Archinect - News

ASLA will send two observer delegates to UN's COP27 for the first time

2022-11-03T17:51:00-04:00

A two-person delegation from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) will be present as observers of next week’s COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in an unprecedented move first announced yesterday by the organization.

Landprocess founder Kotchakorn Voraakhom and Climate Positive Design founder/CMG Landscape Architecture principal Pamela Conrad will travel to the conference in order to present the ASLA Climate Action Plan to attendees, which is set for publication on November 12th.

The plan is an extension of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Climate Action Commitment that was announced at last year’s summit. The 27th edition is taking place under a rather unique set of circumstances colored by an ongoing land war and a recent UN report that called for up to $6 trillion in annual green investments in order to combat its updated prediction indicating the world is now on track to warm between 2.1 to 2.9°C by the end of the century.

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David Adjaye and HOK are both named as TIME100 honorees

2022-03-31T13:35:00-04:00

David Adjaye has been given a TIME100 Impact Award, and HOK has made the magazine’s list of the 100 most influential companies as part of the annual designation released this week. The two are the sole representatives of the architectural industry on a pair of lists that includes multiple online retailers, tech company leaders, houses of finance, and engineering concerns.

TIME singled out HOK’s design for the new Terminal B at New York's LaGuardia Airport, saying it now constitutes “the gold standard for airport design moving forward.”

The magazine also selected Adjaye as one of its 2022 Impact Award recipients for his innovative work across multiple typologies.

Speaking at a ceremony at Dubai’s newly-opened Museum of the Future, the Ghanaian-British architect said: “You are shaped by the world around you. It’s not just enough to build [...] it’s important to imbue the future we make with the past, and to im...

Porous interventions to adapt to increasing floods in Bangkok

2018-03-05T16:12:00-05:00

Sea level rise and increased rain have posed serious flood risks for Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, which is already close to sea level. [...] She works to do this by reclaiming urban porosity through a network of public green spaces. [...] She has already been planning and working on projects beyond climate resilient housing - including rain gardens, green roofs, permeable parking, urban forests and farms - to address the root causes of increased flooding in her city.

After witnessing a dramatic economic boom and rapid urbanization—and subsequent environmental challenges—in her native Thailand, Harvard graduate, landscape architect and TED fellow Kotchakorn Voraakhom founded Porous City Network to fight the increased risk of flooding with design solutions and improve urban resilience and adaptability in Bangkok, primarily in the city's most vulnerable communities: "PCN makes the city porous by transforming underused impervious surfaces into a system of productive public green spaces, and advocating maintaining threatened landscape infrastructure like agricultural land, canals, and ditch orchards, which help mitigate excess water."