#Architectural Review

[guy60660]

Nguyễn Hà | Triệu Chiến | Architectural Review

[calvinpo]

For the Architectural Review

Bass Coast Farmhouse in Victoria, Australia by John Wardle Architects

Calvin Po

For the architectural profession, building on the unceded lands of Indigenous people is a conflicting proposition, yet one that is almost inevitable for architects in Australia. Bass Coast Farmhouse, by John Wardle Architects, is one such project, built on former farmland among coastal heath reserves off the Bass Strait in Victoria. As they do with all their projects, the architects acknowledge the Traditional Owners, in this case the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

Between the role of the architect, duty to their client, and wider questions of postcolonial ethics, these tensions permeate the house’s character and its distinctive relationship to the land. The Kulin Nation’s Tanderrum ceremony extends to outsiders a welcome to Country conditional on honouring the land and its intertwined relationships with its people: ‘The land ... is our mother. These cliffs are like our cathedrals, this is our church.’ On this sacral land, the architect’s exploration of ‘the nature of building on terra firma’ is not just an architectural fantasy, but a reflection of this quandary, and rejection of colonial myths of terra nullius – the land is not a blank slate.

From ecological footprint to the architectonics, this sensitivity is omnipresent. The house is entirely off-grid and the construction is largely prefabricated to minimise onsite waste and disturbance. The house sits gingerly on the ridge of a dune, making only the necessary contact with the ground. It is then cantilevered as the dune falls beneath the house. The cantilever, with its barn-like void and its suspended walkway, evokes an archaeological shelter, spanning over and shielding artefacts, and framing them for display. To enter the house, a set of stairs descends from this walkway as if down into geological strata of times past.

As for what is being sheltered – the dune and a scattering of stones – they too become imbued with new significance. After centuries of European colonisation, few traces of Boonwurrung heritage remain. It is the land itself, and the Boonwurrung people’s intergenerational custodianship of it, which is left to be protected. A critical part of the project is repairing parts of the site degraded by modern agricultural extraction, with a specialist advising on a massive replanting project for carefully restoring indigenous grass, shrub, and tree species. In contrast with the landscape, the house’s timber cladding (already silvering in the antipodean sun) and the corrugated galvanised steel roof seem to acknowledge its fleeting presence, relative to the long histories of the Kulin Nation.

The house is the antithesis of being ‘monarch of all [it] surveys’, to quote William Cowper’s poem on Alexander Selkirk, the British castaway in the Pacific. The Anglocentric ideals of Capability Brown’s Picturesque landscapes, where the earth itself is reshaped for the pleasure of the house’s gaze, are rejected. All the outward-facing windows, including the living room’s picture window, can be shuttered at a moment’s notice. For a house surrounded by expanses of nature and the coast, it is surprisingly introspective, with its primary aspect oriented around the central courtyard. The house is also extensive for a single-storey family home, with beds and bunks in polished, timber-panelled rooms, accommodating over a dozen people. But rather than bearing down on the terrain or asserting its panoramic dominion, the house seems to recognise that the views and the land are on loan, not owned.

John Wardle Architects, with its recently inaugurated Reconciliation Action Plan, joins others in Australia in re-evaluating their relationship with First Nations. But in the end, the impact a private house can have on reconciliation is limited. As Carolyn Briggs, a senior Boonwurrung elder, once reflected, ‘I’m always trying to find markers that inform me that we still have a part in this place. ... I think it would be amazing if you can start to read the land and wonder about the history of the people who lived and died before we were here. Hopefully one day you’ll know it. But we can’t see that now in the built environment.’

Link to original article here.

[smallpotatoes-dandelions]

Illustration from The Architectural Review, 1953

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Christopher Brown’s ‘A Natural History of Empty Lots’

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Christopher Brown is an accomplished post-cyberpunk sf writer, a tech lawyer with a sideline in public interest environmental law, the proud owner of one of the most striking homes I have ever seen, and an urban pastoralist who writes about wildlife in ways I've never seen and can't get enough of:

https://fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/

All of these facets of Brown's identity come together today with the launch of A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and other Wild Places:

https://christopherbrown.com/a-natural-history-of-empty-lots/

This is a frustratingly hard to summarize book, because it requires a lot of backstory and explanation, and one of the things that makes this book so! fucking! great! is how skillfully Brown weaves all that stuff into his telling. Which makes me feel self-conscious as I try to summarize things, because there's no way I'll do this as well as he did, but whatever, here goes.

