Newly built houses, with their sizable carbon footprints, don’t just contribute to climate change. For many Americans, they’re also too expensive—a bitter irony in cities rife with vacant buildings and record evictions.
Given the urgency of both issues, projects that retrofit livable housing into existing low-carbon shells (the initial embodied carbon was spent long ago) might be worth a closer look. We searched for them and came across a handful that promise a cure for housing insecurity and excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
The mirror with dimmable LED lighting visually enlarges the room, which, thanks to partitions has more structure. The floor-level shower offers easy access and comfort with underfloor heating, square overhead shower and hand shower. Image Via Architonic
Just how much things can change in 30 years can be clearly seen in the history of fashion and design. Only a few visionaries manage to outlive trends with their timeless creations, while simultaneously treading confident, new design paths. People like Dieter Sieger, for example, who revolutionised the bathroom with Duravit back in the 1980s, or Philippe Starck, who has been collaborating with the company since 1994.
Satellite image of Bahir Dar (Ethiopia) Support of the Sustainable Structure Plan of Bahir Dar. Image Courtesy of UN-Habitat
The Un-Habitat or the United Nations agency for human settlements and sustainable urban development, whose primary focus is to deal with the challenges of rapid urbanization, has been developing innovative approaches in the urban design field, centered on the active participation of the community. ArchDaily has teamed up with UN-Habitat to bring you weekly news, article, and interviews that highlight this work, with content straight from the source, developed by our editors.
In order to support local governments in developing countries to implement the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, UN-Habitat has created the Participatory Incremental Urban Planning Toolbox, “a step-by-step methodology to assess, design, operationalize and implement urban planning processes”. The guideline proposes a timeline of phases, blocks, and activities, helping city leaders, stakeholders, and the community to have a comprehensive and strategic overview of the whole strategy.
Luonnos Bagdadin taidemuseosta Irakiin (1957–58). Originaalipiirustus. Image Courtesy of Alvar Aalto Foundation
The Alvar Aalto Museum is showcasing one last exhibition before it undergoes a complete renovation, highlighting the architect’s unbuilt museum designs. While Aalto designed a total of 15 museum buildings, only three made it from concepts to the actual built structures. The exhibition entitled “The Dream of a Museum” includes both detailed and more sketch-like plans, along with competition entries.
Architect and activist Edward Mazria, FAIA has been honored with the 2021 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects. The Gold Medal honors an individual whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture. As the jury notes, Mazria is being recognized for his work to combat the climate crisis and motivate the profession to take action.
It’s been nine months since the world stopped spinning, only to restart at a different rhythm. And although we’d spotted this new style of work approaching on the horizon, we still weren’t prepared for it. In a blink of an eye, our work environments and lives were reduced to a screen and a keyboard. We were forced to go virtual.
The construction industry moves a huge amount of resources, employs millions of people, and is a fairly accurate gauge for the economic situation of different countries. If the economy goes down, construction shrinks, and vice versa. Members of the construction industry include mining companies, contractors, material manufacturers, architects, engineers, governments, real estate, and more. In other words, many agents participate either directly and indirectly in the industry. But construction is also considered to be one of the most backward and resistant industries to embrace new technologies, instead opting to replicate traditional ways of doing less efficient work with high rates of waste. A study by McKinsey & Company showed that, unlike other industries, industry productivity has remained stable in construction in recent years, despite all the technological progress that has occurred.
Autodesk has just acquired Spacemaker, a platform that “gives architects and developers the automation superpower to test design concepts in minutes” and explore the best urban design options. Targeting architects, urban designers, and real estate developers, the cloud-based AI-powered generative design helps professionals taking better early-stage design decisions.
Judy Genshaft Honors College. Image Courtesy of Morphosis
Architecture and design practice Morphosis has broken ground on the new Judy Genshaft Honors College at the University of South Florida (USF). The five-story, 85,000-square-foot building is the latest in the firm's portfolio of educational facilities, a project that marks the university’s ongoing expansion and growth. Located on USF’s campus in Tampa, the honors college was designed to encourage interdisciplinary exchange while providing flexible spaces to learn.
Silvia Garcia Camps has presented a series of collages of renowned works of architecture to show that, nothing is ever really invented, it's simply borrowed and mixed. In this article, we highlight her presentation.
Oregon holds some the most varied geography and private developments in the United States. Home to diverse landscapes and architecture, the state is defined by the Cascade mountain range, windswept coastlines, dense forests, and a high desert environment to the east. These varied geographies have shaped the state’s construction techniques and residential design. At the heart of these building efforts are timber and glass homes found throughout the state.
In recent years, we have published many articles about wood. Addressing trends of use, possibilities for log wood, panels, curves, and finishes, innovations in tall building structures, and wood's behavior towards fire, these articles have explicated a wide variety of the material's applications and characteristics. A specific type of wood, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), has emerged as highly structurally efficient with thermal, seismic, and even sensory benefits, described by specialists as the concrete of the future. But when we post these articles on social media, we frequently encounter comments from our readers concerned about the impact of deforestation. Although we may see wood as a great building material of the future, we must ask ourselves: is it possible to continue cutting down trees and using their wood while still calling it sustainable?
