Anjulie Rao


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Dwell •

Is GoFundMe the New Insurance?

Your house is likely the most valuable asset you’ll own—it’s the source of potential intergenerational wealth and the container for your belongings—but the task of insuring it properly comes with a lot less certainty. There’s been much discussion about the failures of homeowner’s insurance over the past few years, in light of the climate crisis wreaking havoc on communities that have long thought they’d never flood or burn. Variables dictate what is covered and what is not—like water coming from...
Dwell •

During a Housing Crisis, Graffitied Buildings Expose the Cruelty of Excess

The Oceanwide Plaza complex, a $1.2 billion ultraluxury development in Los Angeles, if built to completion would have included three towers—a hotel with residences, and two 40-story residential towers containing nearly 500 condominiums—located right across the street from the city’s downtown convention center. In 2019, when the Beijing-based developer Oceanwide Holdings Co. axed their involvement, the construction site went dormant, save for a few guests in the spring 2024: as the site’s three t...
Barn Raiser •

Going Off the Grid in the Midwest

Initially, The Line was much shorter. In 2017, urban researchers Luis Hilti and Matilde Igual Capdevila drew a line from their Liechtenstein home to a gallery in Venice as a part of the 2018 Venice Biennale. A year later, they extended that line around the globe, connecting the two points “the long way.” Through this, they established The Institute for Linear Research (ILR). Now, the ILR invites anyone to traverse The Line (accessible by Google Maps) by foot (or boat, bicycle or other human-powe...
The Architect’s Newspaper •

With Columnar Disorder, Germane Barnes revises classical architecture to tell stories about the African diaspora

It’s difficult to remember much about columns from architecture history class. There are three main “orders”—Doric, Ionic, Corinthian—though some expand the lineup to five with the addition of Tuscan and Composite. (I’m not Googling this right now.) It’s hard to recall as time has passed and my synapses have weakened, but also because the column’s meaning has changed. Encountering a building lined with decorated mo...
Dwell •

When Knocking Down Homes Is Actually a Step in the Right Direction

Driving north on I-55 in St. Louis along the Mississippi River, Sugarloaf Mound is easy to miss. It’s nestled between the river’s west bank and the freeway, appearing as a hill that descends as you travel north, vanishing into the landscape as quickly as it pops up. You might catch a glimpse of two rooftops, homes that squat on the mound’s northern, flatter end. Yet this seemingly ordinary hill has been a contested site for many years: it is the last remaining sacred mound originally belonging t...
Dwell •

Why Do We Keep Developing in Climate Disaster Zones?

Hurricane Helene’s path generated at least $53 billion in damages and, in North Carolina, left more than 102 dead across the state. Most striking was the destruction in Asheville, where flooding destroyed homes and businesses, downed trees, and washed out roads. A city once considered a ‘climate haven’ due to its elevation and distance from shorelines was cut off from the world, busting the myth of ‘safety’ wide open in the face of climate change. As the saying goes, "wherever you go, there you...
Dwell •

Do Architectural Design Competitions Make a Difference?

In the October 9 announcement, the competition’s new name came with a different strategy. There is no mention of pairing winning architects with developers or providing a stipend; the stated goal—to build these homes en masse across vacant lots—is now a figment of memory. None of these homes have been built; no holes dug or foundations laid. What is lost, sources say, isn’t just good design—it’s the promise of streamlining housing construction that might chip away at the bureaucratic hurdles tha...
Dwell •

“Megalopolis” Romanticizes the Tortured-Genius Architect Archetype in the Worst Way

Despite the many forest retreats and desert getaways featured in Dwell’s glossy pages, architecture is not about escapism. There’s much to be said about the profession’s purpose, but foremost it’s a job that requires one to labor intimately with the realities of the environment and human safety to resolve how buildings should respond accordingly. We can, of course, romanticize the tortured-genius architect, whose vision for a utopic future is stymied by bureaucracy or cash flow; their task might...
The Architectural Review •

Remediation works: cleaning up after the Manhattan Project

Oak Ridge’s AK Bissell Park is part of the east Tennessee city’s civic centre, a green space that includes pedestrian pathways, a band shell and a quaint bridge over a creek. Across that bridge is a pristine circular plaza, in which sits the city’s Japanese International Friendship Bell. A massive concrete cantilever suspends the 3,760kg Bonshō‑style bell a couple of metres from the ground, while long, arched wood slats above evoke a Buddhist temple. The bell’s engravings include Japanese cranes...
The Architect’s Newspaper •

City Limits sees urban interstate development through the eyes of community organizers

