Archinect - News

Cities depend on water. Here's the best solutions for urban designers to ensure their security

2024-06-17T19:51:00-04:00

More cities will likely face these kinds of shortages as climate change, deforestation and ecosystems degradation increasingly threaten the natural systems that maintain water supplies. But nature offers solutions, too. By protecting, restoring and sustainably managing forests within their watersheds, cities can improve water quality and quantity in a cost-effective way. And they can make water sources more resilient to a changing climate.

The most recent ASLA survey of U.S.-based landscape architects confirmed the industry’s positive response to this critical demand, including that a total of 42% of respondents have said they are pursuing climate projects worth more than $1 million and another 29% saying the value of this work was over $10 million.

Mexico's recent presidential election is another barometer, as the environmental engineer and former CDMX mayor Claudia Sheinbaum’s ability to tackle the looming water crisis there proved a decisive factor in her historic victory. (A catastrophic 'Day Zero', however, still looms right around the corner.)

Heatherwick Studio previews first South American project in Bogotá, Colombia

2024-03-21T16:45:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has made public details of a new project in Bogotá, Colombia, for a client in the higher education industry. The studio’s first South American design will be realized as a seven-story academic building and makerspace with a uniquely colorful facade composed of setbacks, free columns, planting, and small circular outdoor terraces.

The client is Bogotá’s Universidad Ean Design School, a 56-year-old private institution founded to provide "comprehensive training of people and stimulate their entrepreneurial aptitude so that its action contributes to the economic and social development of people."

Image: Heatherwick Studio/NOD

Traditional Werregue basket-making practices serve as the inspirations for the design, tipping off Heatherwick’s war on blandness and desire to elevate craft into a primary role in his building practice.

This homage to Colombia's Wounaan Indigenous community will serve as the new centerpiece of the campus, complementing the architecture of the su...

Cities are finding newer and more creative ways to incorporate electric vehicles into their transit schemes

2021-10-04T14:20:00-04:00

But where cities are succeeding, they’re finding that electrifying public transit can solve more than just climate problems. It can clean the air, reduce traffic jams and, ideally, make getting around town easier for ordinary people, which is why some politicians have staked their reputations on revamping transit. In many cases, city governments have been able to take climate action faster than their national governments.

The effort to reduce car traffic mirrors those taking shape in U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco. The cost of doing so has in a way become its own problem, as the infrastructure required to support expansive EV fleets in large metropolitan areas has proven to be a challenge for many of the places that have mandates for electrification coming due in the next two decades. The widespread adaptation of electric vehicles and trams could reduce emissions by 37 million metric tons a year in American cities alone.

Studio Cadena hits all the right angles with Masa, a new restaurant in Colombia

2018-11-30T09:45:00-05:00

In Bogotá a new restaurant stands in a northern residential neighborhood in Colombia. Studio Cadena, known for their playful and stylistic approach, creates a 7,500 square foot restaurant built with interconnected volumes each with a particular function. Built at residential scale, the restaurant is the second project the studio has done for Masa. Built on the same site as a former house that had gone through several rebuilds, Masa's Bogotá restaurant is the studio's largest built space.

Masa Restaurant in Bogotá, Colombia Image © Naho Kubota

Image © Benjamin Cadena

According to Benjamin Cadena, the studio's founder and principal, “The idea is that everything is connected, but the spaces remain fragmented for intimacy. In any space in the restaurant you might hear or smell things that give a sense of the adjacent spaces, but it isn’t completely open. The design defines distinct spatial volumes yet allows you to move through them with the freedom of an open plan.” Split into three area...

Bogota from the Roofs, Streets and Sky by Camilo Mønón Navas

2018-01-26T13:56:00-05:00

To me, everything looks fascinating from the air. But, for some reason, I never expected Bogotá, Colombia, to look so striking.

Colombian artist, Camilo Mønón Navas has produced a series of images titled, Arial Façades, in which Camilo takes various perspectival photographs and assembles them whimsical and fantastical means while bringing his home city of Bogota to the surface through all its cultural glory.

In Camilo's words. "Those buildings, spaces, or architectural complexes that are part of our city and that show us through a drone the incredible details that our city hides from the air...by exploring from the terrace of my apartment–a 10-story building–the structures of the cities from the zenith views.”

William McDonough + Partners unveil their first Latin American Cradle to Cradle-designed building in Bogota

2017-09-07T17:39:00-04:00

The architecture firm of William McDonough, who co-developed the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy, unveiled the scheme for a new 20,000 square-meter academic building at the Universidad EAN in Bogota. The project marks the firm's first signature building in Latin America. They also hope the new building will be a catalyst for integrating more Cradle to Cradle Certified products in Colombia's building industry.

