Archinect - News

The AIA California launches the 11th annual Architecture at Zero Competition

2022-12-06T12:20:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by Architecture at Zero.

Architecture at Zero is a design competition for decarbonization, equity, and resilience, open to students and professionals worldwide. It serves to engage the fields of architecture, design, engineering, and planning in the pursuit of sustainable design.

The 2023 competition challenge is to design an agriculture center, connecting the history of California’s first Black town to its present aspiration to become a destination for sustainable agriculture and Black history. Allensworth lies in the Central Valley of California, one of the most productive agricultural regions on the planet, providing more than half of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States.

All entrants will design the Teaching & Innovation Farm Lab. Graduate students and professionals will also design housing for farm students on the site. Key aspects of this project include responding to the challenges of equity and resilience through the desi...

Here is what happened in Glasgow after the underwhelming conclusion of COP26

2021-11-15T14:38:00-05:00

The ending of this year’s COP26 conference has left many architects to ponder how effective the mostly non-representative group of negotiators were in addressing the skepticism and high expectations coming into the meeting that is meant to address what is undoubtedly the greatest moral issue of our time.

The conference concluded on Saturday with a resounding sense of discord, despite a historic pact signed by 197 countries to close the conference. Here’s a look at some of the highlights and tangible changes that came out of the two-week meeting in Glasgow.

Coal

Coal was the biggest hangup at the conference by far, with the final language of the deal constituting what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared a “death knell” for the industry. Although more than 40 countries agreed to end their own domestic production of coal, India, with help from China and Iran, singularly stalled the pact until an 11th-hour deal changed the text from “phase out” to the more ambiguous “phase dow...

At COP26, Norman Foster speaks about the primacy of cities in the fight against climate change

2021-11-04T13:58:00-04:00

Norman Foster’s commentary on urbanism is in the news cycle once again after the architect made an appearance in Glasgow as part of this week’s United Nations COP26 climate summit.

The comments roiled many in the social media universe, who pointed to Foster’s continued insistence on airport design and penchant for high-profile projects in oil economies that for many betray whatever claims the architect might make in regards to his own personal environmentalism.

Foster was participating in a question-and-answer breakfast with U.S. climate envoy John Kerry for an audience of worldwide mayors moderated by Glasgow’s own city council leader Susan Aitken.

Speaking with the former Secretary of State, Foster, who made waves recently after a terse appearance on Bloomberg Television in September in which the architect doubled down on his decision to withdraw from Architects Declare a scant 18 months after its founding, said that Covid has accelerated several already-ascendant trends such a...

Athens has hired a new 'Chief Heat Officer' to help the city combat climate change

2021-08-26T16:45:00-04:00

Europe’s summer of natural disasters has included increasingly frequent extreme weather events [...] Ms. Myrivili’s appointment is a recognition of that new reality. But it is also a foreboding sign that having someone to grapple with suffocating temperatures may be a mainstay of the municipal cityscape, as necessary and unremarkable as a transportation, sanitation or police commissioner.

Other cities like Miami have retained administrators with similar titles. Athens is leading the way in terms of a loss of residents who are in large part moving to escape the heat. The country itself is expected to lose 8 million people in the next four years. Myrivili earned a PhD from Columbia University in 2004 and served as Athens' Deputy Mayor for Urban Nature, Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation from 2017 to 2019.

A scorching mid-summer heatwave combined with wildfires has forced the closure of several important cultural sites around the city.

The New York Times has a profile of Athens' newest city administrator here.

U.S. architects join international pledge for climate action

2020-05-27T20:21:00-04:00

The Architects Declare movement has spread across the globe as over 20 countries have joined the fight to address climate change and biodiversity issues. The United States has announced its pledge to join. With 92 signatures collected from U.S.-based architecture practices like Perkins Eastman, Inaba Williams, SHAUM/SHEIH, and many more have expressed their commitment to taking action.

Although the current COVID-19 pandemic and other political and economic issues have made headlines these past few months, the architecture industry has made its mark during the crisis. With the battle to mitigate climate change still ever-present, the United States has finally joined the fight.

Initially launched in May 2019 in the U.K., Architects Declare aims to use the voices of architects to "galvanize the profession and provide a platform for advocacy and for sharing information and strategies for change." Initiated by NY-based non-profit The Architectural League, the U.S. branch of Architects ...