Like most countries, India faces a perpetual housing crisis. As the world’s most populous nation, with an urban population expected to grow from 410 million in 2014 to 814 million by 2050, this becomes a pressing concern. The Indian built landscape brings further complexities in the form of a pervasive market-driven approach and the need for socially relevant housing. Looking into the future, how will India address the needs of its growing population to house the next million urbanites?
Cities across the US are struggling to fill their office spaces. Major cities like Washington DC, Boston, and San Francisco have increasingly vacant downtowns, while the urban centers of small Rust Belt cities struggle to survive altogether. This trend is consistent beyond the US, with over three-quarters of Europe’s office buildings at risk of obsolescence by the decade’s end. The cause of this, in most cases, is simple: an oversupply of offices and a shift towards remote work. These vacant buildings can trigger a negative domino effect of economic and social challenges for cities, and their surplus, coupled with a housing shortage, has sparked discussions among cities and architects about the impending necessity to transform offices into housing.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, along with the New York City Department of Design and Construction, has announced the breaking ground on the construction of the Studio Gang-designed Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center. Located at the Nostrand Playground in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, the center aims to bring new amenities to the residents of East Flatbush while honoring the history and heritage of the community. The new center is named after Brooklyn-born politician Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to serve in Congress and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
It has been a bull market for downbeat urban reporting since the pandemic arrived in town. And it isn’t hard to see why. In 2020, central U.S. cities went from “comeback” success stories to ghost towns; transit lost nearly all ridership; tens of thousands of stores and restaurants shuttered; and many of the affluent decamped to the suburbs and distant Zoom towns.
In September of this year, New York City experienced a severe storm that inundated its streets with more than 7 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, causing a number of roads to close, cars to submerge, and buses to get trapped. This event again highlighted the city's old infrastructure's inability to handle fast and heavy rainfall. As climate change intensifies, experts warn that such extreme weather events will become increasingly frequent. This vulnerability is especially concerning in densely populated urban areas such as New York City, where flooding risks increase due to the large amounts of impervious surfaces.
From October 12 to 18, NYCxDESIGN presents the Design Pavilion, a prominent public architectural exhibition in New York. Occurring during Archtober, a month-long celebration of architecture, this year's Design Pavilion highlights three imaginative installations spanning materiality, sustainability, social justice, and more.
Two tangible installations have been designed to transform Gansevoort Plaza in the Meatpacking District into urban retreats, while the third exhibit offers a digital art projection at the World Trade Center Podium, addressing the nation's history of enslavement and the quest for healing. Along with the pavilions, the Design Talks program highlights and opens discussions on relevant issues of the profession, centering around themes of sustainability, repurposing, and waste reduction.
Oana Stănescu is a Romanian architect, designer, writer, and educator, based in New York and Berlin, with a diverse portfolio of interventions around the world. Selected as part of 2023 New Practices by ArchDaily, the young architect recognizes the value of architecture as a discipline, but nevertheless acknowledges that architecture cannot single-handedly resolve the complex challenges of our world. “Architecture is most powerful when recognized as part of a larger system, rather than being solely self-serving”, she adds in her conversation with ArchDaily’s Managing Editor, Christele Harrouk. In this way, Oana views architecture as a key player in a broader context, working to address significant societal issues.
With several ongoing projects, from the rehabilitation of an existing industrial infrastructure in Romania, to an integrated house within its natural environment in Canada, Oana’s creative process is centered on a commitment to serve people. Watch the full interview and discover below key insights from the conversation.
The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5) has announced the participation of the James R Thompson Center as both a cultural partner and city site for the 5th edition of the exhibition. CAB 5: This is A Rehearsal is curated by the Chicago-based artist collective Floating Museum. The Thompson Center has long been referred to as one of Chicago’s postmodern architectural marvels, designed by Helmut Jahn. At this year’s biennial, which starts on the 21st of September, 2023, the center will host five exhibitions and site-specific installations.
Archtober, a New York City-based platform that promotes the discovery of architecture and design through experiences and content, will celebrate the next installment of its annual Festival from October 1–31, 2023.
After over two decades in the making, the Perelman Performing Arts Center opened to the public on September 19, 2023. The luminous cube-shaped building was designed by the architecture firm REX, led by Joshua Ramus, to become one of New York City’s cultural keystones and the final piece in the 2023 Master Plan for the rebuilding of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. The inaugural season will feature commissions, world premieres, co-productions, and collaborative work across theater, dance, music, opera, film, and more. While only eight stories high, the venue stands out due to its monolithic façade composed of translucent veined Portuguese marble.
