The hottest Architecture Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

Manhattan Hotel Futurism

Kneeling Bus • 136 implied HN points • 14 Mar 23
🎭️ Culture Nostalgia City Planning Architecture Cultural Preservation
  1. Cities are facing an existential crisis as urban activities move online, disconnecting from physical spaces.
  2. New York is clinging to past eras due to powerful nostalgia, which hinders progress and adaptation to emergent forces like technology.
  3. The future city may resemble suburbs more than traditional urban areas, with less inertia to hold onto the past and more openness to embrace technological advancements.

5 Fresh Cities I'm Watching

The New Urban Order • 59 implied HN points • 14 Sep 23
🏝 Travel Cities Urbanism Architecture Culture Design
  1. The author is following five fresh cities for their urban development and innovative approaches.
  2. These cities include a North American city repurposing vacant office buildings, an Eastern European city with a dynamic mayor focusing on city design, an Asian megacity with unique urban planning narratives, a city challenging London to become the U.K.'s cultural hub, and an African city undergoing transformation with pedestrianization and tech sector growth.
  3. The author's work revolves around exploring cities with forward-thinking mayors and unique urban development models.

Google Cloud's Core Principles of System Design [System Design sundays]

Technology Made Simple • 59 implied HN points • 04 Sep 23
🕹 Technology System Design Cloud Computing Documentation Architecture
  1. A robust system design should be secure, reliable, scalable, and independent, allowing for iterative changes without disruption.
  2. Document everything to help visualize deployments, collaborate effectively, and guide future design decisions.
  3. Simplify system design, use fully managed services, decouple architecture, and strive for a stateless architecture to improve reliability and scalability.

Infrastructure and Business Logic in Serverless: Exploring the Relationship

The Serverless Mindset • 78 implied HN points • 14 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Infrastructure Serverless Development Architecture
  1. Finding the right balance between infrastructure and business logic in serverless architecture is crucial.
  2. Serverless offers a sweet spot between simplicity and control, allowing for understanding and informed decision-making by developers.
  3. The relationship between infrastructure and business logic in serverless architectures is complex, and finding the right balance is key to creating scalable and resilient systems.
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Little boxes — and they all look just the same

City Hall Watcher • 98 implied HN points • 27 Feb 23
🎨 Art & Illustration Architecture City Planning Urban Design Development Aesthetics
  1. Toronto's architecture is becoming more monotonous due to recent provincial legislation affecting design approvals for buildings.
  2. City Hall is preparing for a by-election to replace Mayor John Tory, with the process set to begin after Pride weekend.
  3. The development pipeline in Toronto has seen a significant increase in proposed residential units, reaching a record high in 2021.

The Moroccan Express

The Cosmopolitan Globalist • 7 implied HN points • 21 Feb 24
🏝 Travel Culture History Heritage Nature Architecture
  1. Reading assignment provided for Middle East studies: involves skimming specific chapters of 'Peace Process' by William Quandt.
  2. Marrakech offers a unique and alluring experience: from the architecture of riads to the vibrant culture and historical significance.
  3. Insights into Moroccan monarchy and governance: showcases an example of implementing democratic reforms under a constitutional monarchy.

Mirage at Apple Park

Tabletops • 78 implied HN points • 05 Jun 23
🎨 Art & Illustration Sculpture Architecture Design Visual Arts
  1. Mirage at Apple Park is a public sculpture made of cast-glass pillars from deserts worldwide, creating a stunning visual during the day and a gentle glow at night.
  2. Apple Battersea in London is Apple's 40th store in the UK and is located in a redevelopment area with offices and apartments.
  3. Apple Watch Pride Edition is celebrated in stores with new displays featuring colorful geometric shapes, and Apple Camp offers kids aged 8-12 a chance to design inventions on iPad.

Why Cities?

The New Urban Order • 79 implied HN points • 31 May 23
🎭️ Culture Urbanism City life Architecture Community History
  1. The narrative around cities and urban living is evolving, with a renewed focus on improving quality of life and addressing why people choose to live in cities today.
  2. Major cities are facing challenges as online cultural offerings and retail experiences compete with the unique aspects of city living, emphasizing the need for cities to enhance their distinct urban forms and community connections.
  3. Investing in public transit, affordable housing, historic architecture, and community spaces are vital for cities to attract and retain residents, especially essential workers, and maintain a sense of place and connection in a rapidly changing world.

