Architecture

Taking Co-Living Seriously In Architecture And Design

August 4, 2026 David Bollier. Create! Architecture, Co-housing, Housing, The Commons

Surging real estate markets, among other factors, have made US housing unaffordable to large segments of the population, especially young people. So much of it is designed for conventional nuclear families and upscale buyers seeking luxury amenities. For lower- and middle-income people, simply finding affordable housing is hard enough; it almost seems utopian to want housing with attractive public amenities, shared spaces, and a spirit of neighborliness and belonging. Fortunately, a number of renegade architects, builders, and city planners see great potential in shared living arrangements.

These Black Architects Are Helping Rebuild Altadena After The LA Wildfires

April 24, 2025 Corinne Ruff, Next City. Create! Architecture, Black America, California, Community, Disaster Recovery, Los Angeles, Wildfires

Carla Flagg remembers the joy of growing up in west Altadena. “We had these great pool parties where all the cousins and everybody would come to the Fair Oaks house,” she says, smiling, as tears welled up in her eyes. Her parents owned the house and passed it down to her sister and her sister’s kids. “ We had that home for 50-some odd years, and there are still people who know the original phone number.” Flagg’s family home was one of some 9,400 structures that were destroyed in the Eaton Fire in January. It was also one of many homes passed down within the Black community by family members. Discriminatory redlining of the 1960s steered her parents away from Pasadena, and realtors encouraged them to purchase on the west side of Altadena.

One Year Ago, Brazil Banned Hostile Architecture

December 30, 2024 Raphael Tsavkko Garcia, Next City. Educate! Architecture, Brazil, Homelessness, Hostile architecture, Urban Design

In February 2021, at the height of the pandemic, images of a lone priest standing beneath an overpass with a sledgehammer in his hands captured Brazil’s attention. Father Julio Lancellotti, a São Paulo-based priest known for his work with trans people and those living on the streets, had crushed hundreds of stones placed there by São Paulo’s mayor to prevent homeless people from taking shelter beneath the overpass. Lancellotti was protesting hostile architecture, the design of public spaces or structures to discourage their use. From removing seating from train stations to installing metal dividers on benches, hostile architecture attempts to keep the “unwanted” away from certain spaces — especially keeping unhoused people from seeking shelter, sleeping, sitting or existing in the public.

We Can’t Decolonize Architecture Without Talking About Palestine

November 19, 2024 Palestine Collective, Next City. Organize! Architecture, Decolonization, History, Palestine

One year ago this month, Palestine Collective was born. We’re a group of more than 50 creatives in the U.K. who have the primary goal of normalizing support for Palestine in architectural and design circles, both in the academic and practitioner space. We came together in response to the censorship we were facing in our places of work and study when speaking on the human rights and spatial injustices faced by Palestinians. We have seen censorship of Palestine across top cultural institutions. London’s Barbican Centre, a prominent performing arts venue, backed out of hosting a London Review of Books lecture series over a talk called “The Shoah after Gaza.”

Why My Coworkers And I Unionized Our Architecture Firm

October 21, 2024 Je Siqueira, Jacobin. Strategize! Architecture, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

The first attempt to unionize a privately owned architecture firm since the 1970s started at SHoP Architects in New York City, where I was working at the time. This was part of a wave of nontraditional organizing efforts taking place around 2020 that included tech workers at Kickstarter and Google, baristas at various Starbucks locations, writers at Vice, and partners at Apple stores, just to name a few. During the summer of that same year, while most “nonessential workers” were working remotely under stay-at-home orders, some of us hit the streets of cities all over the country to protest police brutality and the assassinations of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

An Atlas For Urban Commons Of The World

October 6, 2024 David Bollier. Create! Architecture, The Commons, Urban Design, Urbanization

Stefan Gruber, a Carnegie Mellon professor of architecture and urbanism, sees cities as a prime site of struggle between capitalism and commons, and at the same time more accessible than most national or international policy venues. "The history of urbanization is intricately entangled with the history of industrialization and capitalism," said Gruber, citing thinkers like Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells. "Cities provide access to a high concentration of labor and production, infrastructure, trade, finance, and consumption markets." Yet even though cities have contributed to capitalist growth, Gruber noted, "they have also been the arenas where the contradictions of capitalism, such as inequities, the environment, and class struggle, have played out most visibly."

Keeping Cool Without Costing The Earth

July 5, 2022 Rapid Transition Alliance, Resilience. Create! Architecture, climate crisis, extreme heat, Renewable Energy

In May 2022 temperatures in India and Pakistan reached 50°C. Heat this fierce causes chaos to infrastructure, water security and also triggers irreversible cell damage within the human body. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported that this extreme event, which plunged nearly a billion people into heat stress, was made 30 times more likely due to climate change. And with extreme heat comes the need to keep cool. As the heat waves in India and Pakistan showed, the response for those that can afford it, is to buy an air conditioner (AC).

Beautiful Hobbit House Must Be Destroyed

August 4, 2014 Rachael Misstear, www.walesonline.co.uk Create! Architecture, Environment, Sustainability

A 'hobbit house' is now facing demolition after a council refused it retrospective planning permission. Pembrokeshire council planners ruled that the home in Crymych broke the rules for developing homes in the countryside. The decision was backed by nine councillors and four voted against the decision at County Hall in Haverfordwest. It comes after the planning committee visited the site of the eco-home in Glandwr earlier this month. Charlie Hague and Megan Williams built the eco-friendly house to live a self-sufficient lifestyle, winning fans across the world. They have spent years fighting against the demolition of their distinctive home, which was built on private land without planning permission. They received a demolition notice from the council as they failed to apply for planning permission. The couple said that the home has a low impact on the environment because of its unique construction, with its straw bale walls absorbing carbon.

Brettstapel: Important New Building Material

August 4, 2014 Lloyd Alter, www.treehugger.com Create! Architecture, Environment, Sustainability

Why this mountain bike center is built of Brettstapel, and why North American builders should be using this stuff. Coed-y-Brenin is a hugely popular mountain biking destination in Wales, " the original mountain biking centre, where it all began. From retro, rocky, classics to modern contempory trails, there are rides to satisfy first timers to seasoned pros!" Architype Architects have designed an extension to the original building that has a bike shop below and meeting rooms above. That's a fun use and it is an interesting building, but the real buzz is about the Brettstapel. Brettstapel is a method of making massive wood panels out of smaller pieces of wood, resulting in large panels that can be used as structural walls and slabs, much like Cross-Laminated-Timber (CLT). The use of CLT or other massive wood technologies can help substitute renewable wood for concrete, which has a very high carbon footprint, in many projects.

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