Brown is a transplant from rural Iowa to Austin, where he set out to start a family, practice tech law during the dotcom boom, and write science fiction, as part of a circle of writers loosely associated with cyberpunk icon @brucesterling. After both the economy and his marriage collapsed, Brown started his restless perambulations around Austin's abandoned places, sacrifice zones, the bones of failed housing starts and abandoned dot-crash office parks.

When he did, something changed in him. Slowly, his eyes learned to see things that they had just skipped over. Plants, animals, and spoor and carapaces and dens of all description, all around him, a secret world. These were not pockets of "wilderness" in the city, but they were pockets of wildness. Birds' nests woven with plastic fibers scavenged from nearby industrial dumpsters; trees taking root in half-submerged tires rolled into a creekbed, foxes and rodents playing out a real-life version of the classic ecosystem simulation exercise on the edge of an elevated highway that fills the same function as the edge of a woodland where predator and prey meet.

As Brown fell in love again – with the artist and architect Agustina Rodriguez – he conceived of a genuinely weird and amazing plan to build a house. A very weird house, in a very weird place. He bought a plot of wasteland that had once housed the head-end of an oil pipeline (connected to a nearby oil-storage facility that poisoned the people who lived near it, in an act of wanton environmental racism) and had been used as a construction-waste dump for years.

After securing an extremely unlikely loan, Brown remediated the plot, excavating the oil pipeline, then building the most striking home you have ever seen in the resulting trench. Brown is a pal of mine, and this is where I stay when I'm in Austin, and I can promise you, the pictures don't do it justice:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/style/christopher-brown-edgeland-house-austin/

Formally, A Natural History of Empty Lots is a memoir that explains all of this. But not really. Like I say, this is just the back story. What Natural History really is, is a series of loosely connected essays that explains how everything fits together: colonial conquest, Brown's failed marriage, his experience as a lawyer learning property law, what he learned by mobilizing that learning to help his neighbors defend the pockets of wildness that refuse to budge.

It's an erudite book, skipping back through millennia of history, sidewise through the ecology of Texas, all while somehow serving as a kind of spotter's guide to the wild things you can see in Austin – and maybe, in your town – if you know how to look. It's a book about how people change the land, and how the land changes people. It is filled with pastoral writing that summons Kim Stanley Robinson by way of Thoreau, and it sometimes frames its philosophical points the way a cyberpunk writer would – like Neal Stephenson writing a cyberpunk trilogy that is also the story of Leibniz and Newton fighting over credit for inventing calculus:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/11/20/neal-stephensons-system-of-the-world-concludes-the-baroque-trilogy/

Brown is a stupendous post-cyberpunk writer, and also a post-cyberpunk person, which I've known for sure since I happened upon him one morning, thoughtfully mowing his roof with a scythe:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/46433979075/

You can get a sense of what that means in this lockdown-era joint presentation that Chris, Bruce Sterling and I did on "cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk":

https://archive.org/details/asl-cyberpunk

Brown is a spectacular novelist. His ecofascist civil war trilogy that opens with Tropic of Kansas got so much right about the politics of American demagoguery and was perfectly timed with the Trump presidency:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/07/11/tropic-of-kansas-making-america-great-again-considered-harmful/

The sequel, Rule of Capture, uses the device of courtroom drama in a way that comes uncomfortably close to the Orwell/Kafka mashup that the authorities have created to deal with environmental protesters:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/08/12/rule-of-capture-inside-the-martial-law-tribunals-that-will-come-when-climate-deniers-become-climate-looters-and-start-rendering-environmentalists-for-offshore-torture/

And the final volume, Failed State, is one of the most complicated complicated utopias you could ask for. This is what people mean by "thrilling conclusion":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/12/failed-state/#chris-brown

