Traffic ahead of the I-405 shutdown, photo via the Daily Mail.

When America’s busiest freeway, Interstate 405, closed temporarily for mandatory construction from July 16-17, all of Los Angeles broke out in panic as drivers canceled weekend plans and signs flashed on every freeway in the region preparing locals for anticipated delays. The LAPD even recruited popular celebrities on Twitter, including Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian, to broadcast a warning so people would stay off the roads, during what was referred to as the “Carmaggedon.” But 53-hours of blocked access and apocalyptic panic later, LA did not find itself in a hopeless gridlock. Instead, the anticlimactic closure proved how much Californians depended on the 10-mile route, yet how surprisingly easy it also was to abandon their cars for 2 days.

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The library at Gensler’s Chicago office is a satisfying space in many ways. By being situated on one of the design firm’s main circulation routes, this resource room naturally occupies the center of the action. The materials and catalogs that fill the shelves communicate, to employees and visitors alike, how much this group of designers value knowledge. The library shouts this nonverbal message.

This library is not a static place, fixated only on books and periodicals. There is a learning place in the first bay, dedicated to exhibits by artists, craftspeople, and manufacturers, among others. The shows can focus on topics that are outside the general comfort zone of people who work here.

It’s also the place where experimental uses of furnishings provide the firm’s design staff with ways to test out and understand furnishings options available to them. In this way the library becomes a platform for the quick prototyping of space design.

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Considering that we’ve seen some of the century’s worst catastrophes in the past few years, it is only natural that design for disaster has been on all our minds. I’ve seen reconstruction plans and pre-fab shelter designs galore, but a recent event in New York takes the cake for bizarre inventiveness.  Last Thursday the Urban Assembly School for Design and Construction (UASDC) hosted an “Iron Designer” fundraiser—yes, like Iron Chef, only for design—challenging contestants to build a full-size emergency shelter in three hours. Read more…

By now, you’ve probably heard that, last weekend, JetBlue held a dry run of Terminal 5, its new 635,000-square-foot, $743 million facility at JFK. Around one thousand dyed-in-the-wool Jetters checked in to nonexistent flights, diligently filed through security stations, and stood in line to board phantom planes, all to help the building’s engineers, Arup, work out circulation and way-finding kinks before the opening on October 1. In return, there were free JetBlue caps. Naturally, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Saturday. Read more…