Landscape of Energy

Landscapes of Energy 

Edited by Rania Ghosn.

Energy infrastructures deploy space at a large scale, yet they remain invisible because the creation of value in the oil regime has long externalized spatial costs, sliding them out of sight and away from design's agency. Contemporary environmental, political, and financial crises have brought energy once again to the forefront of design concerns. Rarely, however, do practices of sustainable design-efficient building skins, islands of self-sufficiency, positive-energy machines-address the spatiality of energy systems. Instead, they tend to emphasize a renewable/nonrenewable binary that associates environmental costs exclusively with the infrastructure of oil and overlooks the geographic imperative of all forms of energy.

Volume 2 of New Geographies proposes to historicize and materialize the relations of energy and space, and map some of the physical, social, and representational geographies of oil, in particular. By making visible this infrastructure, Landscapes of Energy is an invitation to articulate design's environmental agency and its appropriate scales of intervention.

City of Apps

This is a repost from the New York Times Bits Blog
"New York City Names Winners of Apps Contest" by Jenna Wortham

So interesting to see cities taking on the private sector to create transparency, efficiency and localized, dispersed networks. The future of city building...

Emergency Aid

photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

And so come the reports of the aftermath of the Earthquake that hit the capital city of Haiti. It was of no surprise that much aid was needed, that money was being asked for and that organization was to say the least, unorganized. Its the nature of events such as these, that we can imagine, yet still feel unprepared in its real aftermath. From the Tsunami to Katrina, we just never have enough in preparation for such events.

And why does it come to this? It could be easy to say that these communities are already under pressure and the slightest imbalance can cause deeper unrest. But if we get to the heart of the issue, are the cities, the built environment, the dwellings and infrastructure ill prepared for resiliency in such events? Can we plan for unplanned events?

Our cities are not built sustainably. Density, materials and technologies are not capable to respond to big events that mother nature can unleash. But what has been reported are the numbers of "unorganized" decisions coming out of the events that are worth noting. I will also list other organizations and types of thinking that help to plan the un-planable.

Housing:
Transitional Structures
architecture for humanity

Organizational:
Wise Earth Network

additional links:
A Plan to Spur Growth Away From Haiti’s Capital