June 2012
1 post
WE up CyCLe →
May 2012
2 posts
2 tags
AlBorde arquitectos →
“Viven al borde y trabajan con lo que tienen a su alcance, pero sin estar al margen de lo que ocurre en el mundo de la arquitectura a escala global: saben de medios de transporte y energía alternativos, de redes de comunicación y colaboración, de reciclaje, de manejo eficiente de los recursos y de sistemas de construcción ancestrales y modernos. Lo saben y lo viven. Su cultura arquitectónica...
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micro/farms
Built by Damien Chivialle in collaboration with ENSCI students, a small, working micro-farm is reminiscent of urban gardens at the dawn of industrial civilization.
Urban agriculture is being technologically liberated from an utopian vision, opening the horizons of contemporary design research at an accelerated pace. The creation of micro-farms is one of the most fascinating themes that was...
April 2012
3 posts
1 tag
parasitic architecture
Parasitic Architecture can be thought of as a flexible and sometimes temporary structure that feeds off the existing infrastructure and build form. A parasite has to work with existing infrastructures and use them to its own end but can also be considered as an architectural intervention that materializes and transforms the built form. A parasitic construction redefines and reconfigures a...
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city forward →
City Forward is a free, web-based platform that enables users – city officials, researchers, academics and interested citizens world-wide – to view and interact with city data while engaging in an ongoing public dialogue.
By using City Forward’s straightforward exploration tools, you can identify patterns, trends and correlations in the data that may reveal new insights and point to new areas of...
On Beauty, Architecture, and Crisis
“ We must recover the original unity of Justice and Beauty: to offer the beautiful is by nature just. It betters the world without leading crusades against evil and without promoting barbarous ideologies. The beautiful is generous (and therefore ethical) precisely because its beneficiary may be anyone, not only
its creator or its customer.”
—Luigi Zoja
from: Beyond Shelter | M.J. Aquilino |...
March 2012
7 posts
9 tags
What Is It About the Art Schools?
Vittorio Garatti, School of Ballet, Cuban National Art Schools. [Photo by Adrián Guerra Rey] The story of the Cuban National Art Schools (las Escuelas Nacionales de Arte, or ENA; I will use the Spanish acronym going forward) is compelling. In January of 1961 — two years after the military success of the revolution — Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, in an ostentatious act of political theater, went...
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Green Building and Climate Resilience
This report summarized the most recent research on the likely impacts of climate change at various scales: regional, neighborhood, and site or building. The findings present a range of predicted future characteristics in the categories of temperature, precipitation, coastlines, air quality, pests, and fires.
This report lists probable impacts so that design teams can set modified performance...
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Studio-X Global Network
RStudio-X is GSAPP’s global network of advanced research laboratories for exploring the future of cities. With locations in Amman, Beijing, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, it is the first truly global network for real-time exchange of projects, people, and ideas between regional leadership cities in which the best minds from Columbia University can think together with the best...
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Coin Street Community Builders
Coin Street Community Builders (CSCB) is a social enterprise that grew out of the Coin Street Action Group. Set up in 1977, the group was formed to resist the commercial development on a large 13 acre site on the South Bank in London. Much of the surrounding area had already been developed into commercial uses, with residents either choosing to move out due to a general lack of affordable...
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Japan's recovery will be a test of mind
The psychological impact of the triple disaster in 2011 is beginning to surface.
Sendai, Japan - In the past year, Mizue Yamamura has wished for nothing else but the news of her husband. The 71-year-old spends all her time in temporary accommodation in Onagawa worrying about the fate of still-missing Yoshio.
Mizue and Yoshio were in their third-floor apartment in Onagawa town on March 11,...
Calling for a Global Design Service Corps
Only a sliver of the world’s population currently benefits from well-designed spaces in which to live their best lives.
Butaro Hospital, Rwanda. (Photo by Iwan Baan)
A large-scale design service corps could provide many times the number of fellowship opportunities as these existing programs, concentrating them in targeted cities where they could benefit from peer support and cutting-edge...
February 2012
9 posts
2 tags
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Il re pallido
” Il cane odiava quella catena. Ma aveva una sua dignità. Quello che faceva era non tendere mai la catena del tutto. Non si allontanava mai nemmeno quel tanto da sentire che tirava. Nemmeno se arrivava il postino, o un rappresentante. Per dignità, il cane fingeva di aver scelto di stare entro quello spazio che guarda caso rientrava nella lunghezza della catena. Niente al di fuori di quello...
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Cities and Flooding
Urban flooding is a serious and growing development challenge. It is a global phenomenon which causes widespread devastation, economic damages and loss of human lives.
The occurrence of floods is the most frequent among all natural disasters globally. In 2010 alone, 178 million people were affected by floods. The total losses in exceptional years such as 1998 and 2010 exceeded $40 billion.
...
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Think Sharing and Free Are Good?
by Jaron Lanier
All too many of today’s Internet buzzwords— including “Web 2.0,” “Open Culture,” “Free Software” and the “Long Tail”—are terms for a new kind of collectivism that has come to dominate the way many people participate in the online world. The idea of a world where everybody has a say and nobody goes unheard is deeply appealing. But what if all of the voices that are piling on end up...
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Japan, the earthquake and the media
The worst disaster in Japan since the second world war hit the country’s north-east coastal region on 11 March 2011. The combination of tsunami and nuclear crisis presented the media with great practical problems and ethical concerns.
