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In July 1980, a group of Salvadoran migrants crossed the border between Mexico and Arizona. They walked over a remote mountain range and halfway across a wide desert valley in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. There were more than two dozen of them—people who had left behind lives and jobs to come to the United
Archaeologists searching through the ruins of the very ancient past are always happy to come across an epic poem or a historical chronicle, but very often the hardest documents to find are the ones that tell historians something about everyday life. About what it was like to be a bureaucrat in Egypt’s middle kingdom, or
Happy New Year! We’re starting 2025 with four more mini stories! This week we have a sleepy button, electric signs, a very important sticker, and video you can smell. Let’s get into it! Snooze Buttons In the 1950s, General Electric changed alarm clocks forever by adding a snooze button. On top of the clock there
We’ve all got problems. Sometimes your problem is a massive roadblock in your life, or maybe it’s this little thing that quietly annoys you that you’ve learned to grudgingly put up with. But regardless of the size of your problem, it would be so great if someone would just fix it for you. Not just
More in architecture
As we are well aware, a modern house has multiple meanings and can span as far back as the early 20th century. This week however, we’ve decided to look to the more recent past and marvel at how architects and developers are translating the requirements […]
Until last week, my wife Tomo and I had the great pleasure of being stewards of Whitney Smith's Holmes House. It was built by Jackson and Evelyn Holmes in 1941. In 2021, it became LA County Historic Landmark #8. What made this house so special was not that it was gigantic, ostentatious, or glamorous, but that it was built for a middle-class family interested in the power of good design.
The AEC industry continues to confront our environmental challenges—never mind what the headlines might suggest.
As wildfires continue to devastate Los Angeles, with thousands of residents displaced and entire communities struggling to recover, the urgency of addressing fire resilience in urban landscapes has never been greater. In light of the ongoing crisis, we are republishing our 2021 interview with UCLA’s Hitoshi Abe and Jeffrey Inaba about their collaborative research studios, FireCity and FireLAnd. This exploration into designing adaptive, fire-resilient environments feels more relevant than ever today. Inaba and Abe discuss critical topics such as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), strategies for balancing human activity with ecological systems, and rethinking urban regeneration in the face of climate change. Their approach to fostering a “new ecology of coexistence” between wilderness and city offers insights that could inspire architects, planners, and policymakers as they navigate the challenges of rebuilding and creating more sustainable communities. This republication also serves...