New York City’s Local Law 18, also known as the Short-Term Rental Registration Law, came into effect on September 5, changing the way in which short-term apartment rentals operate in the city. The new local legislation dictated that from now on, short-term rental hosts in the city must register with the Office of Special Enforcement (OSE) to obtain a license, and rentals are only allowed if the host lives in the place and is present for the duration of the guest’s stay. The number of guests is also limited to just two, and the duration is limited to 30 days. The legislation is not an explicit ban on platforms such as Airbnb, but the strict regulations make it almost impossible for the service to continue its activity.
In the ever-evolving landscape of urban development, cities are faced with an array of challenges that demand quick and innovative solutions, ranging from the critical issue of affordable housing to the pressing need for efficient and decongested infrastructure and sustainable energy practices. As the demands of the built environment expand, local authorities worldwide are redefining policies and regulations to shape their cities. These innovative regulations can drive sustainable and consistent progress as cities stand at the intersection between their present challenges and future aspirations.
From the grid plans of ancient Greek cities to the Renaissance's idealized urban layouts, the history of urban planning is a reflection of evolving power structures and societal priorities. Across the world, many African and Asian cities simultaneously existed without clear visual manifestation. the organizational structure being deeply embedded in cultural needs and social relations. Urban development is marked by a dichotomy - the contrast between top-down planning strategies led by influential entities and governing bodies, and the bottom-up initiatives driven by local communities. This interplay shapes cities, influencing aspects from infrastructure and public spaces to housing models and urban character. Delving into the differences between these strategies is essential to crafting a harmonious urban landscape that caters to the needs of its residents.
When one thinks of public spaces, the image of a pool rarely comes to mind. Public spaces are the center of civic life, places where most interactions, activities, and behaviors follow strict social and cultural norms to ensure the safety and comfort of all users. In contrast, swimming and bathing represent something more intimate and primordial, a sensorial experience distinct from any other. In addition to the health benefits, the act of floating in space creates a break from everyday life and its constraints.
As social spaces, public baths and pools offer an even more unusual experience. Here, regular conduct rules and norms no longer apply. Social nudity becomes the new norm, and, as people strip off their clothes, they also lose their status markers, transforming the pool into an egalitarian oasis. Across history, these often-discredited spaces offered a heightened social experience, fostering connections and bringing a new element to dense urban environments. As a typology present since antiquity, public baths and pools have also been a disputed space, as a manifestation of difficult topics such as gender and racial segregation, gentrification, and surveillance in contrast to the freedom they promise.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill have been selected to design the New York Climate Exchange in partnership with Stony Brook University, a public research institute in New York. The new net-zero campus, located on Governors Island, New York, is planned to serve as an anchor institution for the development of new climate solutions. As a first-of-its-kind international center, “The Exchange” will also act as a regional hub for the green economy.
David Hotson (b. 1959) founded his New York City-based practice David Hotson Architect in 1991. His projects – houses, loft residences, penthouse apartments, and galleries – are known for their remarkable spatial and visual complexity. His Church of Saint Sarkis in Carrollton, Texas is especially distinguished for the luminous and sculptural qualities of its interior space as well as the exterior grade high-resolution digital printing on its west façade. Earlier this year this appealing work won the US Building of the Year award by World-Architects.com. Hotson obtained his Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and earned his Master of Architecture in 1987 at Yale.
In the following interview with David Hotson, we discussed the architect’s design process, focusing on making concave spatial voids legible and primary, being inspired by Byzantine architecture and his favorite building ever built, what structure he considers the most important work of contemporary architecture, what makes his award-winning Church of Saint Sarkis special, and the use of space and light as the essential tools in creating architecture as a figural void and ultimately an art form.
On January 31st, construction scaffolding and barriers were disassembled from the site at 56 Leonard Street, revealing Anish Kapoor’s first permanent artwork in New York City. The 48-foot-long, 19-foot-tall, 40-ton sculpture is nestled partially beneath the Herzog & de Meuron-designed residential building in the Tribeca neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. The mirrored sculpture is reminiscent of Kapoor;’s work called Cloud Gate, also known as “The Bean,” in Chicago, US.
Airbnb has long been a reliable way to find a homestay. Since its inception in 2008, the site has hosted more than 7 million homes around the world where travelers can stay in a room, or rent an entire house out for themselves. Recently, many cities have been cracking down on short-term stays, citing safety issues, false listings, and rising property prices which push people out of their homes when housing becomes used just for Airbnb rentals. What are cities doing about these issues? What is Airbnb doing to help remediate them? And will Airbnb be viable for much longer?
