Archinect - News

The case for a semi-permeable architecture

2018-01-29T20:18:00-05:00

Our current built environment squanders too much fresh water and other vital resources, and tips too many poisonous substances into our surroundings. To develop a more sustainable relationship with the natural world, we need to allow chemical exchanges that take place within our living spaces, and between the inside and the outside. We need to embrace permeability.

Professor of experimental architecture, Rachel Armstrong, endorses a renewed symbiotic relationship between the built and the natural worlds and explains the benefits of permeability with the help of recent technological developments in the field of biodesign, such as mycotecture, algaetecture, bioplastics, and a variety of bioreactors.

bracket [goes soft]: Dredge Locked

2012-04-19T13:10:00-04:00

In anticipation of today's event, Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT], we are showcasing a piece from the book each day this week. We hope to see you tonight!

Dredge Locked
by Alex Yuen

Unnoticed by many, Houston’s shipping channel, like many such commercial waterways around the globe, is subjected to a continual process of dredging, in order to maintain a certain breadth and depth to accommodate the vessels that enter and leave Houston every day. This material, however, is seldom regarded as anything but waste and is deposited and contained, either within the channel or on shore, taking up space and spreading the harmful bi-products of the petrochemical facilities in the area. Up to this point, such actions have rarely been scrutinized and this system of isolating and hiding the contaminated material, even at such a massive scale, continues. Yet as the world and Houston move into a new era of awareness and accountability, major possibilities are lost by simply sweeping ...

bracket [goes soft]: GROUNDING: Landslide Mitigation Housing

2012-04-18T13:41:00-04:00

In anticipation of this week's event, Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT], we are showcasing a piece from the book each day this week. We hope to see you this Thursday!

GROUNDING: Landslide Mitigation Housing
Jared Winchester / Viktor Ramos

“Landslides and other ‘ground failures’ cost more lives and money each year than all other natural disasters combined, and their incidence appears to be rising. Nevertheless, the government devotes few resources to their study — and the foolhardy continue to build and live in places likely to be consumed one day by avalanches of mud.”
- Brenda Bell, The Atlantic Monthly, (Jan. 1999)

Precarious relationships between human occupation and geophysical metamorphism are a common occurrence along coastal California and Los Angeles County in particular. The architecture of this region is a perpetual game of chance between tranquil domesticity and the danger of its tragic upheaval. To mitigate future catastrophic events, salvage currently unbu...

bracket [goes soft]: ESP // Estuary Services Pipeline

2012-04-17T16:49:00-04:00

In anticipation of this week's event, Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT], we are showcasing a piece from the book each day this week. We hope to see you this Thursday!

ESP // Estuary Services Pipeline
by Bionic / Marcel Wilson

The Estuary Services Pipeline is a regional utility infrastructure designed to cope, adapt, respond, and leverage the changes presented by sea level rise in the 170 miles of coastline in the San Francisco Bay estuary. This century sea levels are projected to rise as much as 55” due to global climate change. This epic disaster will unfold slowly and threatens our most productive economies, infrastructures, cultures, and coastal ecologies. The sheer magnitude of the issue promises uncoordinated efforts among governments, agencies, and the private sector. Response is likely to be slow, late, and resource intensive. The pipeline is a coordinated large-scale force for the San Francisco Bay Metropolitan Area that leverages all available resources to engage...

bracket [goes soft]: Buoyant Light

2012-04-16T18:24:00-04:00

In anticipation of this week's event, Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT], we will be showcasing a piece from the book each day this week. We hope to see you this Thursday!

Buoyant Light
by Claire Lubell and Virginia Fernandez

The Canadian Arctic is a vast landscape, dotted with remote communities whose lives depend on natural cycles for subsistence. While imagining widespread distribution, Buoyant Light is sited in Igloolik, an Inuit community of 1600 at 70 degrees North with active creative and research programs. Like much of the Arctic, Igloolik is witness to acute changes in permafrost, sea levels and ice. As an island, it is particularly vulnerable to unreliable freeze-thaw cycles of the sea which directly affects safe hunting and traveling.

Image: View of Igloolik at night, illuminated on land and water by a distributed series of buoyant lights.

Buoyant Light consists of a balloon and a buoy which serve a dual function: to harvest solar energy, providing Iglooli...