NBWW BLOG…

Christopher Hawthorne explores what a new generation of architecture school deans, the rise of the Free School in Los Angeles, and online courses by Gehry and Hays reveal about the democratization of the profession. By Christopher Hawthorne At the beginning of the year, I began writing a weekly column in the Sunday arts section of the Los Angeles Times, where I’ve been the architecture critic since 2004. I started the column, called Building Type, in part because I wanted to cover more critical territory; at the end of a typical year there is always at least a small handful of significant buildings, exhibitions, and books that I feel guilty about having left uncovered. The world that architecture touches on is huge, and in some basic way I wanted to visit more of it. I also figured...

These small things can make a big impact by Megan Barber, Patrick Sisson, and Alissa Walker Whether you live in the farthest suburb or in the heart of downtown, how you move around your city shapes your social interactions, your job, and even your family dynamics. Peruse the news, however, and you’ll find a laundry list of transportation nightmares: subway systems in a state of emergency, declining ridership in our biggest metro areas, and unreliable bus systems plaguing commuters. What’s a transit-loving urbanite to do? In an effort to parse through the doom and gloom—and in honor of Curbed’s first-ever Transportation Week—we want to share 101 smart transportation solutions that can make our cities better. What You Can Do | What Businesses Can Do | What Your Neighborhood Can Do |...

Billings saw month-over-month growth in August, and demand for design services in all geographic regions and building sectors remains in positive territory. By Hanley Wood Data Studio The monthly Architecture Billings Index (ABI) came in at a score of 53.7 in August, up 1.8 points from July’s score of 51.9, the AIA announced today. Though billings eased slightly in July, August’s 1.8 gain was expected following July’s uptick in new project inquiries. The ABI is a leading economic indicator of construction activity in the U.S., and reflects a nine- to 12-month lead time between architecture billings and construction spending nationally, and regionally, as well as by project type. A score above 50, as seen every month since February, represents an increase in billings...

Perspective Finder and Color Capture are features for the software developer’s Trace and Board apps, respectively, that leverage the ARKit platform in Apple’s new iOS 11. By Wanda Lau One of the most buzzed-about features of Apple’s new iOS 11 is ARKit, an augmented reality (AR) framework that uses an iPhone’s or iPad’s camera to capture data about its surrounding environment. Introduced in June at the Worldwide Developer Conference, the framework allows third-party developers to leverage the software’s use of SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology to identify horizontal surfaces, record light levels, and measure distances automatically. ARKit’s take on SLAM technology raises the bar on existing augmented reality platforms, which often combined...

Miriam Sitz As summer 2017 drew to a close, for the first time in 166 years of weather records, two Category 4 Atlantic hurricanes hit the United States in the same season—just 16 days apart. Each brought its own superlatives: Harvey, the continental U.S.’s wettest storm ever, drenched southeast Texas with as much as 51 inches of rain, while Irma maintained a devastating maximum wind speed of 185 mph over a record- setting 37-hour period. Among Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean, where both storms brutally battered small island nations before making landfall on the continent, more than 130 lives were lost, and early estimates of total damages are approaching $300 billion. … In Florida, Hurricane Irma also played out differently from the way initial forecasts predicted. Miami...

By Jackson Rollings On Saturday, September 23, Storefront for Art and Architecture will launch the New York Architecture Book Fair with a day-long conference, Architecture Books / Yet to be Written / 1982-2017-2052. The event will ask architects to think about the past and future of architectural publication, enlisting critical voices in the field, including: Diana Agrest, Stan Allen, Amale Andraos, Harry Cobb, Beatriz Colomina, Reinier de Graaf, Peggy Deamer, Elizabeth Diller, Steven Holl, Sanford Kwinter, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne, Enrique Norten, Toshiko Mori, Joan Ockman, Spyridon Papapetros, Brett Steele, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Rafael Viñoly, Mark Wigley, James Wines, and others. This conference is presented in partnership with The Irwin S. Chanin School of...

Keith Larsen Miami to Orlando could become one of the first routes on Hyperloop’s ultra-fast autonomous transportation system, allowing commuters to travel between the cities in only 25 minutes. The Los Angeles start-up company, Hyperloop One, announced the Miami to Orlando route was one of its 10 winners around the world as part of its Hyperloop One Global Challenge. Hyperloop One is looking to design a high speed transit system which would use pressurized tubes to transport commuters in pods. It would allow people working in Miami to commute to Orlando in 25 minutes, a trip that would otherwise take over four hours by car. Florida’s Hyperloop team is led by AECOM, an engineering firm, and has the backing of the Miami Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works,...

Florida has one of the nation’s strongest building codes, patterned after the code Miami-Dade County enacted after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 Mike Seemuth As Floridians recover from Hurricane Irma, preliminary evidence shows that homes built in compliance with the state’s toughened building codes sustained less storm damage than other homes. Rusty Payton, chief executive of the Florida Home Builders Association, told the Wall Street Journal that while further assessment is needed, it appears the state’s stricter set of construction standards “did its job.” Florida has one of the nation’s strongest building codes, adopted in 2002 and patterned after the building code that Miami-Dade County enacted after Hurricane Andrew decimated the southern end of the county in 1992. Among other...

By Blair Kamin The Chicago Architecture Biennial no longer can be accused of indulging in the city’s long tradition of windy braggadocio. When the big contemporary architecture and urban design exhibition opens this weekend, it will for the first time become an event that occurs every other year. But that is a mere procedural achievement. This edition of the biennial matters because it is thick with strong ideas and is more tightly curated and organized than the inaugural version. Like that first show, it takes the temperature of its time in fascinating ways. Titled “Make New History” and featuring work by more than 140 designers from over 20 countries, the exhibition reveals many things about the current state of an art that shapes our lives: postmodernism, with its...

The Influence Charrette: Exposing and Exploiting Design Bias The Premise After hosting architecture competitions and charrettes for years, we have observed a multitude of biases that juries subscribe to when it comes to core principles of architectural design and representation methods. Unlike the typical hot-button issues that drive architectural discourse like sustainability or accessibility, these biases are subconsciously implemented, yet they have equal influence on outcomes. For example, we’ve seen that regardless of style, projects that stress certain design principles like repetition and scale are more likely to win competitions. More basically, portrait-oriented images are statistically more favorable to a jury than landscape-oriented images. Perplexingly, we’ve found that...

By ARCHITECT Staff Columbia, Md.–based software developer Vectorworks has announced the release of its 2018 BIM software. This latest version updates add-ons to its eponymous software, as well as its Architect, Spotlight, Landmark, Fundamentals, Designer, and Vision packages, and introduces Braceworks, “a structural load analysis add-on module targeted to designers and riggers working on temporary entertainment structures,” according to the developer’s press release. Updates to the BIM software also include the ability for users to review and work in multiple drawing views simultaneously, as well as direct model editing capabilities in section and elevation views. [ARCHITECT] On Sept. 5, the International WELL Building Institute launched a new district-scale rating...

AIA president Thomas Vonier implores legislators to keep an eye on the long game regarding design and construction regulations. By Wanda Lau With hurricanes Harvey and Irma behind us—and the long roads to recovery and rebuilding ahead of us—the AIA issued a statement today asking state and federal legislators to reject any initiative that seeks to weaken building-code requirements, and to include public buildings in efforts to update and upgrade the country’s infrastructure. In the press release, AIA president Thomas Vonier, FAIA, urges lawmakers to “reject attempts to roll back protections that make good design and careful planning the hallmarks of U.S. construction.” The press release cites President Donald Trump’s Aug. 15 Executive Order 13807, “Establishing Discipline and...