Archinect - News

Climate Change and Public Works

2013-01-21T17:24:00-05:00

We seem to have lost the political capacity to grapple with the big picture, the long range, the global scale. To a degree we've even lost the vocabulary. In design circles it's as if the perceived failures of mid 20th-century planning — exemplified by top-down urban renewal and personified by the power-brokering Robert Moses — have induced a kind of conceptual paralysis, an inability to formulate the public sector, or public works, in terms not beholden to a discredited history.

On Places, editor Nancy Levinson argues for an intensified political agenda for designers.

As Barack Obama takes the oath of office for his second term, the longstanding tension between the pressing need for public action and the tenacious culture of privatization remains the critical dilemma of U.S. politics. Nothing underscores the need to resolve this tension — and to commit once again to the ideals of collective purpose and common good — than the accelerating crisis of climate change.

Sponge Parks, Sand Dunes May Boost Resilience to Storms

2012-11-21T15:11:00-05:00

I looked back on resilience work designed for a Museum of Modern Art exhibition two years ago, called “Rising Currents.” It now seems prophetic. Among the proposals by Susannah Drake of Dlandstudio and Stephen Cassell of Architecture Research Office was the “Sponge Slip,” which would have replaced a Lower Manhattan parking lot with a sunken park. The idea was to guide floodwaters into the park basin and away from the subway tunnels and electrical infrastructure that Sandy crippled.

Melting permafrost plagues Dawson City

2012-08-16T15:42:00-04:00

Dawson City spent more than $600,000 last year dealing with damage to roads and pipes caused by melting permafrost. A recently-published report says the shifting ground, a result of climate change, can do a lot of damage to infrastructure such as water and sewer systems.