Climate Crisis: The Latest Architecture and News

While the United Nations has been continuously urging architects, engineers, and city shapers to put the 2030 agenda and the SDGs into action, and the IPCC report revealed intensifying climate change, sparking widespread discussion over insufficient action, the 83rd ongoing session of The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe - UNECE Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management taking place in San Marino, has just issued a special declaration on “how to build better, safer, more inclusive, and resilient" cities, ahead of COP27. This set of “Principles for Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Design and Architecture”, or the San Marino declaration has gathered the signatures of Norman Foster and Stefano Boeri.

It’s About Time, the 10^th edition of the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, is a seven-week-long manifestation showing realistic courses toward a livable future at a time when the consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent. Half a century ago, the consequences of climate change were predicted in The Limits of Growth report from 1972. This outlines the possible consequences of an exponential increase in population, agricultural production, and resource extraction. The report is viewed by many as the beginning of environmental awareness. The Rotterdam Architecture Biennale aims to bring these changes into perspective by looking both at the past and the possible future.

Climate change is becoming more and more real every day: all over the world, we are witnessing a clear increase in climate disasters. Moreover, the latest IPCC report warns us of possible “tipping points” from which the climate transition could become not gradual, but sudden and irrevocable.

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It is expected that by 2050, the rapid depletion of raw materials will leave the world without enough sand and steel to build concrete. On the other hand, the cost of building continues to soar, with an increase between 5% and 11% from last year. And with respect to its impact on the environment, the construction industry still accounts for 23% of air pollution, 50% of the climatic change, 40% of drinking water pollution, and 50% of landfill wastes. Evidently, the construction industry, the environment, and the human race are facing several challenges that are influenced by one another, but it is the human being who is at the greatest disadvantage.

As a response to global challenges such as climate change, discrimination, and physical vulnerability, designers and engineers from across the world have developed innovative construction materials that put the human wellbeing first in urban, architecture, and interior projects.  

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

The passage of the Biden Administration’s climate change package, the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” has predictably split along partisan lines, with Republicans characterizing the bill as an act of reckless government spending, certain to raise taxes and fuel further inflation. But does this act really represent reckless spending? The legislation authorizes $430 billion in spending, the bulk of which—more than $300 billion—is earmarked for tax credits; other spending, and initiatives aimed at stimulating the clean energy economy; and reducing carbon emissions. (The bill also allows Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies for certain expensive drugs.) The bill is funded in part by a 15% minimum tax on large corporations and an excise tax on companies that repurchase shares of their own stock. Given the scope of the problem, and the escalating future costs of climate inaction, this legislation is an exceedingly modest, but very necessary, first step.

The Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, opens The Energy Show and the Solar Biennale on Friday, September 9, 2022. In collaboration with The Solar Biennale designer and curator Matylda Krzykowski and solar designers Marjan van Aubel and Pauline van Dongen, the exhibition presents a series of projects that explores the sun's meaning and possibilities in society, the environment, and design. With Europe in the midst of an energy crisis, The Energy Show and the Solar Biennale is an opportunity for designers and the general public to examine the transition to solar energy and technology as we move towards a post-carbon future.

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Record monsoon rains, in part due to melting glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountains, have brought devastating floods that have covered over a third of the country’s surface. According to BBC and UN estimates, around 33 million Pakistani, one in seven people, have been affected by the floods, as more than 500,000 houses have been destroyed or severely damaged. Flood waters have also swept away an estimated 700,000 heads of livestock and damaged over 3.6 million acres of crops. The Sindh province is the hardest hit, receiving 464% more rain than the 30-year average.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed congestion pricing for Manhattan. The state legislature rejected the plan. Fifteen years later, we’re still debating the idea, fiddling while the planet burns.

The newest problem is that a new environmental study and traffic model from the MTA, The Central Business District Tolling Program Environmental Assessment, says that what’s good for 1.63 million residents of Manhattan and the planet, in general, will increase the pollution in the already unhealthy air in the Bronx. Yes, that’s a problem. Turning the perfect into the enemy of the good is also a problem. We need a plan that benefits all.

If you’ve been avoiding some of the latest news recently, here’s a quick update; European and North American countries have been facing one of the hottest recorded summers in modern history. Discussions over the climate crises have therefore been reignited and so has the role of the design and construction industry in providing solutions that would mitigate the experienced heat effects in our daily lives. While passive cooling solutions have always been used in some parts of the world, where local resources and vernacular builds are adapted to high temperatures, other regions are looking to technological and innovative manufacturing means that would maintain human comfort, aesthetic values, and energy efficiency/ cost. 

Although early modernism with its signature high-rises and glass houses had made us think that glass enveloped buildings are mostly uncomfortable, over-exposed, and overheating settings; nowadays glass manufacturers are proving that glass, if well treated and well-placed, can be as versatile and efficient a material as one could want without compromising the visual comfort or the dwellers. 

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Boston is the latest city to announce a city-wide plan that, if passed, would eliminate the use of fossil fuels in new constructions and major renovation projects. This measure expands upon the commitment to enact climate action and make Boston a Green New Deal city. Other US cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, and Berkeley have all imposed similar measures in recent years. Seven European cities - Bilbao, Bratislava, Dublin, Munich, Rotterdam, Vienna, and Winterthur - have also developed a project to phase out fossil fuel from urban heating and cooling.

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Department of Assets, Information and Services (AIS) has announced that by 2025, all city-owned buildings and facilities in the city will be fully operated with clean, renewable energy. At the moment, Chicago is one of the largest cities in the United States to reduce the city’s carbon footprint at such a scale, and has already began the process of transitioning its transportation busses and cars to all-electric vehicles by 2035. The agreement demonstrates the city's plans to "drive high-impact climate action, build the clean energy workforce of the future, and equitably distribute meaningful benefits to foster the local clean energy economy for all.”

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Eucalyptus forests in Australia are known to burn periodically. It is the trees' way of ensuring propagation, as its fruits – known as gumnuts – have an insulating layer breaks down with the heat of the fire. Once they open, the burnt soil is covered with seeds, initiating a process of forest renewal. Glenn Murcutt, an Australian architect, has created a body of work rooted in the country's landscape. His innovative houses embrace the possibility of frequent fires, including elements that allow for fire control with the least possible loss. In short, the houses are built with very non-flammable materials, always have huge water reservoirs, and a “flood system” that allows the building and its immediate surroundings to be spared in the case of a forest fire.

In 1969, ‘The Architects' Resistance’, a collective of students from Yale University, Columbia University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published a manifesto titled ‘Architecture: whom does it serve?’

With this manifesto, the group sought to place the practice of architecture in a broader economic, social and environmental context than the one taught in their university lecture rooms. In just two and a half pages, we find a powerful call to reclaim a more social and ecologically conscious architecture. It unambiguously denounces the role architecture played during those years as a practice in service to those in power while adding that “the architect's submission to the system begins with the belief that they possess special skills and knowledge that are inaccessible to the general public.”

The total energy demand from buildings has risen dramatically in recent years. Driven by improved access in developing countries, greater ownership of energy-consuming devices and increasing urban densities, today it accounts for over one-third of global energy consumption and nearly 15% of direct CO2 emissions. As the climate crisis aggravates and its consequences are more visible than ever, the architecture and construction industry must respond accordingly. It must take responsibility for its environmental impact and give priority to reducing energy consumption, whether through design decisions, construction techniques or innovative products. The key lies, however, in not sacrificing aesthetics and comfort in the process.