Archinect - News

Green Design Shines at Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up Awards

2013-03-12T14:49:00-04:00

How does one apply 21st century green design to a city with sites and structures dating from the 17th to 19th centuries? That was exactly the challenge for teams in the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up design competition, and on March 7, 2013, nine finalist teams presented proposals to address the need for affordable green design within Philadelphia at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

To also see the PowerPoint presentations of the three Soak It Up winners, head over to the Bustler article.

A City for Books and Architecture in South Korea

2013-01-16T11:21:00-05:00

When I first heard of Paju Bookcity, I imagined a bibliophilic paradise of human-scaled buildings with legible facades nestled side-by-side like volumes on a shelf. When I traveled to the real Paju Bookcity, I found an industrial estate created by companies related to all aspects of book manufacturing, sited north of Seoul in the marshes near the Demilitarized Zone. But if Bookcity is not the fairy tale I envisioned, it is a kind of Cinderella story: this is the industrial park remade.

On Places, Shannon Mattern explores the ongoing remaking of Bookcity — which seeks to reinvent invent Korean publishing, architecture and urban planning — in the digital era.

Peel-and-Stick Solar Panels: A World First

2013-01-09T19:31:00-05:00

Researchers at the Stanford School of Engineering have succeeded in developing the world’s first peel-and-stick thin-film solar cells. The idea will allow the cells to be applied to almost any surface, with successful tests having been conducted on paper, plastic and window glass. This opens up significant opportunities for alternative applications for solar technology, previously limited by traditional solar cells, which must be mounted on stiff, often heavy, fixed panels.

Dublin Ohio Plans 1000-acre Urban Development in the Heart of Suburbia

2012-02-04T15:26:00-05:00

The City of Dublin, Ohio is an affluent Columbus suburb typically known for it’s good schools, easy access to jobs, and low density housing and retail developments that have rapidly sprawled outward over the past forty years. Fast forward another forty years and things may look drastically different. Officials with the city’s planning department have been steadily working on the Bridge Street Corridor plan, which calls for the redevelopment of 1,000 acres located at the core of Dublin.

One of the largest suburbs of Columbus, Ohio is planning to give itself an urban face lift with a new long term redevelopment plan. In addition to increase residential density to over 5000 people per square mile, the plan calls for the eventual installation of light rail light to serve local and regional commuters.

Urban Planning in the iPhone Age

2011-11-03T20:30:57-04:00

... the next wave of mobile applications do more than that—they collect massive amounts of data about how people live, where they travel and what they want to see in their neighborhoods. And they connect all of that with the officials in position to make decisions. Apps, in other words, offer potential solutions for two of the trickiest parts of the urban planner's job: sharing data and engaging citizens.