As brilliant as Brown is in fiction mode, his nonfiction is unclassifiably, unforgettably brilliant. A Natural History of Empty Lots is the kind of book that challenges how you feel about the crossroads we're at, the place you live, and the place you want to be.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/17/cyberpunk-pastoralism/#time-to-mow-the-roof

[kevkebus-subh]

[ryukolighter]

Imagine if the Demigods could have internet/youtube

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[thelailasblog]

[uwmspeccoll]

Decorative Sunday with Henry P. Kirby

These charming sketches are the work of New York architect Henry P. Kirby (1853 - 1915). Architectural Compositions contains fifty loose plates printed on Whatman paper and housed in a portfolio. It was published in Boston in 1892 by Bates, Kimball & Guild, publishers of one of the United State’s leading architectural journals of that time, The Architectural Review (Boston), not to be confused with the longer running Architectural Review still in publication out of London. 

Kirby would have been working as a draftsman for George B. Post at the time of publication, for whom he later worked as lead designer before striking out on his own. Some of the subject matter also evokes Kirby’s time in France, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts after training with his father, also an architect. Per the subtitle, some of the sketches were “made in connection with actual projects,” while many were “the result of study during leisure moments.” I found Kirby’s eye for the human elements in his sketches particularly endearing, from the foreground figures to details on the buildings themselves, like open widows and overgrown foliage, or what looks like a duvet cover hanging out to dry (first image above). 

For any music buffs reading, the final sketch includes some bars of "Très-jolie" from the opéra comique smash hit La Fille de Madame Angot. 

Our copy of Architectural Compositions was gifted to UWM by Gustav A. Elgeti in 1966. 

Find more Decorative Sunday posts here.

-Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[cemeteryreviews]

Cemetery Reviews #2 - Campo Santo

Campo Santo is the old cemetery of Zapatoca. It's quite small, and people are no longer buried there. Even so, what you see there is very special. There's a mausoleum, and although there are few tomb inscriptions, the ones that remain are quite old. I saw one from 1819, a death one year before independence. There is also a tomb of a German fugitive who lived a semi-feudal and lavish lifestyle in the 19th century.

Although his colonization and trade projects failed and his life ended in ruin, he has a tomb enclosed in its own fence. The guy also has a street named after him. Even if the foreigners who come here don't end up doing much, it's still cool to remember them because it's curious that they pass through here. The chapel is very small and only has a few benches, but the tombs, already piled up among themselves, are covered with grass, moss, and the trees surround the site. To get there, you can also climb a street with long stairs, and from the end, you can see the town from above. In a way, it's like you have to climb a little closer to heaven to see the site.

For these reasons, the bits of history, the curious characters, and the location, I found it to be a very beautiful place with a very fulfilling atmosphere.

8/10

[bookreviewcoffee]

Ariel

Sylvia Plath

It is difficult to write about Sylvia Plath's work. On the one hand she is one of the founders of the genre of "confessional poetry" and for her poetic works she was awarded the "Pulitzer Prize" in 1982 (posthumously).... On the other hand, the very public activity of Sylvia and her tragic death (suicide). However, the official version (suicide) was initially questioned by Sylvia Plath's relatives, who considered it a murder, arguing that similar mysterious deaths of Asya Vevil and her daughter Shura, which suggested the existence of a "series", and its "protagonist" was Sylvia Plath's husband Ted Hughes and at the same time Asya Vevil's lover. However, the matter did not go further than the assumptions. However, the poetry of Sylvia Plath perfectly characterises the environment in which she had to exist. This is particularly clear in the poems: "Sheep in the Fog", "Elm". "Death and Company", "On the Way There", "The Hanged Man", "The Edge" .... In the circumstances of the death of Sylvia Plath remains much unclear. It has been suggested that this suicide was actually a kind of thwarted staging: if the neighbour downstairs read the note addressed to him, the tragedy would probably have been prevented. The neighbour himself, Trevor Thomas, who had been unconscious for several hours - under the influence of the same gas that had leaked onto his floor - believed that Plath had switched on the cooker as a "distress call" for him to come to her rescue. That it was indeed a suicide is indicated by the testimony of the same neighbour, Trevor Thomas, that he had seen Sylvia the night before. "She had gone round to his house to get a stamp she was going to use to send a letter to America. She seemed unwell and nervous to Trevor. Plath insisted on reimbursing him for the value of the stamp. When he suggested that she not worry about it, Sylvia said that "otherwise her conscience before God would not be clear." The case of Sylvia Plath weaves together incompatible things - faith in God and suicide, which in Christianity is treated as one of the deadly sins. As for the poetry of Sylvia Plath and her first posthumous collection "Ariel", in my opinion an edition of such quality lacks the parallel text of the original. Without the latter at hand, it is difficult to assess the quality of the translation and the author's thought. Often one mistranslated or inaccurately translated word changes the whole idea of the work. But the fact that Sylvia Plath's poetry is really sincere and penetrates into the very soul allows her to classify it as confessional poetry.....

