The Architect's Newspaper May 2024
What to do with plastic waste? The Good Plastic Company has an answer page 8
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Building with raw earth, popular in Europe, is slower to catch on in the U.S. page 10
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Michael Zaretsky and Marlon Blackwell remember Ohio architect Terry Boling page 13
WHAT IF THE WHOLE HOUSE WAS THE HILL? Hill House, designed by Donaldson + Partners, is the result of an all-too-rare creative alignment between architect, client, and builder. Read on page 22.
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AN treks across the country to see new and ongoing projects by WRNS Studio page 18
The Latest on Silicosis
Eavesdrop Dispatch In Construction Open House Marketplace
Terra-Cotta Tradition
Engineered stone is often hailed as a wonder material. It’s cheap, durable, recyclable, and attractive. But it’s also killing people, according to medical researchers and public health officials around the world. They’re linking a surge in severe cases of silicosis, a progressive and incurable lung disease, to the material’s growing popularity. Silicosis is one of the oldest occupational diseases. But the “rock dust menace,” as The New York Times described it in 1928, was mostly reined in in the U.S. after safety regulations like wet cutting, ventilation, and respirators were enacted. However, engineered stone, also known as quartz, has significantly higher concentrations of silica than natural stone— around 90 percent (granite is around 45 to 50 percent and marble is typically below 5 percent). Because of this, Australia banned engineered stone, and regulators in California may do so too, if widespread noncompliance with emergency continued on page 11
Christopher Payne visits Gladding, McBean. Read on page 40.
City Limits
PATTERNS: SFV Placid
Anjulie Rao reviews a new book by Megan Kimble. Read on page 80.
JOE FLETCHER
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LEONID FURMANSK Y
CHRISTOPHER PAYNE
Victory Boulevard cuts a straight line through the suburban San Fernando Valley. It’s a 20th-century time capsule: a wide swath of asphalt lined by lowrise retail, gas stations, and fast food outlets that sprung up after acres of orange groves were bulldozed. More recently, infill housing has sporadically plugged in the gaps between strip malls and midcentury apartment buildings, but as a place, the Valley’s commercial corridor is bleak and sunbaked, even on a winter day. Victory Wellness Center sits within this context, on a banal stretch in North Hollywood. Georgina Huljich and Marcelo Spina of Los Angeles–based PATTERNS transformed a vintage supermarket and “Valley Brutalist” office building (think thick, beige stucco and tinted glass) into a medical campus that is in dialogue with what passes for urbanism in these parts. With a few formal gestures—some slicing and carving out of the existing market structure—their design continued on page 9
Facades Surficial case studies and products. Read on page 33.
JOE FLETCHER
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