Archinect - Features

The Paris Model: Adapting and Creating Public Space as Cities Get Hotter

2019-10-03T05:00:00-04:00

This July, Paris recorded an all-time high temperature of 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.7 Fahrenheit).

The Parisian authorities quickly introduced measures to cool people down, including an app to point people towards 922 “Urban Islands of Coolness.” The measures included the installation of misting machines, water fountains, late night opening of parks and pools and the mapping of cultural spaces. Through absolute necessity, a whole new network of public spaces has been created, adapted or highlighted in the city via new technologies in reaction to soaring temperatures.

Let's explore some of those approaches.

Environmentalism Matters for Architects — With or Without the Paris Agreement

2017-06-02T13:00:00-04:00

Yesterday, amidst the roses, magnolias, crabapples and Littleleaf lindens that populate the White House Rose Garden, the President announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the landmark international climate agreement made last year and signed by every country in the world except Syria and Nicaragua.*

At home in a changing climate: strategies for adapting to sea level rise

2016-08-03T10:09:00-04:00

For most of us, ‘home’ conjures a sense of safety and security. But a home is a fragile thing: vulnerable to quaking ground, rushing water, violent winds—not to mention, the volatility of finances and health. This has never been more true than in the time of climate change. The global thermostat of the home in which we build our homes is on the fritz.

Ways of Seeing in the Anthropocene: Review of "The Geological Imagination" and "The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform"

2015-12-03T16:51:00-05:00

Jim Inhofe, the senior Senator from Oklahoma, resumed chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in early 2015, following an eight year hiatus. Shortly after, he stood on the Senate floor holding a snowball sealed in a plastic bag. "In case we have forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record,” Inhofe began, taking the snowball out of the bag and chucking it across the room. “You know what this is?”

Architecture of the Anthropocene, Pt. 3: Getting Lost in the Ozone

2015-05-07T12:08:00-04:00

This is the third installment of the recurring feature Architecture of the Anthropocene, which explores the implications of the Anthropocene thesis for architecture. The Anthropocene is a contested name for "the era of geological time during which human activity is considered to be the dominant influence on the environment, climate, and ecology of the earth."

Prior installments can be found here.

Between Sampling and Dowsing: Field Notes from GRNASFCK

2015-04-30T13:10:00-04:00

In case the name didn’t tip you off, let it be said that GRNASFCK is not your average landscape architecture studio. Whether producing disjointed travelogues in Celebration, Florida or organizing rallies for extremophile bacteria in San Francisco, GRNASFCK operates almost like an industrial dredge, unsettling easy or comfortable ideas about the relationship between architecture and ecology, and covering impressive conceptual (and geographic) ground.

Architecture of the Anthropocene, Part 1

2014-09-29T11:12:00-04:00

“Hurricane Kyle is tracking way off shore, but still Miami South Beach is underwater,” reports Sam Champion of the Weather Channel beneath a shifting, computer-generated dome. On the ground, storm tracker Jim Cantore, with the aid of a hovering drone, analyzes the surging tides that have inundated the coastal town despite the distance of the hurricane. In Chicago, a deadly heat wave forces the Cubs to play their games at night and in 90 degree weather. Meteorologist Stephanie Abrams documents cities endangered by the megadrought in the Southwest. “And it’s only going to get worse.”

Architectures of the Disaster

2014-07-30T17:55:00-04:00

45.2 million people are currently displaced by conflict and persecution, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The number accords with the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees articulation of a refugee as: an individual who has fled their country “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” But, as their website admits, in the 63 years since the convention, the dynamics of displacement have radically changed. This definition of a refugee does not account for the millions of people currently displaced by natural disasters, droughts, desertification, sea level rise, population growth, or resource scarcity. Of course such ecological crises are also intricately enmeshed in sociopolitical conflicts, complicating attempts to redefine the refugee or to classify a new category of “climate refugees” or “environmental migrants.”

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