[echolaliaplayer]

Sinking feeling that I've lost my essay which talked a bit about labour issues and rent seeking practices in the architecture profession. It wasn't the focus of it since I had to reel it back into archi theory but it was really fun to read about and I didn't keep a citation list elsewhere

[phoenixyfriend]

Those Economics/Architecture Videos I've Been Bingeing

But eating less bandwidth than the previous version of this post.

This post has 100 links, because that's how many tumblr lets me add before it refuses to save the post anymore. (Legacy editor allows up to 250, but then I would have the colors.)

A lot of these are about NYC, because that's my personal main focus, but there are a few others. Also, I have absolutely no training in this field and only started watching these a few days ago but Ya Girl Is Bingeing and Really Loves Edutainment. All the descriptions are my own, btw. I'm not looking to gain clicks or references, I want you guys to know what you're getting into.

I was not involved in creating any of these videos, but it did take me over a week to watch them all and decide which ones to include, how to organize, and how to describe the contents.

I cannot speak to a lot of the deeper issues touched on, and do not agree with all the political or economic points brought up in these videos (as this is a wide range of people and topics), but they are by and large a good look at much of an industry that most people, myself included, don't know enough about, considering how crucial it is to our lives.

I'm open to channel/video recs but there are a few I ran into that seem well-done but have an audio quality I can't work with, so that's... unfortunate.

Stewart Hicks - Chicago-based, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois

Why Skyscrapers Are Losing Their Tops - Stewart Hicks - The general history of architectural styles for skyscrapers from the 1930s to the near future.

Why Do Architects Insist on Using Flat Roofs? - Stewart Hicks - Compares and contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of flat vs gabled roofs.

How Buildings Changed After the Eiffel Tower - Stewart Hicks - Thirteen minutes of history on structural engineering in bridges and skyscrapers.

The Bewildering Architecture of Indoor Cities - Stewart Hicks - Goes into the planned and unplanned variants of this phenomenon, which ranges from giant buildings intended to act as an entire community, to the unplanned network of underground tunnels or overstreet enclosed walkways that let people cross blocks upon blocks of a city without having to step outside.

How This Tower Barely Touches the Ground - Stewart Hicks - Addresses the engineering behind 150 N. Riverside in Chicago, and the zoning laws that caused its rather unique Y-shaped base in the first place, along with the requirements causing things like custom giant I-beams and necessitating a barge to host the crane since they had nowhere to anchor one on the ground.

How Chicago is Being Unbuilt: Back to Nature - Stewart Hicks - Explores the ways in which Chicago is undoing prior urbanization, and implementing some new eco-friendly infrastructure and various projects.

Why We Should Live in Our Office Buildings - Stewart Hicks - More and more office buildings are standing empty. With movements towards more mixed zoning and the return to walkable city models, some of those office buildings are getting retrofitted to be livable spaces and mixed-use locations.

How Architects Design for Less Lonely Living - Stewart Hicks - In a lot of places, like the US, the way we interact or avoid other people is impacted heavily by the organization of the buildings we live in.

House Sizes Are Getting Absurd - Stewart Hicks - Just a fun romp comparing the range of sizes (from the bare minimum of capsule hotels to the absurd mass of some modern estates) for various dwellings. Lots of very deliberate visualization.

