amanda kolson hurley

The Show That Fuses Architectural Critique With Real-Estate Porn CityLab, May 10, 2017 In an episode of “Grand Designs,” a couple wants to expand a tiny cottage into a three-bedroom family home. One member of the couple, Gregory Kewish, has the idea to use panels of a high-tech wood—called cross-laminated timber—in a new and experimental…

Diplomatic design: New US embassies make an architectural statement CNN, May 5, 2017 Later this year, the new US Embassy in London will open, a giant glass cube on a formerly industrial site south of the River Thames. The embassy, which cost a record $1 billion, provoked controversy almost from the moment it was announced. Some…

Can Silicon Valley Kick the Sprawl Habit? The Bay Area’s knowledge jobs are dispersed across a vast, car-choked landscape of suburban office parks. And that’s the way the industry likes it. CityLab, April 27, 2017 America is a nation of office parks. Low-rise compounds surrounded by seas of employee parking are fixtures of the suburban…

The Rise and Fall of Design as Medicine for the Mentally Ill Washington City Paper, April 13, 2017 It’s hard to imagine anyone dealt a worse hand than the patient identified by her doctor as “Alcoholic Woman No. 2.” Her father died in a mental hospital when she was an infant. Her mother was psychotic,…