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Finn MacLeod: Brooks + Scarpa: The Six, Los Angeles: ...embodies a new approach to the design of public housing...stands out on the MacArthur Park landscape...designed to house and meet the needs of disabled veterans...It's a building with a heartbeat...inherently optimistic yet deeply functional, and serves as a reminder that affordable housing can exemplify design excellence, even under the most challenging circumstances. [images]

The Victorian company building small houses for the homeless: ...government announced their plan to combat the rising number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Melbourne. Called Towards Home...Part of the program consists of the construction of 30 “modular and relocatable homes” to be built on public land...Force10...has come on-board to put together the first round of these homes...- Architecture & Design (Australia)

Rowan Moore: The Grenfell Tower tragedy exposes a tawdry culture that has held sway for too long: This terrible event has been allowed to happen by the government’s faith in a fatally dysfunctional market: What is certain is that the residents were betrayed...Fires have a way of making the inexcusable unignorable...will change the British attitude to housing forever.- Observer (UK)

Oliver Wainwright: Architects urge change in attitudes towards safety after Grenfell fire: Those with experience of working in other countries have been highly critical of how fire safety is treated in UK: ...the response to Grenfell may be more bureaucracy rather than improved standards.- Guardian (UK)

Justin Davidson: Could the Grenfell Tower Disaster Happen in New York? Don’t be complacent: High-rise building failures are never accidents, and contempt for the poor is global: ...the Grenfell blaze casts a ghoulish light on the importance of government’s least glamorous task: to fix what is broken for those who need it most. Because neglect is the moral equivalent of murder.- New York Magazine

Henry Grabar: There’s No National Solution for the Housing Crisis: ...there isn’t one explanation and there isn’t one fix: ...after London’s deadliest fire [Grenfell Tower], the U.K. is having a national reckoning about inequality, austerity, and the role of housing in the welfare state...The deterioration of New York City’s living monument to the welfare state is part of a larger trend...The affordability crisis is two separate problems - one with rent, and one with income - that look like one.- Slate

Diana Budds: Designing For Social Justice: 4 Lessons From Chicago Architects: Timothy Swanson, leader of CannonDesign’s Chicago practice, thinks architecture can help inequality...but only if it’s part of a broader strategy: “I’m a fundamental believer that design is either for or against the common good"...- Fast Company / Co.Design

Architects call for Indigenous design for new centre: The former United States embassy building in Ottawa is not a culturally appropriate space for an Indigenous Centre, says the Indigenous Task Force of the RAIC...“Indigenous people always get the hand-me-downs...The heritage building...has sat empty for 18 years...“It is not the first choice of Canada's First People"...- Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC)

Anne-Marie Lubenau: Chicago Riverwalk’s Transformation Into Recreational Frontier: The popular new public space, a finalist for the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence, is part of Mayor Emanuel’s “Building on Burnham” initiative. -- Ross Barney Architects; Sasaki [images]- Metropolis Magazine

Beyond the Greenhouse: Growing Trends in Architecture: ...amidst global environmental crises...this form of nature-oriented architecture is gaining more attention...undergoing unprecedented transformations...architects are rethinking and reinterpreting what a greenhouse can be, and how it can best be used to better our lives. -- Atelier Kristoffer Tejlgaard; atelier tho.A; Lenschow & Pihlmann/Mikael Stenström; Ramirez Sébastien; Heatherwick Studio; act romegialli; Sou Fujimoto Architects [images]- Architizer

John Gendall: What Makes Renzo Piano's First Spanish Building So Different? AD spoke with the Pritzker Prize-winning architect about the inspiration for his most recent design, a cultural center [Centro Botín] in Santander, Spain: “light is the most important element, and in Santander, it’s a very special light." -- Fernando Caruncho [images]- Architectural Digest

Ned Cramer: Happy Birthday, You Old So-and-So: As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, and his peerless architectural achievements, let’s also remember the darker side of his legacy, and its effect on the profession’s public image...It’s the cult of personality that rankles, not the work...architects today are...open to criticism, eager to collaborate, and willing to compromise when prudent. Good will leads to great architecture.- Architect Magazine

Jonathan Glancey: Set among trees, rocks and a waterfall, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater was a masterpiece beset with problems. Glancey tells its story: Wright’s fame, however high flying his imagination, was rooted to the ground...The name of his god began with an "n": nature...Fallingwater is as close to the ground and nature as architecturally possible. [images]- BBC

Amy Beth Wright: Frank Lloyd Wright Restoration a Cornerstone in Buffalo’s Revitalization: Recently restored, the Martin House Complex is one of the best examples of Wright's “prairie-style” homes: At Graycliff, Wright deepened his experimentation with the organic...houses are just two of many architectural treasures receiving new attention...the past providing ballast for the city’s future. H.H. Richardson; Deborah Berke Partners; Flynn Battaglia Architects; Goody Clancy; Andropogon Associates [images]- Architecture & Design (Australia)

Gillian Darley: Who says architecture doesn't work on TV? Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier instinctively knew how to get in the spotlight - even if it was more egos than axos: Early adapters in the race for column inches or airtime, they affected memorable touches in dress...and never shied away when the opportunity offered to saunter, nonchalantly, into shot.- BD/Building Design (UK)

ArchiMaps shows you all the must-see buildings in NYC, London, and more: Fun! The brainchild of Spanish architect Ángel Camacho, the project took a few years to come to fruition...comes preloaded with a handful of “ArchiRoutes” designed around specific themes.- Curbed

Eve Kahn: Hunting for Famous Architects’ Forgotten Design-School Projects: These drawings and models show where hallmark styles were born: Librarians and archivists are creating searchable databases of classroom projects and competition entries produced in the last century. -- Cooper Union, Van Alen Institute; Percival Goodman; Max Abramowitz; George Nelson; Minoru Yamasaki; Daniel Libeskind; Liz Diller; Laurie Hawkinson; Karen Bausman; Dominic Kozerski; Ronald V. Stang [images]- Atlas Obscura

Will Wiles: The Corner of Lovecraft and Ballard: ...both put architecture at the heart of their fiction, and both made the humble corner into a place of nightmares: The Lovecraftian corner could drive men mad...and sometimes kill them outright...Ballard’s stories have a lingering fascination with the domestic interior; it’s a landscape that he distorts until it shrieks with anxiety.- Places Journal

Bell Works; Yale Center for British Art; The Bubeshko Apartments; "Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston" and the Save the Reactor campaign recognized in Docomomo US 2017 Modernism in America Awards: ...emphasize the importance of partnerships between owners, architects and the community coming together to save and reinvigorate architecture that at one point faced demolition. -- Eero Saarinen; Alexander Gorlin Architects; Louis I. Kahn; Knight Architecture; Rudolph Schindler; DSH Architecture; Chris Grimley; Michael Kubo; Mark Pasnik [images]- DOCOMOMO US

ANN feature: Michael J. Crosbie: Sitting Down with Kevin Roche: "I learned everything I know about architecture from Eero": "The most important thing one can achieve in any building is to get people to communicate with each other. That's really essential to our lives. We are not just individuals, we are part of a community."- ArchNewsNow.com