Shopping Malls are Getting Desperate - Stewart Hicks - Discusses the decline of shopping malls, and the 'tricks' they employ to try to keep people happy and coming by.

The Architecture of Curb Appeal - Stewart Hicks - There's a lot that goes into making a house look good in a way that gets it sold. A lot of people hate it.

The Controversy Over Accessory Dwelling Units - Stewart Hicks - In many places, it's illegal to build a smaller livable space in your backyard. You know, places you put an adult child who wants their own space, or your mother-in-law, or just rent out to college students for the next ten months. But, at least in a few places, it's not going to be illegal much longer.

Toilets Need to Change - Stewart Hicks - Plumbing is such an important part of our daily lives, and it's still evolving!

The Hidden Meaning and Logistics of Fountains - Stewart Hicks - This one is just fun. 😊

The Genius of 2x4 Framing - Stewart Hicks - So apparently the US is a bit odd in how much of our architectural/construction industry uses light wood framing as a standard.

The B1M - Hosted by Fred Mills (British), more generally about construction, rather than just architecture

Why America Is Tearing Down Its Highways - The B1M - Explores the history of the interstate highway system, and how much of it was used for redlining and general segregation, along with the challenges faced by the plans to tear those highways down.

The $1.2 Trillion Plan to Rebuild America - The B1M - NGL I'm like. Ludicrously excited about this one. There's a lot going on! I hope it works out!

Why a Billionaire Tried to Stop This Bridge - The B1M - There's a new bridge being built between Detroit, MI and Windsor, ON. This bridge is going to help with the ongoing trade between the US and Canada; these two cities are already a major hub for one of the largest trading partnerships in the world (the largest where one side is not the European Union), so building another bridge is a reasonable undertaking. However, the new bridge will be just a few miles down from an existing bridge that is currently owned by a billionaire who makes a killing over his control of a major portion of this bottleneck of the trade route. (Also, more engineering challenges!)

The Statue of Liberty: Building an Icon - The B1M - Someone actually asked me about this recently and anyway you should all go learn about how the Statue of Liberty happened, she's a gem.

Why New York’s Billionaires’ Row Is Half Empty - The B1M- The usage of NYC luxury housing as a semi-liquid asset used as investment by the megarich, along with the rights acquisitions that led to their building in the first place, the gentrification they contribute to, and the tax write-offs they get for it.

Why Our Cities Are So Expensive - The B1M - How infrastructure investment by governments can and does frequently lead to gentrification. Focuses on London's Battersea Power Station revitalization plan.

Why New York's Skyscrapers Keep Changing Shape - The B1M - This is actually an exploration of more than just New York, covering much of the same topics as the above 'history of skyscraper design' video, with a great focus on the Chrysler building.

Why No One Wants This New York Skyscraper - The B1M - Investigates the ways in which the development of Two World Trade Center has been delayed over the past decade and change, along with a handful of other projects in the area.

The Wild Story of New York’s Abandoned Skyscraper - The B1M - There's a half-finished skyscraper on the western shore of Manhattan, and due to the errors in laying the foundation, there's an 8cm tilt in it. The parties involved in construction are duking it out in court about who's at fault, and until they're done, that thing is just... sitting there.

New York's Latest $3BN Skyscraper Explained - The B1M - Another stupidly tall skyscraper for midtown. You know. Because we need another one.

The $7BN Plan to Save New York's Most Hated Train Station - The B1M - Explores the history, current state, and planned upgrades to Penn Station of NYC.

New York's Most Hated Highway is Falling Apart - The B1M - The issues hitting the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and the difficulties in repairing it.

The Secret Subway That Could Save New York - The B1M - Hey do you want to hear about how we might finally be getting that Queens-Brooklyn line that doesn't need to pass through Manhattan first?

The Tunnel That's Failing New York City - The B1M - The tunnel that handles a massive amount of the human traffic between NJ and NYC is starting to break down due to age. This one included a line that actually gave me feelings: "Look, it's a 110-year-old system, you know, it's done its job. Like, we really can't ask any more of it." It did its best! For a long time! Thank you!

