A New Look

It’s time for some changes around here. The change in weather (to say nothing of the violently evident changes to our climate) offers the perfect opportunity to invite our readers to hunker down, snuggle up, and delve a little deeper into the content we’ve shared with you over the past four years. So, we’ve freshened things up a bit. We hope that our new, friendly, and elegant redesign will encourage you – whether you’re a long-time UO reader or an urban enthusiast only recently introduced to our take on the culture of citymaking – to explore not only each new feature or post to our forum, but also the emerging connections between different pieces. If you think housing is the most urgent challenge facing public interest design, here’s an index of relevant stories. If you think green infrastructure is our best bet to manage the storms of the future, check out some case studies we’ve featured over the years. If public art is what enriches your experience of the city, learn more about the thinking behind specific bodies of work.

The editorial perspective of Urban Omnibus emerges from the Architectural League’s long history of presenting and producing innovative work about the built environment for over a century. While much of the League’s programming can be experienced live, over the last five years we have sought to expand further into the digital realm to reach a worldwide audience interested in architecture and urbanism. In addition to the familiar lecture podcast format, the League has produced a growing number of original videos, digitally published essays and interviews, and online exhibitions.

To deliver and organize more effectively the full range of our programming, the League is proud also to announce a redesign of archleague.org. Central to the website’s redesign is the launch of a “Features” section, which provides a way to collect and organize multi-platform content by topic, individual, or program series. Of particular interest to UO readers might be a fascinating interview with Colombian architect Simón Velez, videos recapping panel discussions from the Beneath and Beyond Big Data symposium in April 2011, and a four-part series of archival audio recordings from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s of presentations held at the Architectural League by leading figures in post-war modernism. New features will be announced each week via the League’s weekly newsletter (sign up hereif you’re not on the list already, or sign up for both the UO weekly email and the League’s newsletter at the top right of this page). Also, through a new advanced search tool on both websites, you can now search content across both archleague.org and uomigrate2.wpengine.com.

We encourage you to take some time to explore both sites and, as always, drop us a line here or in the comments below to tell us what you think.

The views expressed here are those of the authors only and do not reflect the position of The Architectural League of New York.