's news.
Portland, Oregon, "just did the nearly impossible - a peek at what can happen when housing advocates outnumber housing opponents" (a model for other cities). -- Chandran explains why atArchitecture's winning design in the Building Trust International competition for Phnom Penh factory worker homes is a model for other cities "struggling to meet surging demand" for low-cost housing. -- Kolson Hurley parses a new approach to treating dementia: "nostalgiavilles" that "trade in an intangible good: memories," and "why a 'memory town' is coming to your local strip mall" - a model town near San Diego "is set to be replicated around the U.S." ("It's not what advocates of retrofitting the suburbs may have had in mind"). -- Schwab parses Work & Co's "ultimate anti-open office" in Portland, Oregon, that "is proof that not all open plan offices are miserable hellholes" ("no sad desk lunches allowed" - and nary a ping-pong table in sight). -- Wainwright gives (mostly) thumbs-up to Stanton Williams' makeover of London's Royal Opera House: "its warren of interior wonders" was once off limits to non-ticket holders - until now - "high culture's icy palace lets the people in for a drink" (though some elements are a bit "generic," the "new ladies' loos are a dizzying sight to behold"). -- RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) opens a $50 million, 90,000-square-foot Manhattan flagship a block from the High Line and the Whitney Museum, complete with a rooftop restaurant and outdoor terrace, "to prove brick-and-mortar retailing is not dead." -- Louise Nevelson's 1977 "masterwork" chapel in Saint Peter's Church in midtown Manhattan is about to close for a much-needed (and deserved) restoration - it "remains key public space in a neighborhood where Privately-Owned Public Spaces (POPS) have been allowed to evolve" into anything but. -- A snapshot of the 12 shortlisted projects vying for this year's WAF award in the 'Education - Future Project' category; they "have the potential to redefine how students learn." -- TPS taps blind architect Chris Downey to help design the new South Dakota School for the Blind and Visually Impaired: "I didn't see the value of a blind architect when I first got into it. Now I have no doubt that I have more value without sight than I had as a sighted architect." -- Crosbie x 2: He gets "an optimist's take" from Imdat As re: Artificial Intelligence and how it "might change design and practice as we now know it - would that be such a bad thing?" (his current research on AI's impact on architectural design and practice is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense). -- In a blast from ANN's past: Crosbie talks to Imdat about crowdsourcing design, and "why the criticism that sites like his Arcbazar.com are taking jobs away from architects doesn't wash." -- Dickinson takes a deep dive into the current state of architectural criticism: He's optimistic about "how a wave of new voices" and digital formats are "changing the way we talk, think and write about buildings - the few remaining print magazines will, finally, become beloved footnotes" (sigh). -- Two we couldn't resist (O Canada): Vancouver "has the 'sorriest bus stop' in North America. There was something about Vancouver's abomination that stood out." -- Does Canada have the world's most confusing road sign? "It has to be seen to be believed - it looks like an indecipherable patchwork of various other road signs, mainly because it is."

Whither the weather and climate change:
-- Green reports on APA's symposium that gathered urban planners at San Francisco's SPUR to "mobilize for climate action": there's a "need to do a better job of bringing historic preservation allies into the fight," and "climate plans must also take into better account the unintended consequences of good intentions." -- Plautz parses the U.S. Conference of Mayors/Center for Climate and Energy Solutions survey that found "57% of cities plan climate action in the next year: With the Trump administration rolling back several climate measures, cities and states have been stepping up and making climate commitments of their own." -- Penndorf of Perkins+Will explains that Hurricane Florence "shows architecture must address climate The challenges ahead pose intriguing questions that demand both ingenuity and a stubborn commitment to do more."

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by Shirley Styles

August 9, 2018