A Transient Time Capsule

Iterare • 78 implied HN points • 24 Mar 23
🏝 Travel Adventure History Exploration Architecture
  1. Visiting historical sites can provide a sense of perspective on the transient nature of life and legacy
  2. Embrace the present moment and cherish the memories created, as they are unique and fleeting
  3. Our actions may not leave a lasting impact beyond a few generations, so focus on making meaningful memories in the present

Apple Boylston Street

Tabletops • 78 implied HN points • 02 May 23
💼 Business Retail Construction Architecture Technology History
  1. Apple's store designs appear effortless and are iconic in urban settings.
  2. The process of building an Apple store involves overcoming obstacles like public approval and construction delays.
  3. Apple Boylston Street is unique and was the largest store in the U.S. at the time, showcasing distinctive architectural features.

The Imitation Shame

Cosmographia • 119 implied HN points • 03 Dec 22
🏝 Travel City Architecture
  1. The post discusses the contrast between different architectural styles in Budapest, showcasing a mix of Baroque, Communist Brutalism, Neo-Classical, and Neo-Gothic.
  2. The visuals shared in the post provide a glimpse of Budapest's rich architectural history and its evolution over time.
  3. The article is accessible to paid subscribers, indicating exclusive content and benefits for those who subscribe to the platform.

Lesson Plan: Model Home

The Field Trip Newsletter • 58 implied HN points • 17 Apr 23
🚌 Education Geography Art Architecture Design Literature
  1. The lesson plan focuses on teaching children about different housing styles around the world
  2. Children are encouraged to create a blueprint design of their own home and build a model home from another part of the world
  3. Additional ideas include hosting a mini film festival, studying global weather patterns, and building structures from around the world

To Build or to Reuse? A CDK Question

Making It Up • 1 HN point • 11 Apr 24
🕹 Technology Infrastructure Code Cloud Computing Development Architecture
  1. CDK offers the flexibility to reuse existing resources or create new ones in your architecture for different environments.
  2. By incorporating conditionals and the ability to import resources via ARN, CDK allows code deployment into both fresh and existing environments from the same codebase.
  3. Using CDK, it's feasible to create custom constructs with logic for reusing or building infrastructure, making it simpler to manage and deploy resources across different states of environments.

Highland Park Captured My Heart

Cornerstone • 39 implied HN points • 14 Jul 23
🎭️ Culture Urbanism Architecture Community Nature History
  1. Highland Park in Pittsburgh exemplifies a beautiful blend of closely spaced homes, walkability, and a large park.
  2. The neighborhood showcases the potential of human-scale urban planning with diverse housing types and economic integration.
  3. Highland Park's organic beauty and timeless charm highlight the possibility of creating similar communities if granted permission and freedom in development.

System Design Concepts: An in-depth guide to Database sharding

Engineering At Scale • 29 implied HN points • 29 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Systems Databases Scaling Performance Architecture
  1. Database sharding splits a large dataset into chunks stored on different machines, increasing storage capacity and distributing queries for better performance.
  2. Sharding allows for high availability by avoiding a single point of failure and higher read/write throughput by distributing query load.
  3. Cost and maintenance overhead are drawbacks of sharding, and it differs from partitioning where data is stored on a single machine.

Back-end for Front-end Pattern in Ecommerce

Cristian’s Substack • 39 implied HN points • 10 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Development Architecture APIs Microservices Patterns
  1. Back-end for Front-end (BFF) pattern helps reduce front-end complexity by acting as an interface between front-end and microservices/APIs.
  2. BFF pattern separates front-end requirements from back-end concerns, making the application easier to maintain and more resilient to API changes.
  3. Implementing BFF pattern can improve error handling, maintainability, and performance in an ecommerce platform by allowing for better control over API consumption and reducing network steps.

The Context Window Dillema

Davis Treybig • 19 implied HN points • 24 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Research Models Attention Architecture Innovation
  1. The driving factor limiting context window size is the quadratic scaling of self-attention in transformers.
  2. New research explores alternative mechanisms like Hyena Operators, State Space Models, and hierarchical attention to improve context window efficiency.
  3. Emphasis is placed on the importance of context curation and retrieval systems over simply increasing context window size for effective LLM performance.

Towards modern development of cloud applications

Engineering At Scale • 3 HN points • 26 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Development Architecture Performance Challenges Methodology
  1. Microservices offer advantages like scalability and fault-tolerance, but come with challenges like increased latency and management overhead.
  2. A proposed solution suggests writing monolith applications, leveraging runtime for deployments, and implementing atomic rollouts to address microservices challenges.
  3. By modularizing code into components, abstracting communication details, and managing deployment lifecycles, the solution aims to improve performance and reduce costs.

