Suburbia Reborn

And the results are in: "Build a Better Suburb"
read more about it here

Pushing Green in the Heartland

There were some really important points that came up in the recent article in the New York Times by Leslie Kaufman. The tools and techniques that we use to adjust peoples perceptions and behaviors of the environment and the impact our built environment can have on it are not "one fits all."

Coming from this part of the world myself, one can only image that using Al Gore, Climate Change Science and environmentalism isn't a way to get people to listen... instead

"Ms. Jackson settled on a three-pronged strategy. Invoking the notion of thrift, she set out to persuade towns to compete with one another to become more energy-efficient. She worked with civic leaders to embrace green jobs as a way of shoring up or rescuing their communities. And she spoke with local ministers about “creation care,” the obligation of Christians to act as stewards of the world that God gave them, even creating a sermon bank with talking points they could download."

...brilliant

read whole article here

Smart Mobility

Transportation for America has recently posted some interesting case studies on transportation. What is of interest is their look at excess capacity and the rubric they use in exploring it: increased efficiency, travel options, better information, pricing and payments and trip reduction. How can we learn from their industry and apply these tools for other industries/infrastructures in need of rethinking, redesign...?

Tektonomastics

Tektonomastics:  “tekto-” — Greek for “building” — with “onomastics” — the study of the history and origin of proper names.

Great project in New York that is identifying residential buildings bringing to light a forgotten landscape, a new digital historical record and simply as a means of getting to know your hood.

Urban Omnibus article link

Aquaponics

Fish Farms with a Side of Greens
I have always had an eye on this industry in terms of its ability to work in a closed loop...where waste becomes food and vice-versa. The "cradle to cradle" for the food industry?

" Aquaponics — a combination of aquaculture, or fish cultivation, and hydroponics, or water-based planting — utilizes a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. Fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, which in turn filter the water in which the fish live. Cuttings from plant are composted to create food for worms, which provide food for the fish, completing the cycle."

Masdar: Progress report

Great progress report from "Critic's Notebook" on the opening of Masdar...the first buildings.

Ouroussoff states:
"...What Masdar really represents, in fact, is the crystallization of another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance...

...This has involved not only the proliferation of suburban gated communities, but also the transformation of city centers in places like Paris and New York into playgrounds for tourists and the rich. Masdar is the culmination of this trend: a self-sufficient society, lifted on a pedestal and outside the reach of most of the world’s citizens."

Well said...

City Grid as Canvas

"...Over the last four years hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who have walked by or on top of the orange lines have unwittingly passed what is possibly the biggest graffiti tag in the world. The tag, which is so vast that all parts of it cannot be viewed simultaneously, was created in 2006 by an artist known as Momo and consists of a paint line that he said runs about eight miles long and spells out his name.
It runs from the East River to the Hudson River and extends north to 14th Street and south to Grand Street. The line runs over curbstones and subway grates and zigzags around lampposts and manhole covers. Its route begins at the edge of a West Side pier and ends after crossing a footbridge over the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive..."

Wheeels

Interview with Wheeels creaters, David Mahfouda and Alex Pasternack.

"Transit, and the hard infrastructure that undergirds it, is a system that could obviously benefit from greater efficiency and less waste. But it was the less tangible infrastructure of the Internet that led to her eureka moment, ten years ago: “This is what the Internet was made for, sharing a scare resource among many people.”...

Small Scale, Big Change

New Show opening at the MOMA...NYC
"...This exhibition presents eleven architectural projects on five continents that respond to localized needs in underserved communities. These innovative designs signal a renewed sense of commitment, shared by many of today’s practitioners, to the social responsibilities of architecture...."

James Corner Interview

Interview by Jill Fehrenbacher at Habitat.com with James Corner on the topic of the High Line in NYC.

Icons and Development

This recent article highlights the latest debate of historical preservation vs. development.
Its a matter of icon, history, memory and perhaps ego. How long to be hold onto images? Who has the right to fight for them, and what this the reason we move forward, change, alter and adapt? In this case, the all mighty recession is given the reason to build, leaving the Empire State Building in the shadow. But what is reassuring about this recent development plan is the possibility that New York City isn't dead yet. Not dead as in debt, no jobs or a defunct rail system. But dead in the sense of soul. What are the global cities of today? Dubai, Doha, Shanghai. And what is it about them that sparks the excitement of city, of living and of a future tomorrow. Wasn't New York City THE one city that brought all those terms to mind? When the city was at its explosive youth, it set the standards for codes, setbacks...It redefined an urbanity, it created an synergy and it imagined a future. Now, bogged down in its own history, stagnate from its own memory, its own inhabitants are themselves holding back its greatest potential - that to evolve.

Sure, this is just one building, but numerous other projects in the city can attest to the old age amnesia the city and its inhabitants have taken on...while the young, restless and future-seeking global cities leave it in the dust.

From Pyramids to Suburbs...

And the cities just keep coming... Cairo is next and is in need, no doubt. This NY Times article sums up the progress of serveral new cities being built on the edges of civilization...


"Greater Cairo needs 2 million new housing units within the next 10 years..."

"A few miles farther out in the desert is the extreme side of replacement Cairo: an exclusive golf course community called Allegria, already half built, and the planned luxury development of Westown, flanking the main highway from Cairo to Alexandria. Developers are building a replica of downtown Beirut, which will serve as an urban hub for all the gated communities and other developments proliferating in the desert."

St Louis Arch Riverfront Design Comp

The City + The Arch + The River
St. Louis and the International Design Competition to rethink the arch national park, the waterfront and the city.

"Higher" Transportation

Some interesting developments in the land of hyper urbanization...China. This new elevated bus system promises to decrease the increasing traffic congestion while decreasing the pollution load on the ever increasing cities of China. To be tested out in Beijing, the opportunities to see our street scapes as layers in the cities for multiple programming could yet be seen.

Designing beyond idealism

Sometimes the amount of need for the urban and architectural condition is overwhelming...and the idealism and Utopian visions are numerous. I like this article from Core77 that invites us as designers to remain effective.

“Faced with a potentially inevitable catastrophic set of circumstances, the designers embodied principles of pragmatism over idealism in the artefacts they created, all the while working within a realization that some problems cannot be solved. This might be hard for us to come to terms with as designers, but Protect and Survive demonstrates that it's certainly a useful space for us to explore. When faced with an unsolvable problem, how can we still be effective?...”

“…By being honest in our design work about the imperfections of the worlds both outside and inside us, we might craft more products and services that speak to who we are in a straightforward way…”

“…I hope that with these few examples, I've begun to hint at how a design process that doesn't necessarily default to an optimistic view of our behaviour or our future can form a valuable and productive mode of enquiry, and lead to equally impactful outcomes. By being honest in our design work about the imperfections of the worlds both outside and inside us, we might craft more products and services that speak to who we are in a straightforward way, and, in doing so, offer more meaningful, true support for the way that we really live our lives—and maybe lead us to less artifical utopias…”