Archinect - News

With more severe weather events on the horizon, it's time to elevate our homes

2017-12-19T13:52:00-05:00

We can build homes to sit above flood waters so people can ride out the Harveys of the future, but it won’t be easy or cheap. [...] More than a million people live in the 100- and 500-year flood zones across the Houston area, and hundreds of thousands more do in other U.S. cities, including Miami and New York. Harris County’s move conforms with the advice of building engineers, climate experts, and the insurance industry.

How a 1980s flood regulation protected many newer homes in Houston during Hurricane Harvey

2017-11-08T14:13:00-05:00

No other major metropolitan area in the U.S. has grown faster than Houston over the last decade, with a significant portion of new construction occurring in areas that the federal government considers prone to flooding. But much of that new real estate in those zones did just fine, a Times analysis has found.

The City of Houston, notorious for its relative lack of zoning codes, did in fact take future flooding into account and mandated that new homes were to be built at least 12 inches above flood levels predicted by the federal government. "The 1985 regulation and others that followed," the LA Times writes, "proved widely effective in their biggest test to date — the record-setting rains of Harvey."

Faculty and students at Texas A&M University are helping after Hurricane Harvey

2017-09-26T14:05:00-04:00

As tens of thousands of Texans undergo a long, difficult recovery from Hurricane Harvey, research findings, and studio and service projects by faculty and students at Texas A&M University are helping individuals and communities learn how to emerge from the damage and how to mitigate the effects of future disasters.

The Texas A&M University is home to the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, studying prevention, response and recovery from natural disasters. Student efforts include gathering post-Harvey water samples and studying their quality, serving meals to the community and building models of rainfall data. Read more about the university news and response to Harvey here.

Student samples post-Harvey water. Image from Arch One.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma weaken US homebuilding

2017-09-19T14:19:00-04:00

Homebuilding could slump further in September in the aftermath of Harvey and Hurricane Irma, which struck Florida. According to Census Bureau data, the areas in Texas and Florida that were devastated by the storms accounted for about 13 percent of permits issued in the nation last year.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have held down home completions in Texas and Florida, but the hurricane's aftermaths are also likely to slow homebuilding in the coming months as resources are redirected toward repairs and rebuilding efforts rather than new construction. Labor shortages are also likely to worsen and building materials are expected to become more expensive.

The AIA urges lawmakers to reject rollbacks and issues seven infrastructure principles

2017-09-13T19:54:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects released a statement this morning, in light of damage wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, urging policy makers to reject any weakening of building codes. President Thomas Vonier advocated for state and federal legislators to reject attempts to roll back protections pointing out that "designing buildings to minimize damage from such natural disasters as hurricanes matters not only for public health, safety, and welfare; it also makes complete economic sense."

The AIA went on to remind that, like bridges and highways, America's buildings are infrastructure too, and as such, are crumbling. "Unless we include buildings in the discussion about our nation’s infrastructure renewal" the statement warned, "taxpayers will be stuck with decrepit community places, higher bills when repairs come due and structures vulnerable to disasters and threats."

Along with the above cautions, the AIA also released the following principles on infrastructure

Infrastruc...

Post-Harvey Houston reopens its museums

2017-09-06T14:22:00-04:00

As aid workers and Texans begin to take stock of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Harvey, museums across Houston, the fourth biggest city in the country and one of the areas hardest hit by the storm, are starting to reopen. Gary Tinterow, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), announced Friday that the institution would partially reopen on Tuesday 5 September with free admission through Thursday, 7 September. He offered the museum “as a place for reflection and renewal.”

While a leisurely visit to the museum may not be on the minds right now of Houston residents hit the hardest by Hurricane Harvey, reopening its cultural institutions is an important first step for the city to start the long process of recovery and breathe new life into the civic spirit.

How Houston's absence of zoning code might have contributed to Harvey's devastating consequences

2017-08-30T18:11:00-04:00

Houston calls itself “the city with no limits” to convey the promise of boundless opportunity. But it also is the largest U.S. city to have no zoning laws, part of a hands-off approach to urban planning that may have contributed to catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey and left thousands of residents in harm’s way.

Hurricane Harvey is drawing renewed scrutiny to Houston's 'Wild West' approach to planning and its unusual system for managing floodwater that, according to environmentalists, greatly diminishes land's natural ability to absorb water.

While local officials have defended the city's take on development claiming that the record-shattering rainfall on Houston and its surrounding area this week would have wreaked havoc even if stricter building limits were implemented, it's hard to argue that the damage could have been significantly reduced with more stringent building codes. According to the Washington Post, in the past, proposals for large-scale flood-control projects envisioned in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008 stalled. City residents have voted three times not to enact a zoning code, most recently in 1993.

Instead of imposing restrictions on what property owners can do with their land, Houston has attempted to engineer a solution to drainage—a network of reservoirs, bayous and, a...

Will there be enough construction workers to rebuild post-flood Houston?

2017-08-29T12:44:00-04:00

Rain continues to fall in Houston, Texas, a city which may see up to 50 inches of precipitation over a span of five days thanks to the aftereffects of Hurricane Harvey. Unfortunately, the continued flooding has been exacerbated due to some decades-long, head-in-the-sand urban planning, the history of which is detailed in this comprehensive ProPublica piece. (Spoiler: it turns out paving over natural flood zones with asphalt and concrete, as well as replacing the comprehensive root systems of switchgrass with the comparatively shallow root systems of suburban lawns, gives water few places to go.)

Houston, 2017. Image: @ohcami_ via Twitter

As devastating as current conditions must be to homeowners who built in the surprisingly quick to deliver "500-Year Flood Plain," Houston's drier future isn't looking great, either. Thanks to the Trump Administration's widespread anti-immigration policy, there's likely to be a significant shortage of construction workers to rebuild the U.S.' fourth ...

Trump revoked Obama's executive order on higher standards for flood protection two weeks before Hurricane Harvey

2017-08-28T14:10:00-04:00

Hurricane Harvey has been battering the Gulf Coast for days bringing in record floodwaters devastating much of southeast Texas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has estimated that 30,000 people are in need of emergency shelter and more than 450,000 will need the help of federal aid for recovery after the devastation. The catastrophic flooding, which officials are calling the worst in the state's history, has already lead to at least five deaths and dozens of injuries.

Two weeks before the storm, President Trump revoked an executive order signed by former president Barack Obama in 2015 that aimed to make infrastructure more resilient to the effects of climate change. The Obama-era regulation meant that roads, building and other infrastructure projects needed to be built to withstand the effects of climate change such as stronger downpours, rising sea levels, and flooding. However, as part of Trump's executive order signed several weeks ago, he rolled back the Federal Flood Ri...