The American Institute of Architects Ι Oct. 14, 2019 In 1978, John Catlin, who’d been a wheelchair user for four years after a spinal injury, began graduate school in architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). In 1973, federal legislation was passed that prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities, including facilities designed, built, altered,… Continue reading Design for all requires a culture change in architecture
Category: Articles
This Conservative City Built a $132 Million Park Using One Weird Trick
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι Oct. 11, 2019 In the early 1990s, a crisis of confidence—and urbanism—gripped Oklahoma City. Oklahoma’s capital wanted a bustling, active city center that would attract and retain large corporations and the people who would staff them. But the city had mostly been a luckless suitor. Foreshadowing the Amazon HQ2 cage match, in… Continue reading This Conservative City Built a $132 Million Park Using One Weird Trick
An Activist Architecture Stirs in Chicago
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι Oct. 9. 2019 Perhaps the most compelling installation in this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial doesn’t feature a single architectural model, rendering, or image of buildings (or of anything else). It’s a series of short blocks of text, probing the Chicago police’s killing of Harith Augustus on the city’s South Side in July of last… Continue reading An Activist Architecture Stirs in Chicago
A Floating Lab Aims to Promote a Healthy Marine Habitat in the San Francisco Bay
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι Aug. 29, 2019 From a distance, you could be forgiven for thinking the Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab installation is merely a boat. The vessel is actually a product of the California College of the Arts (CCA) Architectural Ecologies Lab. It’s seaworthy, with a fiberglass hull and oblong shape, but meant for a… Continue reading A Floating Lab Aims to Promote a Healthy Marine Habitat in the San Francisco Bay
How a Gehry building came back ready for the spotlight
The American Institute of Architects Ι Aug. 21, 2019 In the pantheon of Frank Gehry buildings, his American Center in Paris, completed in 1994, was a decidedly transitional artifact. Gehry was rebuffed from using steel on the building by planners with context-attuned designs for its newly redeveloped district on the banks of the Seine, so instead… Continue reading How a Gehry building came back ready for the spotlight
Bamboo Transcends the Tropics for Carbon-Negative Construction
Autodesk’s Redshift Ι Aug. 7, 2019 It can be argued either way: Bamboo is a building material that’s criminally underused in construction or one destined to remain a quirky, regional curio. Long ignored beyond the developing world, bamboo (a grass, not a tree) has the compressive strength of concrete and the tensile strength of steel. Unlike… Continue reading Bamboo Transcends the Tropics for Carbon-Negative Construction
Virgil Abloh’s MCA Exhibition Reveals the Power—and Limits—of Design Disruption
Metropolis Magazine Ι July 15, 2019 Architecture is an attractive medium for the trendsetter-turned-multidisciplinary designer and artist Virgil Abloh. Because buildings are often the face of the establishment, they are ripe targets for subversion—Abloh’s calling card. So it’s no surprise that bits of buildings are strewn throughout Figures of Speech, Abloh’s first solo museum exhibition now… Continue reading Virgil Abloh’s MCA Exhibition Reveals the Power—and Limits—of Design Disruption
Can This Chicago Apartment Factory Make New Homes Affordable?
The Atlantic’s CityLab Ι July 8, 2019 Skender, an established, family-owned builder in Chicago, is making a serious play in a sector associated with young startups: modular construction. The company is building steel-structured three-flats, a quintessential Chicago housing type that consists of three apartments stacked on top of each other in the footprint of a large house.… Continue reading Can This Chicago Apartment Factory Make New Homes Affordable?
New Composite Building Materials Are Redefining Modernism at Exhibit Columbus
Redshift Ι July 2, 2018 Since the advent of modernism, architects have dreamed of the perfect material to unify structure and surface. Steel beams and glass windows were the 20th century’s solution, combining the elements holding up buildings and the elements covering buildings into one tidy duo. This century, academic researchers are throwing out this… Continue reading New Composite Building Materials Are Redefining Modernism at Exhibit Columbus
In Detroit, Empty Lots Become Parks, Helping to Rebuild Lost Social Equity
Metropolis Magazine Ι June 24, 2019 Stephanie Harbin has lived in the Detroit neighborhood of Fitzgerald since 1969, and is president of the San Juan Drive block club. When she was a child, she remembers, there were 75 houses packed onto an extraordinarily long block of San Juan. And in a story that’s been repeated across… Continue reading In Detroit, Empty Lots Become Parks, Helping to Rebuild Lost Social Equity