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Royal College of Art launches CLIMAVORE x Jameel partnership with Cooking Sections for unique sustainability research

2023-04-04T17:12:00-04:00

A new three-year partnership between the Royal College of Art (RCA), nonprofit Community Jameel, and the London-based former Turner Prize nominees Cooking Sections has been announced by the institution in the hopes of using architecture as a tool to advance our knowledge of agriculture-related sustainability practices in the built environment.

The school’s new CLIMAVORE x Jameel partnership will focus on two projects which “reimagine how we eat as human activity changes the climate by developing new methodologies and enhancing policies around the globe.”

The initiative is being led by Cooking Sections co-founders Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual. The RCA says they will look to leverage “architectural and artistic investigative tools, education and action to advance ecological networks beyond current understandings of sustainability, and produce new knowledge around food and climate justice.”

Both projects will offer research fellowship opportunities to postgraduate students...

New report presents staggering amount of parking in US cities

2018-07-16T15:13:00-04:00

Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it's not pretty. Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used.

A new report from Eric Scharnhorst at the Research Institute for Housing America, an arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, estimates the total parking supply in five US cities. Looking at satellite imagery and tax record data, Scharnhorst tallied on-street parking, surface parking, and garage parking in New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming. The results show staggeringly high amounts of land use dedicated to parking with low use percentages.

How good can Swedish nature make you feel in 72 hours?

2017-09-30T17:30:00-04:00

This is the question a new case-study, '72 Hour Cabin', seeks to answer. Launched by Sweden, the experiment will investigate the effects of living in nature on health by taking five participants with some of the most stressful jobs and placing them in a custom-built glass cabin.

During the day, they will have access to common Swedish outdoor activities such as swimming, fishing and cooking. Their well-being, measured by stress-levels, problem-solving capabilities and creativity, will be monitored by two leading researchers, Walter Osika and Cecilia Stenfors, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, one of the world’s foremost medical universities. Participants include a broadcaster from London, a taxi driver from Paris, an event co-ordinator from New York, a police officer from Munich, and a journalist from London.

The five glass cabins these participants will be staying in were designed by architecture student Jeanna Berger, who enlisted her brother-in-laws, who run a construc...