It is almost a year since the dreadful earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan on 11 March 2011. As the anniversary approaches, it is natural that...
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Asian megacities
Shanghai, 2010 © Peter BialobrzeskiHatje Cantz Verlag
Algunas de las imágenes publicadas en Zeit, que muestran el contraste entre el progreso y desarrollo de una ciudad cuando ha crecido de manera desmesurada, con respecto a las edificaciones y estilo de vida antes existentes.
Las imágenes no sólo dejan a la vista el profundo contraste estético, visual, tecnológico y económico del crecimiento...
4 tags
The real cost of Brazil's dam
Construction is now under way in Brazil on the world’s third-largest dam project, potentially displacing 24,000 people.
Plans for the multi-billion dollar Belo Monte dam project on the Xingu River in northern Brazil have long been controversial. Once complete, the 11,000-megawatt dam is supposed to provide a source of clean energy for Brazil’s growing needs. But critics say it will...
January 2012
7 posts
UN report: World's biggest cities merging into...
The world’s first mega-city, comprised of Hong Kong, Shenhzen and Guangzhou, home to about 120 million people. Photograph: Nasa
The world’s mega-cities are merging to form vast “mega-regions” which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people, according to a major new UN report.
The phenomenon of the so-called...
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insideOUT
INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.
These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them...
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Lift Up
Haitian Documentary LIFT UP Commemorates Two-Year Anniversary of Haitian Earthquake
Starting January 12th, to help commemorate the two-year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake, we will be having a week-long, commemorative online release during which award winning Haitian documentary film LIFT UP will be available online and for free at http://liftupmovie.com/.
For LIFT UP, January 12th...
Cómo hacer ciudad: el modelo Medellín
Las postales de Medellín se han desplazado a sectores de la ciudad que históricamente permanecieron ocultos de la imagen exportada al resto del mundo, en los polos que han dado lugar a las más radicales transformaciones. A través de un nuevo modo de hacer arquitectura orientada a la integración social en una red de espacios públicos vulnerables, se aleja del ranking de las ciudades más violentas...
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The world can't afford to keep wasting soil
One-third of Earth’s soil is degraded because of unsustainable farming methods, which could lead to a major food crisis.
Late last year, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) released a hair-raising report on the state of the world’s soil and water resources. The bottomline: 25 per cent of the world’s food-producing soils are highly degraded or are...
Simplify Your New Year's Resolution Process:...
“To tear ourselves away from the everyday, from habit, from mental laziness which hides from us the strangeness of reality, we must receive something like a real bludgeon blow,” wrote playwright Eugene Ionesco in 1959. Ionesco’s metaphor may be violent, but with good reason. Breaking from our usual habits is difficult and often painful – requiring not just willpower and stamina...
December 2011
11 posts
3 tags
1000 doors
1,000 recycled doors are enough for the South Korean architect Choi Jeong-Hwa to transform a dull ten-story building into a fresh-looking landmark. This ‘skyscraper’ in the center of the Korean capital Seoul has become a pixelated landmark, that tells the story of thousand people who once chose a fitting color for a door in their apartment.
In his work Jeong-Wha uses a lot of every-day used...
Cyclifiers →
In order to contribute to cities that use their resources efficient, 2012Architecten has been investigating processes that empower local exchange and production. When we want to transform cities into smart environments that behave like ecosystems we need program and buildings that provide an alternative to transporting our resources, products and components around the globe. These connectors...
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Amateur Building Tactics
Amateur building tactics refer to the myriad practices of self-building that occur across the world without the input of an architect. These practices are usually the result of need and the will to survive and are typically located in what are variously termed informal settlements, shanty towns, favelas, shacks, katchi abadi etc., settlements that are built on left-over and neglected pieces of...
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Stealing the future, selling it in the present,...
“We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and...
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“Like the story of life,
Is hello, goodbye”
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Peak soil: it's like peak oil, only worse →
Resource collapse is bigger than peak oil, and bigger even than the projected depletion of natural gas, coal and uranium – it encompasses each and every natural resource extracted, exploited or otherwise processed on an industrial scale.
This is not to deny peak oil, or the subsequent decline of all the other hydrocarbons that are essential to our lives and economies; the point is that even if we...
3 tags
The New Green Architecture: It's About More Than...
For the past decade, architects and developers—and even lawyers, policymakers, and product manufacturers—have lined up for the LEED(Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) credential, proudly adding it to their names and business cards. A lengthy, points-based checklist earns buildings a similar certification, complete with fancy placards boasting Platinum, Gold, or Silver certification...
“De pequeño se vive, de mayor se sobrevive”
– Leopoldo María Panero
November 2011
8 posts
3 tags
Naples to host next World Urban Forum
The city of Naples has offered to host the sixth session of the World Urban Forum. Scheduled for the first week of September 2012, the theme of the Forum will be The Urban Future
“We look forward to working with UN-HABITAT and other partners to make the next World Urban Forum even more successful than the previous ones,” he said.
UN-HABITAT Executive Director, Dr. Joan Clos thanked...
3 tags
the Make project! →
An online TOOL and social network for the consultation and interchange of sustainable technologies for development
3 tags
Arab spring →
An interactive timeline of Middle East protests
Ever since a man in Tunisia burned himself to death in December 2010 in protest at his treatment by police, pro-democracy rebellions have erupted across the Middle East. The Guadian UK interactive timeline traces key events.
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October 2011
17 posts
2 tags
