Word: union
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While officials, pundits and the everyday folks who have to pay bills lament unemployment rates that won't go down and wages that won't go up, some Rust Belt planners and union leaders are feeling optimistic: they're taking inspiration from the Basque region of Spain, where a network of worker-owned cooperatives launched amid the rubble of the Spanish Civil War has grown to become the country's seventh-largest corporation, and among its most profitable...
...late October, the Mondragon Corp. and the million-plus-member United Steelworkers (USW) union announced an alliance to develop Mondragon-type manufacturing cooperatives in the U.S. and Canada. Says USW's Rob Witherell: "Initially we are looking to convert an existing manufacturing operation." As for financing new ventures, he adds, "There's a significant amount of infrastructure already in place in the U.S. to assist in the development of cooperatives, such as the National Cooperative Bank and the National Cooperative Business Association. It's possible the NCB could function in a Caja Laboral ... role for us here...
...Mayne's Cooper Union building is his first completed project on the East Coast. From the outside its signature feature is a perforated steel scrim that acts as both a sunscreen and an instant attention-grabber. By its folds and slashes it provides a dynamic surface to what might otherwise be a standard stack of offices, classrooms and laboratories. Mayne has played with similar screens in a few recent projects, most spectacularly in a federal office building in San Francisco, where the screen cascades down 18 stories and then spills in long folds across an adjoining plaza, like a metallic...
...Transparency has been a buzzword among architects for some time now. One thing it refers to is the attempt to open a building to its surroundings. So the leaping gash that cuts through the Cooper Union façade - part dancer, part dueling scar, part Chinese character that never was - could be called a gesture towards transparency. It corresponds to the public areas of the building and discloses them to the outside. It could also be called a gesture of pure architectural theater. Especially at night, when the building is lit from within, it's a completely smashing addition...
...Francisco federal office, Mayne has also provided his Cooper Union building with elevators that don't stop on every floor. His hope is that this will encourage people to take the stairs for at least a floor to increase their chances of bumping into each other. (For the handicapped a conventional elevator hits every floor.) And anyway, compared to a standard elevator, the stairs are a joyride...