City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and The Future of America’s Highways It was pouring rain the day I moved to Chicago, finishing a grueling 17-hour drive to become a new resident of a sprawling metropolis. Entering the city limits from I-90, a freeway that is somehow packed with traffic while also serving as a de facto race course for impatient drivers, I was greeted by massive digital billboards that I would later learn broadcast the Illinois...
The Architect’s Newspaper •

Manica-designed Chicago Bears stadium could unravel policy-forward development in favor of a suburbanesque amusement park

Chicago’s mayors have a proclivity for Big Architectural Endeavors: Richard M. Daley is credited for transforming a parking lot and railyard into Millennium Park; Rahm Emanuel pushed the downtown Riverwalk from a small veteran’s memorial into a mile-long promenade; and Lori Lightfoot launched Invest South/West to bring good design and economic investment to Chicago’s most neglected neighborhoods—a response to her predecessors’ downtown focus. Current mayor, Brandon Johnson, was elected last year...
Untapped Journal •

What the “Whole Earth Catalog” Taught Me About Building Utopias

What the “Whole Earth Catalog” Taught Me About Building Utopias My mother threw away her copy of the Whole Earth Catalog long before I was born. Having endured so much use, it was in shreds, she tells me as I sit in the kitchen of her home near Golden, Colorado. She first purchased the manual when she was 14, growing up in the flower children era. She was deeply drawn to it, calling herself a devotée, she says, “because of the zeitgeist I was unconsciously a part of: that whole Aquarian Age,”
Dwell •

ADUs Might Not Be Making Chicago More Affordable, But They Might Make It More Sustainable

There hasn’t exactly been an explosion of new accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in Chicago since its city council passed an ADU pilot ordinance in 2020, which allows for new coach houses and basement or attic renovations to add additional units in certain parts of the city. The ordinance intends to allow homeowners to make multigenerational living arrangements or extra income with their existing property; proponents also advocated for ADUs as a means to build more affordable housing—a principle ye
Dwell •

A New Website Is Trying to Convince You That Housing Can Be “Awesome and Affordable”

While working for Los Angeles radio station KCRW, Frances Anderton, who hosted the popular show DnA: Design and Architecture from 2002 to 2020, would frequently speak with proponents and opponents of ballot initiatives and design projects that promoted higher-density apartments. During those interviews, she noticed something particular: Even those firmly set in the "YIMBY" camp seemed to express a quiet disdain for multifamily housing. "I would get an undertone in the conversation—there is a h
Architectural Review •

Retrospective: Theaster Gates

To sanctify a place, you might call a priest. Perhaps they would throw some holy water on it, anoint it with oil, or build an ornate palace for prayer. But for Theaster Gates, making a place sacred begins with repair; the holiness of a place is evidenced by care. Since the late 1990s, the Chicago‑based potter, performance artist and urban planner has created an empire out of materials and sites that speak to the Black experience, Black places and Black objects – to great international acclaim.
Chicago Reader •

Norman Teague draws inspiration from John Coltrane’s masterpiece

In these days of violence and uncertainty, I’ve been seeking gratitude. As such I’ve returned to Wendell Berry’s It All Turns on Affection—a brief but profound book that calls for a turn away from an aspirational economy driven by technology and back to caring for the land around us. Affection, I believe, requires gratitude—for what we have and for what goodness the future could bring. When Berry asks us to redirect our collective attention to another way of being in the world, one based on devo
Dwell •

Is Rent Getting Cheaper in 2024? It's Complicated

Though the latter half of 2023 showed cooling rental markets after a pandemic spike, a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) has peeled back the layers of the United States’ housing crisis, connecting rent affordability with increases in unhoused populations. Published last week, America’s Rental Housing 2024 takes the temperature of recent fluctuations in the rental market, reporting changes in the number of those who are rent-burdened and those who are experiencing
Dwell •

After the NFL, Michael Bennett Finds a New Career in Furniture Design

Michael Bennett has always been an artist. The former Seattle Seahawks defensive end and 2013 Super Bowl champ spent much of his youth in constant discipline, channeling what he calls, "the duality of the body and mind." For Bennett, athleticism is an artistic practice, coordinating between bodies in space and time—though that space was usually a large stadium filled with fans, marked by a countdown clock. But over the past four years, he has been expanding this practice to explore the mind-body
Dwell •

How to Keep New York’s Floating Swimming Pool From Being an Island for the Rich

As of this month, New Yorkers are officially, after 14 years, closer than ever to swimming in the East River—legally and safely, of course. The + POOL, a first-of-its-kind floating urban swimming pool, has had a long history of fits, starts, and development , as Dwell chronicled recently. But when Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the project would receive a whopping $16 million of state and local funding to bring it to fruition, architect Dong-Ping Wong —who conceived of the floating urban a
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