Archinect - News

Buro Happold and Dialog unveil new urban thermal comfort study for Toronto

2024-01-22T18:45:00-05:00

The City of Toronto recently completed a groundbreaking study of its ‘thermal comfort’ done by Buro Happold and Dialog. The work will provide valuable lessons to urban planners, developers, and other stakeholders as the country’s largest metropolitan area prepares a strategy to suitably mitigate the growing number of extreme heat days it faces in a given year.

The study will go a long way in informing Toronto’s response to heat and climate, leading eventually to the creation and implementation of new comfort guidelines included as part of a broader Heat Relief Strategy that was debuted two years ago. Toronto's City Planning Division contracted Buro Happold and Dialog to lead the study based on the former’s extensive experience with similar plans for large metro areas such as New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis.

“These are significant new kinds of guidance that city leaders everywhere need to help protect their citizens and support public health in an era of rapid climate change,...

Next Up: Exhibit Columbus / Ecosistema Urbano

2021-07-30T12:33:00-04:00

Archinect Sessions Next Up: Exhibit Columbus continues with sharing conversations with the recipients of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize. Today's episode is a conversation with Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo of Ecosistema Urbano.

Ecosistema Urbano is a design and consulting company operating within the fields of urbanism, architecture, engineering, and sociology, with offices in Madrid and Miami. Their work often addresses climate head-on, while incorporating strategies of working with micro-climates to educate communities through public spaces. This focus was applied to Cloudroom, their contribution to this year's Exhibit Columbus. Cloudroom consists of an inflatable "cloud," floating over a wooden structure, acting as a space for education, play, and interaction for middle school students.

Listen to “Next Up: Exhibit Columbus / Ecosistema Urbano”.

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Think you live in a nice county? Find out where it stands on the nationwide Natural Amenities Index.

2015-08-20T12:01:00-04:00

Ventura County, Calif., is the absolute most desirable place to live in America. I know this because in the late 1990s the federal government devised a measure of the best and worst places to live in America, from the standpoint of scenery and climate. The "natural amenities index" is intended as "a measure of the physical characteristics of a county area that enhance the location as a place to live."

Wanna find out how well or how poorly your home county scored? Head over to the Washington Post article and hover your mouse over the interactive map. (Residents of the Great Lakes Region - prepare yourselves for disappointment.)

The Edmonton Freezeway may soon become a reality

2015-02-26T19:37:00-05:00

If all goes accordingly, Canada might get another ice-skating trail known as The Freezeway to turn Edmonton -- a city that can get average below-freezing winter temperatures up to five months in a year -- into a hot destination. Or more like a winter wonderland. Proposed by Edmonton-born graduate student Matthew Gibbs, the 11 km Freezeway is a climate adaptive trail that would enable users to skate to different parts of the city.

Gibbs got inspiration for the skating trail when former city councilor Tooker Gomberg suggested, perhaps lightheartedly, back in the 1990s that the city "crack the fire hydrants open in the winter and flood the streets so people can skate to work."

In the summer months, the Freezeway would become a greenway for bikes and walking. According to Gibbs, the trail would promote a more active winter lifestyle, winter programming and social activities, and an alternative method of sustainable transportation.

Since the Freezeway was one of three winners in the annual ...

Icy Storms and Freezing Temps Pummel the Eastern US

2015-02-18T15:01:00-05:00

The aftermath of a deadly winter storm paralyzed much of the eastern United States on Tuesday and forecasters warned of the worst cold in two decades from another arctic front this week.

From New England to the Carolinas and into the Midwest, winter has definitively come for much of the United States and forecasters are warning that the worst cold in two decades could be on the horizon:

The National Weather Service reported temperatures in the negative 30's in Saranac Lake, New York.
States of emergency were declared from Mississippi to Washington, DC, where the federal government shut down after getting hit with about 5 inches of snow.

According to NBC, Boston received more than 13 inches of snow, raising its total snowfall for this winter to 95.7 inches, a foot away from the all-time record. The city has spent more than $30 million on snow removal already this year, according to CNN. According to local news stations there, the MBTA (Metro Boston Transit Authority) is paying students, union workers, and anyone looking to make some cash $30 an hour to shovel snow. Prison inmates have also been enlisted to help remove snow, possibly for as little as 20¢ an hour (the med...

Harvard GSD to host talk on "Habitation in Extreme Environments: Alpine Shelter" exhibition this Friday

2015-02-11T18:58:00-05:00

Curated by Spela Videcnik, Rok Oman, and John T. Dunlop (Design Critic in Housing and Urban Development), the "Habitation in Extreme Environments: Alpine Shelter" exhibition currently at the Harvard GSD presents a prototypical alpine shelter that students designed in an option studio this past fall. A public lecture and discussion by Spela Videcnik will formally introduce the topic this Friday, February 13 at Gund Hall. The exhibition and lecture are free and open to the public.

Guided by instructors Spela Videcnik and Rok Oman of Ljubljana-based OFIS arhitekti, the studio focused on investigating architectural solutions and responses to extreme climatic conditions, specifically referring to the ongoing heavy wintry conditions that ravage the North region of the U.S. The students researched traditional European alpine settlements in an effort to find new architectural solutions fit for a North American context.

The prototype shelter that will be presented at this Friday's lecture prov...

Relocation or Adaptation: Preparing for Global Warming

2014-06-19T13:11:00-04:00

"...just as planning for response to an industrial accident doesn’t make an industrial accident more likely, so too planning for relocations should not make them more likely... It is .... likely that the slow-onset effects of climate change will lead many to voluntarily migrate in anticipation that conditions will worsen. Those who are left behind – and who will need government assistance to relocate – thus may be particularly vulnerable."

The pressure to start preparing for inevitable relocations due to global warming and the resultant rise in sea levels is growing for many communities around the world. For some, the time for preparation is already running out and the time for action is now. In the United States, the first "climate refugees" are in the largely-native communities along Alaska's coastline. Many of the small island nations of Oceania are beginning to ask their neighbors for asylum preemptively. This will certainly present one of the most challenging realities facing architects in the future as the global refugee population begins to increase. An important strategy will be to learn from existing "refugee cities" such as Zaatari in Lebanon, currently the country's fourth largest city. Populated by people fleeing the violence in neighboring Syria, a current water shortage crisis proves that, today, nearly every situation is in some ways affected by environmental conditions.

For places without as drastic a d...

COLDSCAPES 2013 winning-design exhibition currently in Cleveland, Ohio

2013-11-19T15:26:00-05:00

From the COLDSCAPES design competition earlier this year, an exhibition of the winning designs is currently on display hosted by the Kent State University Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative — a timely event as the weather grows colder in the U.S. Last Friday's exhibition opening also celebrated the book launch of "COLDSCAPES: Design Ideas for Winter Cities", the sixth volume in CUDC’s Urban Infill Book Series.

The COLDSCAPES exhibition will be open for one month at Star Plaza in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ghost Town Climatology

2012-04-11T12:46:21-04:00

Fred Chambers, an Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, is studying what he calls "ghost town climatology," or the declining temperature of a region as it is abandoned by human activity. He describes it as "a reverse urban heat island effect."