The US Government Wants to Destroy These Towers - The B1M - The federal government just wants to demolish some Historic Skyscrapers in Chicago, no biggie.

The Secret $4BN Tunnel Network Under Chicago - The B1M - Since the 1970s, Chicago has been building an absolutely massive set of tunnels hundreds of feet under the surface to handle regular flooding from storms and the climate crisis.

The Fight to Fix the Tilting Millennium Tower - The B1M - There's this skyscraper in San Francisco that's leaning a few centimeters to the side, which doesn't sound like a lot, until you learn that just a few more will mean the plumbing and elevators stop working.

The £100BN Railway Dividing a Nation - The B1M - Goes over the political, economic, and environmental arguments and concerns behind the highspeed rail intended to connect London to the North of England.

Inside London's £19BN New Railway (and its Nightmare Station) - The B1M - Genuinely fascinated at the number of Train Problems that England seems to be having.

Why Europe Doesn't Build Skyscrapers - The B1M - Explains the historical and modern reasons that limit the addition of supertall buildings across most of Europe.

The Insane Scale of Europe's New Mega-Tunnel - The B1M - Explores the engineering and environmental challenges of the Fehmarntunnel, a passage from Germany to Denmark of terrifying size.

Why Europe is Building a 57KM Tunnel Through a Mountain - The B1M - No, a different one. This one is between Italy and France.

We Went Inside the Largest Nuclear Fusion Reactor - The B1M - It's in France, there are over 35 countries involved, and it's just a Lot.

Inside The Lab That Tests Elevator Free-Falls - The B1M - There's this active mine in Finland where they test elevators for safety and it's pretty cool.

Finland Might Have Solved Nuclear Power’s Biggest Problem - The B1M - Finland has a new way of storing nuclear waste.

Nord Stream 2: The $11BN Megaproject That's Dividing - The B1M - It's an oil pipeline and it is causing problems for Everyone.

Why Russia is Building an Arctic Silk Road - The B1M - Russia is taking advantage of the melting ice caps to set up a new trade route through the arctic so shipping can go up through the north instead of down around South Asia and through the Suez Canal.

The $10BN Railway in the Jungle - The B1M - Mexico is building a new, very long high-speed rail line, and it's incredibly controversial.

Hong Kong's $11BN Underwater Railway Explained - The B1M - Hong Kong is putting in a new underwater tunnel (as part of a larger network expansion) for its subway system, and it's. Difficult.

China's Skyscraper Boom is Officially Over - The B1M - Just learned that China is outlawing most skyscrapers. There are a few cases where you can still maybe make one happen, if you can convince the government it's needed, but in most cases... nah. They're cutting you off.

The Unstoppable Growth of China's High-Speed Rail Network - The B1M - [insert gif screaming about trains here]

The Insane Engineering of Tokyo's First Supertall Skyscraper - The B1M - While the focus is ostensibly Main Tower, the video covers a lot of ground regarding earthquakes and the necessary engineering to resist the incredibly frequent occurrence. (Warning: Came out shortly after the Feb. 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, and contains references to the event, urging people contribute what they could to help. The video was already almost finished when the Turkey-Syria earthquake happened, and rather than delay it for fear of it being in bad taste, they decided to use it to encourage people to help the victims.)

Japan’s $64BN Gamble on Levitating Bullet Trains Explained - The B1M - Let's talk about maglev, pros and cons.

Is This Asia's Next Financial Capital? - The B1M - Malaysia is building a lot, and it might herald a new financial superpower for the continent and the world.

Why India Doesn’t Build Skyscrapers - The B1M - The short answer is 'zoning laws that didn't achieve what the legislators hoped,' but it's changing.

The $4BN Railway Reshaping Delhi - The B1M - What it says on the tin.

The World's Most Extreme Construction Site - The B1M - Antarctica!!!

Egypt Built a Supertall Skyscraper in the Desert - The B1M - Egypt is straight up building an entire city in the middle of nowhere, primarily as a new seat of government, because Cairo is overcrowded... and a frequent site of protests.