Architectural References Online is a web-based archive for three-dimensional, navigable model photos of select projects in architectural history. Initiated by Marc Frohn as the head of the chair Raum + Entwerfen and developed together with Tim Panzer, the models and drawings were produced by students at the Architecture School of Karlsruher Institut für Technologie.
A new masterplan and building scheme has been designed for the Codrico Factory and Rijnhaven in Rotterdam. With the overall plan created by Powerhouse Company in collaboration with developer RED Company, the proposal includes a series of buildings by Mecanoo, SHoP Architects, Office Winhov and Crimson Architectural Historians. Called the "Codrico Terrain", the project aims to celebrate local industrial heritage and embrace change for the future.
Skateboarding is often associated with the use of public spaces such as streets, squares, and sidewalks and has become a sport that blends into everyday life in the cities. Although skateboarding is sometimes considered marginalized, because of the dispute over public spaces, it allows underused places such as areas under or near overpasses to be revamped for practicing sports. Many sports centers have been incorporating skate parks into their programs, showcasing very unique designs.
I am a relative newcomer to the Midwest, and of all the things that have captured my enduring attention, one of them is water towers. In my adopted home state, Minnesota, they are everywhere. These top-heavy engineering marvels rise to well over 150 feet tall and assume all manner of shape and metallurgical prowess, from the pedesphere and fluted column structures, colloquially known as the “golf ball-on-a-tee” and “flashlight,” respectively, to the multicolumned spheroid and ellipsoid tanks that, as legend has it, were the targets of frantic gunfire during Orson Welles’ broadcast of “War of the Worlds.” I can attest that when the day’s twilight settles in, those multilegged towers—or, rather, their silhouettes—can appear otherworldly.
https://www.archdaily.com/952627/water-towers-iconic-infrastructure-underutilized-opportunityJustin R. Wolf
In documenting the body of work of Miró Rivera Architects, Belgian photographer Sebastian Schutyser employs a photographic technique never before used for the presentation of contemporary architecture. The soft, pictorial imagery produced with a pinhole camera perfectly showcases the dialogue between architecture and landscape which underlines the studio’s designs.
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina answer a hotline text asking for advice regarding attending architecture school during COVID. The two cover choosing to defer and taking a year off from school, aspects of education missing from remote learning, the differences between physical and virtual learning, how to overcome remote learning challenges, and more. Enjoy! Text or call our hotline: 213-222-6950 for any questions.
https://www.archdaily.com/952685/the-second-studio-podcasts-tips-for-architecture-and-design-students-learning-remotelyThe Second Studio Podcast
Many architects work in a variety of areas, designing everything from the layout of a city block to the most minute details of a building. A common trend among these projects is that the furnishings, the very things that make a structure usable and livable, are often afterthoughts for the project's creators and only become important when the structure is already built.
With the promising news of a potential vaccine that could soon return the world to a semi-normal way of life, questions are being raised about what the future of public transit might look like. While some predict that it will be years before we revert back to the muscle memory ways of packing like sardines into crowded subway cars during rush hour commutes, it’s not just about how individuals feel being within close proximity of one another while moving about the city. It has more to do with how our other daily habits, which have been reshaped as a result of the pandemic, might change the overall goals for public transit systems around the globe. What strategies might be implemented to bring ridership back to normal levels and to bring the mobility landscape back to where it once was as society continues to undergo major fundamental shifts?
Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and BOGL were selected by the municipality of Albertslund and Freja Ejendomme to re-imagine Vridsløselille, a facility that housed once a state prison, and transform the site into an attractive, green district with a distinct identity derived from its unique heritage. The scheme was chosen alongside another project by COBE to create a combined vision for the future development of the area.
The City of Los Angeles has launched a $100,000 housing design challenge for low-rise developments. The competition asks architects and landscape architects to imagine "appealing and sustainable" models of low-rise, multi-unit housing. Organized by the Mayor’s Office and Chief Design Officer Christopher Hawthorne, the initiative aims to create new paths to home-ownership and housing affordability in Los Angeles.
Wood is a material naturally associated with beauty, versatility, and comfort and is used in many different ways in architecture, from flooring to roofing. These qualities also stand out when used in window frames.
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_julkisivupiirustus._Alvar_Aalto_Museum_(1971-73)__facade._Original_drawing_Alvar_Aalto_Foundation..jpg?1604924810 "Alvar Aalto Museum (1971-73), facade. Original drawing . Image Courtesy of Alvar Aalto Foundation")
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__Viro._Sis%C3%A4perspektiivi._Tallinn_Art_Museum_(193-37)__Estonia._Interior_perspective._Original_drawing_Alvar_Aalto_Foundation..jpg?1604926715 "Tallinn Art Museum (193-37), Estonia. Interior perspective. Original drawing . Image Courtesy of Alvar Aalto Foundation")
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.jpg?1604935737 "House in the Blue Wild / Studio Carlito e Renata Pascucci. Image © Monica Antunes")
