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Videos

Already having tackled electric vehicles, space flight, and high-speed vacuum tubes, benevolent mad scientist Elon Musk’s latest foray into transportation infrastructure is ready to get off the ground, or rather, under it.

The tech mogul’s newest startup, the Boring Company, focuses on designing a subterranean network of tunnels beneath the streets of Los Angeles that could shuttle pedestrians and vehicles on electric sleds connected to a system of rails at speeds of up to 125 mph.

Now, the company has announced approval by the LA County city of Hawthorne to construct a 1.6-mile-long tunnel that will allow the technology to be tested in-full for the first time.

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The New Normal, a three year-long educational programme at Moscow's Strelka Institute of Architecture, Media and Design, is focused on "the opportunities posed by emerging technologies for interdisciplinary design practices." In this short essay, taken from a new book of the same name, course director Benjamin Bratton lays out the thesis behind the project.

Something has shifted, it seems. We are making new worlds faster than we can keep track of them, and the pace is unlikely to slow. If our technologies have advanced beyond our ability to conceptualize their implications, such gaps can be perilous. In response, one impulse is to pull the emergency brake and to try put all the genies back in all the bottles. This is ill-advised (and hopeless).

Better instead to invest in emergence, in contingency: to map the new normal for what it is, and to shape it toward what it should be.

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Welcome to the latest installment of #donotsettle extra, the series in which Wahyu Pratomo and Kris Provoost accompany some of their #donotsettle videos with in-depth textual analysis of the buildings they visit.

After last month’s visit to OMA’s first building in Shanghai, we stayed in China and headed north—far north. We are happy to take you to a building that has been high on our “to-do list.” Harbin, a provincial capital city in the north-east of China, has previously only been known for the large-scale ice sculptures that appear during the winter months. In the past two years, this has changed, at least for the architecture geeks spread around the world.

Ma Yansong and his team at MAD Architects designed and built the Harbin Opera House in a new part of the city. First announced in 2013, the building was completed at the end of 2015. Since then, an endless stream of breathtaking photos has been shared on the internet. We had to see this project with our own eyes! We ventured out to Harbin and spent a day at the Opera.

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We’ve already presented a selection of staircases made from beautiful materials, and are back for round 2! With different types of materials and support techniques, some stairs give us the feeling of being suspended in the air, while others play with the exposed elements that sustain them. In this round-up, we’ve got some seriously spiraling stairs, both in public and private buildings. We’re also showcasing some unique metal staircases so thin they look almost see-through – a feat of architecture and structural design.

Check out ten more unique staircases from our archive below:

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C'est officiel : on peut se baigner en eau vive à #Paris ! Venez vous jeter à l'eau à #ParisPlages #LaVillette! @FrancoisDagnaud @jfmartins pic.twitter.com/bv4B4gw6Qc

— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) 18 de julho de 2017

On July 15, the city of Paris announced the opening of three natural swimming pools that receive their water supply from the Seine River, located in the La Villette Basin in the 19th arrondissement of the city. Spanning a total of 1,600 square meters, the new attraction is divided into a children's area, with depths of up to 40cm; an area of medium depth of 1,2m; and a larger pool, with depths of about two meters.

The swimming pools are part of the "Swimming in Paris" project, presented for the first time by the City Council of The French Capital in June 2015, with the goal of "encouraging the practice of swimming for Parisians and Tourists." According to an official statement from the city government, the project aims to allow, by 2020, the "modernization of water parks and the creation of new swimming pools and areas for bathing."

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Videos

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The Chicago Chapter of The Architecture Lobby announces its second annual design competition, Kerning for a Cause, beginning July 17, 2017.

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The long-awaited replacement for New York City’s longest bridge, the Tappan Zee, is set to open to the public on Friday, announced Governor Andrew Cuomo. After four years of construction, the first of the $4 billion dollar project’s twin two-span cable-stayed structures will welcome automobile as well as pedestrian and bicycle traffic for the first time.

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