Oct 14, 2026 · 4 min read
General
The Termite Building Works Better Than the Termite Story
Harare’s Eastgate Centre became famous for copying termite mounds. The real building runs on shade, concrete, cool nights and a carefully timed set of fans.
Writing
ECO ARC
ECO ARC is an experimental automated journalism initiative built and deployed by Asher to explore a central question: Can a systemized, prompt-driven AI pipeline successfully scale local neighborhood reporting without losing its soul?
While traditional columns showcase an author's direct writing and drafting abilities, ECO ARC tests the boundary where software engineering meets media. The system is designed to handle research, topic-selection, drafting, and editorial workflows end-to-end.
Published in partnership with Curbwire—which embraced the opportunity to test innovative automated frameworks in modern publishing—this project serves as a live, public experiment. Ultimately, the traction and reception of Asher's column aim to prove or disprove whether automated systems can expand local news coverage, or if they ultimately strip away the essential "human spark" that makes neighborhood reporting worth reading.
The Curbwire Connection
Asher developed the idea and initial prompts behind ECO ARC. That work became the basis for BUILT HERE, a section of Curbwire, a free, twice-weekly hyperlocal newsletter with editions organized by ZIP code. The approach evolved at Curbwire into a more neutral, news-focused format. ECO ARC continues the original concept, with more room for interpretation and commentary on architecture, design, and the built environment.
Oct 10, 2026 · 4 min read
LA History
The Air-Raid Sirens Became Street Furniture
Los Angeles built hundreds of sirens to make wartime danger audible, then left the machinery standing after the warning system stopped making sense.
Oct 7, 2026 · 4 min read
General
The K67 Kiosk Came With Expansion Packs
Saša Mächtig’s K67 turned a street kiosk into a kit of fiberglass parts that could sell newspapers, connect into larger rooms, and survive decades of improvised use.
Oct 3, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
Los Angeles Wants to Buy the Park Koreatown Already Uses
Koreatown already treats Liberty Park as common ground. A proposed city purchase would turn borrowed access into a public guarantee, but funding and a sale remain unresolved.
Sep 30, 2026 · 4 min read
LA History
Los Angeles Sold Neighborhoods With Custom Streetlights
Los Angeles’s ornate streetlights became neighborhood logos because property owners paid for them, voted on them and used electric light to sell new subdivisions.
Sep 26, 2026 · 4 min read
General
A House Tried to Save Sunshine in Salt
The 1948 Dover Sun House used melting salt to carry solar heat into cold nights, then discovered how much a promising material can misbehave inside a real home.
Sep 23, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
The Lucas Museum Put the Parking Underground
The Lucas Museum’s spaceship gets the photographs. Its sharper civic move was burying Exposition Park’s parking beneath a free public landscape.
Sep 16, 2026 · 3 min read
General
The Thompson Center Had a 17-Story Window Problem
Google’s renovation keeps Helmut Jahn’s great public rotunda while replacing the single-pane skin that made it expensive and uncomfortable to occupy.
Sep 13, 2026 · 4 min read
LA History
Los Angeles Demolished Its Black-and-Gold Oil Tower
Richfield Tower wrapped an oil company in black terra cotta, gold ornament, angels, and a neon derrick. Then the company erased it.
Sep 13, 2026 · 4 min read
General
The Marsh That Treats Sewage Is Getting More Machinery
Arcata's famous wastewater marsh was never a machine-free miracle. Its $54 million upgrade makes the hybrid system easier to see.
Sep 13, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
The Reservoir Cover Became the Reservoir's Weak Point
Pacific Palisades depends on a 117-million-gallon reservoir whose ten-acre cover failed. Replacing it has become a lesson in hidden infrastructure.
Sep 2, 2026 · 4 min read
General
The Train Station That Kept the Tree in the Way
Kayashima Station expanded by cutting its platform and roof around a 700-year-old sacred camphor tree residents refused to lose.
Aug 26, 2026 · 4 min read
General
The Indestructible Chair Needed Better Customers
The Emeco 1006 survived military service, but its maker was rescued when an austere government chair became a prized design object.
Aug 22, 2026 · 4 min
LA History
Los Angeles Sent Schoolchildren Under Sunset Boulevard
In 1924, Los Angeles built a tunnel beneath Sunset Boulevard for Micheltorena students. It protected children by changing where they walked, not how drivers behaved.
Aug 19, 2026 · 4 min read
General
The Kitchen That Counted Every Step
The Frankfurt Kitchen saved steps by turning cooking into a one-person workstation, leaving modern design a brilliant and uncomfortable inheritance.
Aug 15, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
The Bruin Is Keeping the Old Seats
Westwood’s Bruin Theatre plans to reopen with film projectors, existing seats, and a bet that its old-fashioned specificity can still fill a room.
Aug 12, 2026 · 4 min
General
The Basketball Court Designed to Flood
Rotterdam’s Benthemplein Water Square gives a sunken basketball court a second job: holding 1.7 million liters of stormwater before the sewer system has to.
Aug 12, 2026 · 5 min read
LA History
The Concrete River Was Built to Make Water Leave
Los Angeles lined its river in concrete to move floodwater quickly to the sea. The structure worked, and made a living landscape disappear into infrastructure.
Aug 5, 2026 · 4 min read
General
Mass Timber Is Not Magic Wood
Mass timber is compelling because it makes structure feel warm and lower-carbon, but the strongest lesson is still more disciplined than the marketing.
Aug 5, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
The Empty Office Is Not Housing Yet
Los Angeles has made office-to-housing conversion easier, but an empty building still has to survive code, cost, light, plumbing, and politics before it becomes a home.
Jul 25, 2026 · 4 min read
LA History
What a Courtyard Apartment Was Supposed to Do
Los Angeles courtyard apartments tried to solve a very local problem: how to add homes while keeping gardens, light, arrival, and a little privacy.
Jul 22, 2026 · 3 min read
General
CopenHill Is the Pretty Face of a Difficult Machine
Copenhagen's ski-slope power plant is brilliant public architecture, but its beauty is most useful when it keeps the waste problem visible.
Jul 18, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
Sepulveda Is a Transit Line About Trust
Metro's Sepulveda Transit Corridor has to do more than cross the pass. It has to make a hard, expensive project feel believable to the people who will live with it.
Jul 15, 2026 · 3 min read
General
The Office Building That Had to Prove It
Seattle's Bullitt Center made a useful demand of green architecture: operate for a year, measure the results, and prove the claims.
Jul 11, 2026 · 4 min read
LA History
The Dingbat Was a Parking Rule With a Front Door
Los Angeles dingbats are easy to mock, but their strange form tells a sharper story about postwar housing, parking, ornament, and density.
Jul 8, 2026 · 3 min read
General
BedZED Made Low-Carbon Living Look Ordinary
BedZED's lasting lesson is that low-carbon housing works best when the better choice becomes part of ordinary daily life.
Jul 4, 2026 · 4 min read
LA Current
The Wildlife Crossing Is a Bridge for a Broken Map
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is a practical repair to a freeway cut that left wildlife trying to survive on the wrong side of the road.
Jul 1, 2026 · 3 min read
General
What the Bicycle Snake Really Connects
Copenhagen's Bicycle Snake works because it treats a missing ramp as a piece of civic architecture, not a leftover traffic problem.