The building's main feature will be a colorful, perforated sun shade, which will be constructed using McDonough's WonderFrame™ technology. The panels will block glare while provide views, and energy, water, and resource use will be optimized. For natural ventilation, solar chimneys will draw air through the building and exhaust it at the roof.

Featuring 10 floors above ground, the scheme comprises science labs, classrooms, administrative offices, seminar rooms, as well a...

Designing and understanding the "Happy City"

2013-12-09T20:24:00-05:00

"For years, urban designers and architects have claimed happiness as their goal," Montgomery says. "And yet none of the claims have been supported by empirical evidence. Which isn't to say they're not right. It's just to say that we don't know. That we haven't known." In this spirit of empirical discovery, Montgomery takes readers around the world in search of the places where urban design has (and has not) improved quality-of-life.

Human behavior can be extremely difficult to quantify, and determining its exact context even harder. But some cities just seem happier than others, no matter how difficult that status is to qualify. In his book, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, Charles Montgomery tries to create an empirical basis for that causal link between happiness and urban design, through case studies of cities where those two concepts are clearly intertwined. Montgomery spoke with Eric Jaffe at The Atlantic Cities about his research for the book, and how we measure happiness.

Sensitive to the fact that what works in Bogotá might not fly in Oslo, Montgomery is not out to find hard-and-fast rules for happiness. He instead wants to tease out methods of urban design that civic governments may use to become more sensitive, responsive and accountable to their citizens' well-being.

"Graphing Parking" charts out of whack U.S. minimum parking regulations

2013-08-28T13:38:00-04:00

Reforming parking policy is an urgent imperative which could have significant positive effects on the natural environment, our cities, the economy, and our society. For many issues, from affordable housing to carbon emissions, it is an obvious solution that has remained hidden in plain sight for too long.

Architect Seth Goodman has taken it upon himself to expose how dramatically parking plays a role in planning, through a series of nifty infographics that show just how much parking space is allotted for a given institution or destination. Inspired by Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking as a student at Rice University, Goodman has created five different charts comparing a city’s minimal parking space regulations to the square footage of the institution that the parking accommodates, such as a restaurant or office space. The results show an amazing inconsistency regarding how much space is devoted to parking across different cities.

In the above graphic, pitting “Worship Space vs. Parking Space”, the national average for a worship space (6,000 ft2) is compared to the square footage devoted to parking at said space of worship. Fresno, California clocks in at 32,500 ft2 of parking for an average worship space, whereas San Francisco has only a tenth of that, at 3,250. Ke...

OMA's Masterplan Chosen for New Bogotá Civic Center

2013-08-27T15:07:00-04:00

OMA's New York office will design the Bogotá Centro Administrativo Nacional (CAN), led by partner-in-charge Shohei Shigematsu in collaboration with local Columbian firm, Gomez + Castro. Winner of an international design competition, OMA's CAN will firstly serve as a new civic center, but the 680 acres of mixed-use development will also include educational facilities, cultural venues, retail and residences.

Situated at the midpoint of Bogotá's main axis, Calle 26, CAN's site is already symbolically significant, in line with the corridor that exhibits Bogotás history from historical downtown to international airport. Its mixed-use program is split into office, governmental, and educational zones, connected from end to end with a green path that will extend into Bogotá's CicloVía cycling and pedestrian network.

The design aims to integrate not only civic and public life, but also coordinate nearby destinations. According to Shigematsu, “Our proposal enables CAN to be a live...

My Ideal City: Crowd-Sourcing Bogotá

2013-08-19T21:14:00-04:00

[My Ideal City] is an instrument where all people in Bogota help to create their city by interacting in proposals made for their Downtown in crowd sourcing, thus impacting design through real time interaction and direct feedback. Once the different initiatives are defined, the process is completed by the population crowd funding its own initiatives.

Winka Dubbeldam (Archi-Tectonics) and Rodrigo Nino (Prodigy Network) have developed Downtown Bogotá // My Ideal City, an online platform for the citizens of Bogotá to influence their local city-planning proposals. Recognizing that middle-class population growth across Latin America often outpaces the speed of urban development, My Ideal City responds to the demand for bottom-up planning measures. If successful, the online-platform could be implemented across the globe.

Visit the My Ideal City platform.

The exhibition showcasing My Ideal City will be on display at Architekturforum Aedes in Berlin, Germany, through August 29, 2013.