Design an Application with 3 Layer Architecture[Systems Design Sundays]

Technology Made Simple • 39 implied HN points • 07 Nov 22
🕹 Technology Architecture Software Coding Newsletter
  1. One of the classic patterns in software design is the Layers Pattern, promoting low coupling and high cohesion among different layers.
  2. 3 Layer Architecture has been widely used in software development for decades, segregating applications into three logical and physical computing tiers.
  3. Despite modern advancements, the simplicity, flexibility, and practicality of the 3-layer architecture make it a foundational choice in software development.

Stark and Exposed

Natural Selections • 21 implied HN points • 21 Mar 23
🎭️ Culture Architecture Nature Society Wellness
  1. The modern way is to sanitize and control your surroundings to avoid imperfections and surprises.
  2. Trusting experts and following standardized aesthetics can lead to a sterile living environment.
  3. Balancing controlled indoor spaces with exposure to nature and elements can bring vitality and appreciation for life.

Government as a Service

Engineering Open Societies • 19 implied HN points • 01 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Governance Software Development Consulting Architecture
  1. Government as a Service aims to address unique challenges governments face with tailored software solutions.
  2. The product strategy focuses on aligning incentives with government partners to create mutual value and revenue streams.
  3. The technical architecture emphasizes common infrastructure, modularity, and security for efficient development and deployment.

Will PostgreSQL switch to a Thread-based model ?

Engineering At Scale • 14 implied HN points • 24 Jun 23
🕹 Technology Database Architecture Modeling Software Development Performance
  1. PostgreSQL currently uses a process-based model for handling client connections and managing data.
  2. The process-based model offers advantages like fault isolation, security guarantees, and efficient resource management.
  3. Although there are advantages to the process-based model, the community is considering a switch to a thread-based model for PostgreSQL in the future.

The Architecture of Modern Observability Platforms

Bit by Bit • 11 implied HN points • 26 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Observability Architecture Platforms Data Storage
  1. Observability platforms help organizations understand the health of their applications using metrics, logs, and traces.
  2. Modern observability platforms tackle the challenge of handling large volumes of data and offer different types of architectures.
  3. Unifying the storage, ingestion, and querying layers can significantly scale and reduce costs in observability platforms.

The Tintin Opera House

Arjun’s Newsletter • 6 implied HN points • 13 Sep 23
🎨 Art & Illustration Architecture Storytelling History
  1. The Tintin Opera House was a remarkable building in Sarasota, Florida, created by the Tintin brothers.
  2. Dick Dawson, an enterprising New Yorker, transformed the failing venue into a successful establishment.
  3. After financial struggles and tragic events, the Tintin brothers had to sell the opera house, leading to its eventual transformation and loss of original beauty.

Issue 12: Houston, we have a solution

The Works in Progress Newsletter • 6 implied HN points • 07 Sep 23
📰 News Science Architecture International relations Economics Health
  1. Malaria vaccine development took decades but can be expedited through Advance Market Commitments.
  2. Houston has successfully implemented densification around the city centers through local opt-outs to up-zoning reforms.
  3. Dealing with low fertility rates involves understanding historical factors like household technologies, medical interventions, and housing prices.

Symphonies of Color

Novum Newsletter • 1 HN point • 31 Jan 24
🎨 Art & Illustration Artist Architecture Exhibition
  1. Florian Yuriev was deeply inspired by the northern lights, which he saw during his childhood in Siberia.
  2. Yuriev developed a unique artistic language combining colors, music, and poetry, influenced by his experiences living in exile.
  3. Yuriev's life was marked by a pursuit of creating meaningful art, as seen in his vision for a 'light music theater' and his resistance against ideological impositions.

Brick Lane Cybernetics

Cybernetic Forests • 39 implied HN points • 27 Dec 21
🎨 Art & Illustration Cybernetics Language Architecture Design
  1. Annetta Pedretti was a cybernetic linguist known for fostering conversations about conversations, emphasizing the importance of writing and communicating consciously.
  2. Language is a complex system that reflects history and meaning, requiring active listening, questioning, and response to understand its nuances.
  3. Cybernetics is about relationships between complex systems, such as language and architecture, and involves navigating boundaries, challenging clichés, and engaging in curious, slow-building conversations.

Nate Sloan: The Tradition of Posting

Do Not Research • 59 implied HN points • 20 Apr 21
🎨 Art & Illustration Architecture Aesthetics Social media History Critique
  1. Reactionary social media accounts are embracing 'tradition' without irony, advocating for a return to traditional art and architecture.
  2. Some accounts use anachronism to juxtapose historical periods and styles, challenging modernist aesthetics.
  3. Critique of contemporary architectural aesthetics includes a call for a clearer relationship between form and function, pointing out flaws and pitfalls in modern design.