Top 10 Projects Completing in 2023 - The B1M - Some impressive, expensive, and possibly unnecessary projects that are happening.

Tomorrow's Build is a second channel under The B1M, also hosted by Fred Mills. It's more focused on hypothetical, future projects than ongoing ones.

Barcelona’s Car-Free Superblocks Explained - Tomorrow's Build - Barcelona is planning to block off entire parts of the city from most car usage, excepting local delivery, mass transit, and emergency services.

The Hidden Crisis With Renewable Energy - Tomorrow's Build - Storage of energy from renewable sources that are not consistently available (e.g. solar is only available when the sun is out) is difficult, so here are a few options.

This Nuclear Plant is Built in 3 Months - Tomorrow's Build - Mail-order nuclear power is going to be a thing.

Greece is Turning its Olympic Ruins into a Casino - Tomorrow's Build - [good for them dot gif]

This Could Stop Construction Everywhere - Tomorrow's Build - So it turns out we're running out of sand. Which is important, because we need sand for concrete, and the easiest stuff to get (desert sand), doesn't work for that, which is why Dubai has to import sand for construction. So uh. Kind of a crisis. Sand pirates are a whole thing.

Architectural Digest - channel for the architectural magazine that dates back to 1920

Architect Breaks Down 5 of the Most Common New York Apartments - Architectural Digest - Just what it says on the tin! An architect explains brownstones, classics, railroad apartments, and loft/studio apartments. Lots of history, specifically that of the late 19th century tenement buildings and the art community and subsequent gentrification of SoHo.

Architect Breaks Down 6 Luxury Apartments from Billions, Gossip Girl & More - Architectural Digest - On the other end of NYC housing, we got the Rich People Places.

Architect Breaks Down Secret Details Of The Chrysler Building - Architectural Digest - An exploration of the external details of the Chrysler, with commentary on the historical context of art deco and related art movements.

Architect Breaks Down 3 Demolished New York Landmarks - Architectural Digest - Goes over the original Penn Station, Madison Square Garden,and the New York Herald building.

Architect Breaks Down The Evolving Skyscrapers Of New - Architectural Digest - I'm... not going to pretend I'm less than obsessed with NYC videos. Sorry! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Covers setback/wedding cake tiered, glass curtain wall, plaza towers, expressed structures, and the (hated) supertall.

Architect Breaks Down NYC Subway Stations (Oldest & Newest) - Architectural Digest - And we continue on NYC infrastructure history because I am insatiable.

Architect Explores New York City's Greenwich Village | Walking Tour - Architectural Digest - What a beautiful and inconvenient neighborhood, full of so many dead bodies.

Top Luxury - Despite the name, is about construction in general, including critique of megearich projects, so don't go in expecting it to be About The Luxury

World's Most Useless Megaprojects - Top Luxury - Did you know there are entire cities lying around empty? I already knew that, but there are just. So many giant projects that never got finished, ate up a lot of money, and are just kind of sitting around now.

5 Skyscrapers that Never Existed - Top Luxury - Some of these never got past the concept stage, and some ran out of funding, and at least one got turned into a fish farm by locals after it was abandoned.

Biggest Megaprojects in the World - Top Luxury - Exactly what it says on the tin! Guys, there are so many giant projects happening, and so many of them are controversial As Heck.

Why these Megacities are Still Empty - Top Luxury - Not entirely empty, but yeah, there are some megacities designed for one purpose or another that are more Ghost Town than Bustling Metropolis. Other than Naypyidaw, though, most of them are expected to gain larger populations soon, particularly Nusantara (which is being built specifically due to the sinking of Jakarta).

The Most Terrifying Bridges in the World - Top Luxury - Like half of these are in a specific region of China that just has. So many mountains.

Most Expensive Construction Mistakes in the World (Part 3) - Top Luxury - Have you ever fucked up so incredibly that it cost six billion USD to fix?

Not Just Bikes - Canadian living in Europe; city planning with focus on N. American car-centric zoning

Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston) - Not Just Bikes - Do you want more ammo to show people when they try to argue with you about walkable cities?

