Category Archives: architecture

‘The Era of Urban Supremacy Is Over’

From July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, “New census data shows a huge spike in movement out of big metro areas during the pandemic,” Frey wrote in an April 2022 paper, including “an absolute decline in the aggregate size of the nation’s 56 major metropolitan areas (those with populations exceeding 1 million).”

This is the first time, Frey continued, “that the nation’s major metro areas registered an annual negative growth rate since at least 1990.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/opinion/post-pandemic-cities-suburbs-future.html?utm_source=Blueprint&utm_campaign=3a02128ede-Newsletter_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b0b9cbf437-3a02128ede-231014502

The 15-minute city is already here. It’s called Paris

Is the “15-minute city,” a concept in which all of life’s necessary amenities are no more than a brisk walk away, a vision of urban paradise or a thinly disguised open-air prison? Town planning experts tend toward the former, conspiracy theorists toward the latter.

The maps, by the Paris Urbanism Agency (Apur), reflect the result of the latest triennial survey of shops, cafés, and restaurants in the French capital in 2020. The survey shows that there were 1,180 boulangeries (bakeries) and/or patisseries (cake shops) in the city. After declining in the first decade of the 21st century, their number has remained stable over the decade up to 2020. In the previous three years, 94 businesses had closed, but 91 new ones had started up.

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/15-minute-city-paris/

Women in Their Place: Public Spaces Where Women Thrive

Women generally navigate a different set of social situations in public spaces – which means that the way that they use spaces is unique, and requires dedicated attention. To make public spaces truly gender-inclusive, a certain set of considerations for accessibility, services, and amenities need to be made. In this article, we explore places that seem to work for women, and try to get to the heart of what they get right.

https://www.sociallifeproject.org/women-in-their-place-public-spaces-where-women-thrive/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

How Architectural Digest became the new Vogue

A new generation of digital-native celebrities, relaxed about the blurring of boundaries between public and private lives, have embraced celebrity home tours as a tool to promote their personal brands and to challenge public preconceptions. Emma Chamberlain, a social media influencer who found fame via YouTube, confounded expectations with her sophisticated taste in mid-century design and grown-up love of a kitchen island and copper taps when a video of her home went viral. When Khloé Kardashian posts content showing her impeccably organised pantry on YouTube, it is greeted with the kind of swooning comments that were once reserved for Carrie’s walk-in closet in the film Sex and the City.

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/feb/10/how-architectural-digest-became-the-new-vogue

How are U.S. cities rebuilding after the pandemic? Richard Florida on the resilience of urban life in America.

In the U.S., the axiom about the imminent death of the big cities depended on a belief that people would abandon New York and San Francisco for the hinterlands, or for far-off suburbs, or for Miami and other smaller metropolitan areas—and we would see this great reshuffling of the American population.

https://www.thesgnl.com/2023/01/post-covid-us-cities-richard-florida/

What do we mean by flexibility? (developing a new language for the future of work)

Flexibility is often used loosely to mean not working in the office. We’re all still having those, ‘How many days are you in?’ conversations as hybrid working continues to evolve. Post-pandemic, however, expectations of flexible working are much broader than before. Recognizing this, Unilever’s approach is more holistic.

External data and commentary suggest that most people look for what we call ‘everyday’ flexibility – the ability to manage and adjust start and finish times, the freedom to manage work commitments in and around life commitments and for work to be measured in outputs delivered, rather than hours worked.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/flexible-working-productivity-and-growth-davos23?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_scheduler&utm_term=Davos+2023&utm_content=24/01/2023+05:00

Related report: Work in the Pandemic Age

VISUAL DECOLONIZATION OF FUTURES

The Visual Decolonization of Futures is a proposal to liberate the legacies of coloniality that have been sustained through the use of images in the field of Futures Studies. It is a project that confronts and disassociates images about futures from the hegemonic perspective of the Global North. It seeks inclusion, respect, and autonomy not only for individuals, but also for groups and social movements, such as feminism, the black movement, the ecological movement, the LGBTqia+ movement, etc.

https://www.profuturists.org/post/visual-decolonization-of-futures

The Renaissance changed the course of history, but how did it happen?

Well, the people who created it didn’t think they were doing anything new – they wanted to emulate the past. It’s a story of how innovative ideas aren’t about originality, but imitation…

https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1608124451769700352?s=20&t=vGYd8pFRI1Ak8xmXjiW78g

Future of offices: in a post-pandemic world (Arup)

COVID-19 has accelerated a range of preexisting trends in the commercial property sector around health and wellbeing, activitybased working, flexibility and the drive for better space utilisation. Sustainability, smart buildings and the digital workplace are also reshaping the commercial offer. Taken together, these trends and developments will profoundly impact the kinds of workplaces likely to be needed in a post-pandemic world. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EFDdzGO4DuEu459kr1PFwN_exVZiZHiv/view?usp=sharing