Stop press–McMansion Hell, the blog that pointedly and hilariously skewers the worst of American residential construction, has been taken down after Zillow threatened legal action over the use of pictures from its website. The blog has been required viewing for the last year or so, and it’s done a great job of stretching beyond its original mandate and providing genuinely insightful commentary on and explanations of a huge variety of architectural subjects.
Kate Wagner, the blog’s brilliant author, has promised it will be back up again after she seeks legal counsel, but as many commenters have pointed out, taking content from the web for the purposes of criticism is not just “fair use,” it’s also “fair game.
Want to help support free expression in architectural criticism? Hit McMansion Hell every so often and send some supporting comments when it does come back up. And you might also tweet at Zillow.com know what you think of having lawyers send out intimidating letters when someone pokes fun at your target demographic…
architecturefarm 
The EFF is supporting her and Zillow’s case is crap, so she should win easily.
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Have you seen this?
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Ancient concrete: Learning to do as the Romans did: How natural chemistry strengthened ancient concrete.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 July 2017. .
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Did see this–but thanks for passing it along! Roman concrete is fascinating, and it’s true that imperial construction, especially, couldn’t have happened anywhere in the world except italy because of its huge variety of building stones and naturally occurring cement. Whether there are any real lessons for today or not is a good question…a lot of the chemistry that made Roman concrete so strong makes pretty poor conditions (acidic, saline) for reinforcing steel today.
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