Architects Deploy Traffic Barrels to Make U.S.-Mexico Connection

An Oakland nonprofit that uses art for therapy has a startling track record for helping developmentally disabled adults become prolific—and profitable—artists.

It's often difficult for the disadvantaged portion of the population to find meaningful and rewarding work. The start-up ArtLifting takes pieces created by homeless and disabled people, finds buyers and shares the proceeds with the artists.

Tiny homes are a growing solution to homeless veterans and vulnerable youth, especially those who identify as LGBTQ. But the movement faces challenges from regulations and neighbors across the nation.

Pop-ups, temporary constructions intended to enliven public places, can often be used as temporary structures and events as marketing tools, and as camouflage for their larger and less charming permanent developments. But young architects in London, their talent and energy outrunning their employment opportunities, initiate, design and build pop-ups as glimpses of what a better city – more open, more social, more pleasurable, more surprising – might be

The architecture of a hospital can have huge effects on those inside it: the strain that old hospital buildings put on nurses, who spend too much of their time walking from one supply room to another, and on patients, whose already frail health is tested by living in rooms with one to three other patients, by the noise of the hospital, by infections. St. Mary’s Hospital in Sechelt, B.C., opened a new $44-million dollar building that has made the inside quality of life and care better.

Although the poor Nigerian village of Makoko has some makeshift schools, they cannot cater for the increasing number of children in the area. But a new floating school is aimed at generating a sustainable, inexpensive, ecological, alternative building system and urban water culture for the population of Africa’s coastal regions.

A Dallas urban neighborhood was dilapidated with abandoned storefronts and offered no vitality for pedestrians. A group of artists and community members created Build a Better Block, in which local artisans and small businesses took over a vacant block and transformed it for a limited time to encourage the ingredients for more permanent urban renewal.

The Oak Cliff neighborhood in Dallas suffered from recession-closed businesses and crime. Then community members used placemaking, in which people shaped their own environment to improve the quality of life, and the concept of Build a Better Block, which was a pop-up event showcasing art, food, music, and local faire. The idea gives citizens a fresh look at the possibilities through which to transform the space in which they live, and it has attracted attention across the country and around the world.

While billions of taxpayer dollars are allocated each year to support shelters and social service initiatives, homelessness remains a persistent problem in the U.S. - in 2013, an estimated 610,000 people slept without shelter every night. All over the country, people are building "tiny homes" to give to the homeless, providing them with shelter, a bathroom, and a kitchen for less then the cost of a shelter.

Alleys in Seattle were once places of illicit, illegal, and unsanitary activity. The International Sustainability Institute in Seattle began organizing music and art events to bring in people, which, in turn, cleaned-up the crime and garbage. As an urban development strategy, adjacent vacant storefronts re-opened for business and beautification could be seen in new gardens.