If someone is a successful architect, people assume that he or she actually is an architect. Yet a man in upstate New York who drew up renderings of over 100 buildings and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for designing commercial and residential buildings has been charged with pretending to be an architect for more than half a decade. [More]
architecture
Loud Restaurants Make You Eat And Drink More
By 4.19.10
It turns out that, at least for smart restaurateurs, making the dining experience ridiculously noisy is good for business: people buy more drinks per hour, and they finish eating and leave sooner. [More]
The Story Behind The Man Who Designed Apple's Glass Cube Store
By 3.29.10
It’s not often that a retail store becomes an icon even before it opens for business, but Apple managed to pull off this weird architectural/cultural feat with its glass box Apple store in NYC in 2006–it’s the 5th most photographed landmark in the city and 28th worldwide according to a new study of Flickr images. The man who designed it, 70-year-old Peter Bohlin, has been awarded the 2010 gold medal from the American Institute of Architects for his entire body of work, and he doesn’t like computers and had never designed a retail environment before the Apple store. [More]
NYC Sues Verizon Because Heinously Ugly Building Is Too Tall
By 1.4.10
Apparently the extremely ugly Verizon skyscraper in NYC is too tall, and is now the subject of a lawsuit. [More]
By 3.2.09
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125 Years is the length of time it will take a totally abandoned wood frame house to simply fall down. What should we do with them in the meantime? [CR]
Is Your Pleasant Suburb The Next Slum?
By 3.19.08
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
NYC's New High-Tech Public Bathroom Is Freaky, Robotic
By 1.26.08
For years, New York City was a grim place to be when you had to use the bathroom, since there are almost no public facilities (not counting Starbucks). But earlier this month the first of 20 high-tech pay toilets opened in the city, in Madison Square Park just north of 23rd Street. Now the next time you visit the city and need to answer nature’s call, grab a quarter and head over there to experience the strange combination of a $100,000 prison cell/car wash/elevator/Louvre. It’s the cheapest “experience” you’ll probably find in the city.
Controlling Shoppers Through Architecture
By 9.14.06
A short A-Z compendium of design tricks stores use to get you to spend more. We like T, for Tiles:
Dell Has Something Important to Tell The Consumerist About Blazing Batteries
By 8.24.06
Seems our lil ol blog has finally raised the ire of Dell. A day that will go down in history. John Q. Pope, acting as media relator for Dell, wants to correct a post of ours, “Dell Battery Recall May Not End Explosions.”
Dell Battery Recall May Not End Explosions
By 8.24.06
Even if you sent your Dell battery back before it could explode and tear off half your face, you still may not be in the clear. Some computer engineers are pointing out that computer architecture might have just as much to do with the exploding Dell laptop.
New Jersey to Wal-Mart: Your Look Sucks. Change It.
By 2.13.06
In Freehold Township, New Jersey, Wal-Mart’s has been forced to clamp down on its ugly, ugly decor:
