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Sherwin-Williams fires a retail employee over his massively popular paint-mixing TikTok page.
Tony Piloseno, a college senior who worked part-time at a Sherwin-Williams store in Athens, Ohio, was fired after the company discovered his viral paint-mixing TikTok channel @tonesterpaints. For months, Piloseno had been pointing to his channel as an example of what the company could be doing on social media to market its paint to a younger audience. It instead resulted in a corporate investigation, and the company terminated his employment after determining that he made videos during working hours and with company equipment.
“I’d just downloaded TikTok, and the videos took off almost immediately,” Piloseno tells Buzzfeed. “It was just me doing a few customer orders here and there. When we were slow, I was making videos showing the process of it all. I love how colors blend together, what goes with what… It’s hard to explain, but I really enjoy mixing paint. I like showing what stuff it can do.” Instead of embracing Piloseno’s forward-thinking marketing techniques, which we think might be more effective than releasing annual “color trend reports” that never say much of anything, Sherwin-Williams decided that his behavior constitutes gross misconduct. Attention, Benjamin Moore: We think Piloseno might be looking for another job.
Los Angeles is looking for low-rise multi-unit housing options for middle-class families.
Los Angeles and its chief design officer, Christopher Hawthorne, have released an RFP to find smart options for low-rise housing geared toward middle-class families. The city has zoned roughly three-fourths of its residential land, with more than 400,000 lots being single-family homes. The initiative aims to encourage building multi-unit dwellings for three or four households in what Hawthorne describes as the middle space: “There has been sort of a hole in the housing policy donut, if you will, in Los Angeles,” Hawthorne told KCRW, noting that low-rise multi-unit housing can build a stronger sense of community, increase traffic for local businesses, and provide new paths to homeownership. “There’s a big amount of space in the middle.” Low-Rise: Housing Ideas for Los Angeles is free to enter and open for submission until February 12, 2021.
The world’s largest Passivhaus building is currently under construction in Vancouver.
WKK Architects has unveiled a design for the world’s largest Passivhaus building, an undulating skyscraper in Vancouver. “Vancouver is already known to be one of the nicest places to live in the world,” says Tom Wright, co-founder of WKK Architects. “We believe that the new tower will become the litmus test for high-rise developments for cities around the world, and as such we expect great interest in the project during its construction and later occupation.” Passivhaus is an international energy performance standard that helps to dramatically reduce space heating and cooling requirements in a building, as well as its carbon emissions.
The prolific designer Eric Owen Moss receives the American Prize for Architecture.
Presented jointly by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, the award recognizes four decades of contributions that Moss’s Culver City–based practice has made to Los Angeles including The Waffle, The Samitaur, and warehouse renovations to 3555 and Stealth. “His buildings appear geometrically simple but are infused with theory and purpose,” commented architecture critic and President/CEO of The Chicago Athenaeum Christian Narkiewicz-Laine. “His work in his usual and famous Kafkaesque approach simultaneously fosters an insatiable curiosity into what makes him tick; and even more, what makes this ticking turn into such astounding architecture.”
The disappearance of a bicycle that formed part of a Banksy artwork grips Nottingham.
In Nottingham, England, a bicycle in front of a Banksy mural that depicts a girl hula hooping with a tire appeared to be stolen before the owner of a nearby beauty salon admitted to taking it for safekeeping. Kyle Myatt, a local food delivery rider, bought a replacement bicycle after noticing the original had disappeared. “I just did it to see people happier,” Myatt told the BBC. “Even if it’s not been stolen, I’m still glad I replaced it as it looks like part of the Banksy. And at least now if someone does nick it, the original is safe.” The mural mysteriously popped up overnight in mid-October, causing widespread speculation that Banksy had struck again.
Today’s attractive distractions:
An elusive chameleon made its first appearance in more than 100 years.
Tracey Emin’s previously unseen early paintings reveal a different talent.
Alex Prager’s human sculptures memorialize the office Christmas party.
Scientists may have discovered that outer space isn’t pitch-black after all.
