Archinect - News

Trump pushes for increased logging in the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest

2019-08-29T09:00:00-04:00

President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago [...] The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule,” which has survived a decades-long legal assault.

The move comes as global awareness over widespread deforestation in the Amazon and other tropical regions around the world intensifies.

In Brazil, where land clearance and deforestation have increased rapidly this year under the country's new president, Jair Bolsonaro, smoke from the burning Amazon rainforest recently plunged São Paulo into sudden darkness.

SAH Archipedia aims to chronicle America's built environment

2019-07-03T14:07:00-04:00

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has unveiled a new "archipedia" website focused on extensively cataloging a wide range of structures and other facets of the built environment.

Dubbed SAH Archipedia, the online encyclopedia was developed by SAH and the University of Virginia Press. The site contains detailed historical information, interactive maps, photographs, and drawings for over 20,000 structures and places. To aid in research efforts, the database is tagged by subject, and includes indexes organized by architectural style, demographic and cultural information, location, and historical period.

Chronicled sites include Frank Lloyd Wright's Arizona Biltmore Hotel, the architecture and historical sites of Alaska, California's Spanish missions, breweries across the United States, and many others.

A view of the Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Image courtesy of Paul J. Jakubovich, Wisconsin Historical Society, and SAH Archipedia.

The bulk of the information is dra...

Alaskan village voting on whether to relocate because of sea level rise

2016-08-17T13:35:00-04:00

The residents of the northern Alaskan village of Shishmaref are currently voting to decide whether or not to relocate their village. As global warming brings up temperatures, the sea ice that once protected the village has begun to melt. Now the town, which is built on a barrier island in the Chukchi sea, faces inundation.

The village, with its 650 residents, mostly members of the Inupiat Inuit tribe, would be the first in the United States to relocate because of global warming-induced sea level rise. The effects of climate change on the island are considered among the most dramatic in the world. Already, the village has lost 2,500 to 3,500 feet of land to coastal erosion and the entire island could be gone within the next couple decades.

While barricades have been erected to protect the village, their effect has been minimal. The town is built on permafrost, which is melting and causing the shore to become even more vulnerable to crashing waves.

If the vote goes through, the cost of...

Engineers grapple with a melting Alaskan Highway

2016-08-05T14:57:00-04:00

Today the highway serves as the main artery connecting the “Last Frontier” with Canada and the northwestern U.S., bringing tourists to Alaska cruise ships; food, supplies and medicine to remote towns; and equipment to oil fields and mines that are the region’s lifeblood... “Communities are unable to reach each other, it’s harder to get goods there,” [...] Thawing permafrost isn’t “just an inconvenience, folks; it’s a change in the way of life.”

The Alaskan cabin that grew into a Dr. Seuss tower

2016-04-11T15:12:00-04:00

As the story goes, the original owner of this unwieldy building located in Willow, Alaska built his house shortly after a forest fire with a clear view of Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. As the surrounding trees recovered, the pristine view was obscured and the owner decided to add few more stories, eventually spending a decade adding floors until it reached the 12-ish story tower you see today. Not surprisingly, locals refer to the building as the “Dr. Seuss House” [...].

Obama changes the name of tallest mountain from Mt McKinley to Denali

2015-08-31T15:49:00-04:00

The Obama administration will change the name of North America's tallest mountain peak from Mount McKinley to Denali, the White House said Sunday, a major symbolic gesture to Alaska Natives on the eve of President Barack Obama's historic visit to Alaska. By renaming the peak Denali, an Athabascan word meaning "the high one," Obama waded into a sensitive and decades-old conflict between residents of Alaska and Ohio.

"Alaskans have informally called the mountain Denali for years, but the federal government recognizes its name invoking the 25th president, William McKinley, who was born in Ohio and assassinated early in his second term."

Russia considering plans for a 12,400-mile superhighway linking London and Alaska

2015-03-27T14:23:00-04:00

The Trans-Eurasian Belt Development would see the construction of a vast motorway across Russia. It would connect with existing networks in Europe, making road trips to eastern Russia a far easier proposition. While roads do currently run across most of Russia, the quality tends to deteriorate the farther you travel from Moscow. [...] A new high-speed train line would also be constructed, along with pipelines for gas and oil.

The Alaskan village set to disappear under water in a decade

2013-07-30T12:18:00-04:00

Almost no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina. It clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States. Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.

Officials endorse tunnel to link Alaska and Siberia by train

2011-08-31T20:40:36-04:00

Russia appears to be edging closer to giving the go-ahead for an underwater tunnel which could one day allow vacationers in Alaska to take a day trip to Siberia in Russia.