America Always Gets This Wrong (when building transit) - Not Just Bikes - How zoning and city planning needs to adjust in order for mass transit to actually work for people.

Suburbs that don't Suck - Streetcar Suburbs (Riverdale, Toronto) - Not Just Bikes - So there actually are good suburbs in the US and Canada, we just can't build them anymore because zoning laws make it impossible.

Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) - Not Just Bikes - So there's this really popular and horrible form of street/road in the US and Canada that is bad at its job.

Would You Fall for It? - Not Just Bikes - 1950s pro-highway propaganda (which is referenced in many other videos from this channel), and the ways in which it was misleading and effective.

These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us - Not Just Bikes - This video actually did numbers on tumblr a few months ago. You know those stupidly big SUVs and Pick-ups? Yeah! They suck!

Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud - Not Just Bikes - With a few small changes, you too could live in a city that doesn't make you want to wear noise-cancelling headphones every moment of the day.

IT'S HISTORY - Various historic places... mostly NYC

Why can't you visit the Statue of Liberty's Torch? - IT'S HISTORY - Has some confusing image choices (photos from the early 20th century while talking about events from the 18th), but delivers on a fun history of the Statue of Liberty (and includes some facts that the other Lady Liberty video didn't get around to).

What's Left of New York's Lost Reservoir? - IT'S HISTORY - Apparently it turned into Bryant Park.

When Chicago built the Tallest Building in the World | The story of Sears Tower - IT'S HISTORY - Just what it says on the tin.. Big building, big history!

The Secret Tunnels Beneath New York - IT'S HISTORY - NYC has lost so many tunnels? Lost track of, forgotten, rediscovered... it's ridiculous. Half of these are for TRAINS. Those are HUGE. Led to me making this post (which contains a meme or two, but also a very important trigger warning).

Other

The lost neighborhood under New York's Central Park - Vox - Explains the history of Seneca Village: a primarily-black community of newly wealthy, often first-generation-freed peoples that was destroyed to make way for Central Park.

The Rise and Fall of American Malls - Bloomberg Originals - Covers the factors that led to malls becoming so common, and the many things that are contributing to the move away from them.

Megastructures: Building the Burj Al Arab | Dubai Engineering - Reel Truth Science Documentaries - This is fifty minutes of engineering and architecture, and really well done/presented. Mostly steers clear of the larger political controversy in favor of focusing on the math, though it can't entirely avoid the political and economic conflicts due to direct influence on the design by a the Crown Prince.

Why Venice is Europe’s Worst Placed City - Real Life Lore - We all know Venice is sinking, but this explains why and how (it's not just global climate change).

Why Wyoming is VASTLY Emptier Than Colorado - Real Life Lore - More of a general history lesson than architecture, but still fun.

Why Engineers Can't Control Rivers - Practical Engineering - I've had a few classes touch on this topic, but it was mostly back in high school. This video has some really good visualization on the main elements, and addresses that there are some places working on actual fixes!

Why Construction Projects Always Go Over Budget - Practical Engineering - Goes over the process by which costs are estimated, the limitations of those processes, and the risks that inevitably force the budget higher.

Czechia's Incredible 1960s Supervillain-Lair Hotel (And Why Its Architect Got Banned By The Regime) - The Tim Traveller - There's this really cool hotel that recently got refurbished.

Why Egypt Is Building a New Capital City - neo - Another video on the new city in Egypt, but with more in-depth exploration of the specific planning choices (where certain buildings are, especially).

The Forgotten Story of Modulex: LEGO's Lost Cousin - Peter Dibble - LEGO had a brand called Modulex that was used for architecture and city planning for a few decades. These days they mostly do signage.

Why Airplanes Are Still Worth Millions After They Stop Flying - CNBC - The various ways planes are broken down, sold for parts, and otherwise recycled.

[hood-ex]

Love when my students show me their English homework and ask for help, and I just give them the answers because it's late and they need to be in bed instead of worrying about finishing their homework.

[kevkebus-subh]

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/hotcocoareads/

[veeveetheheretic]

reupload of my weekly recap for this week because of errors in the previous upload. 🫣