Archinect - News

In British Columbia, an ecological restoration company is seeking a remote designer

2023-05-31T10:57:00-04:00

Following last week’s look at an opening for a Staff Architect - Wastewater Division at Parsons Corp, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for an Intermediate Architectural Designer at Seed the North.

Seed the North project site, British Columbia. Image courtesy: Seed the North

The successful candidate will join Seed the North’s architect-led ecological restoration company located in northern British Columbia, Canada. Set on a 160-acre property, the company is overseeing the construction of a seed orchard and campus, for which they require a remote-working experienced designer.

Why the role interests us

The open role at Seed the North offers us an opportunity to explore an example of architects and designers delivering projects with an emphasis on responsible timber use. The company operates under a design-build model, work...

Termite mounds hold secrets for energy-efficient buildings, researchers find

2023-05-30T10:58:00-04:00

Researchers have uncovered a methodology for reducing energy consumption in buildings by studying the structure of termite mounds. Led by Lund University’s Dr. David Andréen and Nottingham Trent University’s Dr. Rupert Soar, the research suggests that the properties of lattice networks in termite mounds, known as an ‘egress complex,’ can be copied to optimize the interior climate of buildings.

“Here we show that the ‘egress complex’, an intricate network of interconnected tunnels found in termite mounds, can be used to promote flows of air, heat, and moisture in novel ways in human architecture,” said Andréen about the study, which was recently published in Frontiers in Materials.

Image credit: Dr. David Andréen

The team grounded their research in the egress complex of Macrotermes michaelseni termites in Namibia, which they observed appeared to promote moisture regulation and ventilation. The mounds are regarded as some of the world’s largest biological structures, capable of reachin...

IAAC team’s mass timber nature observatory floats above a Barcelona forest

2023-05-16T12:13:00-04:00

A team from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) has constructed a timber observatory in a Barcelona forest to support analyses of nature. The group of students and researchers from the institution’s Masters in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities program were inspired by the hanging walkways of American biologist Margaret D. Lowman.

Image credit: Adrià Goula

Located in the city’s Collserola Natural Park, and named the Forest Lab for Observational Research and Analysis (FLORA), the facility seeks to provide researchers a space to live and work in the forest canopy. Among the observatory’s facilities are a bird radio, bird houses, working and projection space, as well as bird watching spaces.

Image credit: Adrià Goula

The observatory’s design process began with students studying the biodiversity of the forest, including identifying various inhabitants from underground, aboveground, canopy, and sky levels. T...

New York City’s interactive Tree Map offers live insights into over 860,000 trees across the city

2022-12-13T10:19:00-05:00

Did you know that the London planetree is the most common species of tree in New York City? The fun fact is one of many which can be gleaned from a new interactive map launched by the City of New York, allowing users to explore the city’s tree population. The NYC Tree Map replaces NYC Park’s previous Street Tree Map, and contains data on over 860,000 park and street trees within what the creators call “the most comprehensive and up-to-date living tree map in the world.”

Image credit: NYC Parks

Trees on the interactive map are represented by circles, with the size and color of each circle representing the tree’s diameter and species, respectively. Users can gather data for an entire species of tree, trees in a particular borough or neighborhood, or each individual tree across the map, learning about the tree’s contribution to stormwater management, energy conservation, or air pollutant removal.

Image credit: NYC Parks

For example, the map notes that the 4,265 trees recorded in the Lowe...

10 architecture jobs focusing on sustainability and urban ecology

2022-08-12T08:40:00-04:00

Continuing with Archinect's weekly job highlights, we've put together a list of firms that put sustainability and ecological design/research at the forefront of their practices. If you're an architectural designer or experienced architect with a passion for environmentally driven projects, check out these six firms below. Be sure to check the Archinect Job Board for new jobs listed daily.

1 Great Jones Alley by BKSK Architects. Image render by MARCH/Courtesy of BKSK Architects.

BKSK Architects, LLP seeks a Sustainability Coordinator
Location: New York, NY
Experience Level: 1-3 years

Details: "Founded in 1985, BKSK Architects is a New York City-based firm specializing in design that is socially, contextually, and ecologically engaged [...] We are looking for a Sustainability Coordinator with 1-3 years of experience to join BKSK’s Sustainable Design Team. The group is growing to deliver on our commitment to delivering healthy, resilient, and sustainable projects in New York City. We are ...

MVRDV unveils Armenian masterplan named after first human to orbit Earth

2022-01-12T10:27:00-05:00

MVRDV has unveiled its vision for a major masterplan in the Gagarin Valley in Armenia. The 34,000-hectare area is home to 11,000 people spread across several villages, with about one-third of the landscape consisting of patches of land owned by the local community. MVRDV’s masterplan seeks to make the area “more sustainable and ecological diverse” through the planting of 10,000 plant species, and 12,000 new housing units.

Farming infrastructure. Image: MVRDV

Under the plans, the existing mosaic of 10,000 existing plots will be preserved and reinforced, while the water systems will be enhanced through the addition of canals, public paths, and greenery along the network. Existing roads will continue to form a starting point for connecting the villages, with new walking and cycling infrastructure added.

Bird's eye view. Image: MVRDV

“The area is named after Yuri Gagarin, who was the first human to orbit the earth; he saw the planet’s vulnerability, a house in need of extra care, as many...

Check out SOM's movement-inspired collaboration with artist Janet Echelman in Munich

2021-09-16T17:32:00-04:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has once again come together with American artist Janet Echelman for a site-specific sculptural installation in Munich’s historic Odeonsplatz Square.

Images courtesy of Studio Echelman

The atmospheric sculpture is in constant motion, activating the public space below while changing shape and color with the wind using a 3D data model of the earth’s floor following a powerful 2010 Chilean earthquake from which the ‘1.26’ monicker is taken.

Images courtesy of Studio Echelman

“My artwork reflects an interconnectedness of opposites — flexibility with strength, earth with sky, things we can control with the forces beyond us,” Echelman said.

Images courtesy of Studio Echelman

The sculpture is comprised of more than 361,000 individual knots formed by handmade splices of woven nylon and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene rope fibers. The sculpture weighs 700 pounds and occupies about 3,300 square feet of total area. Its responsiveness and adaptivity represent th...

Carson Chan appointed as the first director of MoMA's Emilio Ambasz Institute

2021-06-11T16:19:00-04:00

The Museum of Modern Art has appointed curator, writer, and educator, Carson Chan, as the first director of the museum’s Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment. He will also serve as a curator in the museum’s Department of Architecture and Design, where he will lead initiatives focused on ecology and sustainability in collaboration with all six departments at MoMA.

As the director of the Ambasz Institute, Chan will develop a “robust and diverse” roster of exhibitions, paired with digital and onsite programs that address the interconnectedness of architecture and ecology. He will begin his new role later this summer and will organize and present a major exhibition focused on the emergence of ecological thinking in architecture, scheduled for 2023.

“I look forward to challenging MoMA’s current and future audiences with new ways to define architecture in the midst of our ecological crisis,” said Carson Chan. “My vision for the Ambasz Inst...

London-based spatial practice Cooking Sections uses architecture, ecology, and geopolitics to reshape the public's relationship to food cycles

2021-04-07T15:11:00-04:00

Alon Schwabe and Daniel Fernández Pascual of the London-based studio Cooking Sections explore food systems through architecture, ecology, visual arts, and geopolitics.

Featured in the second issue of Archinect's print publication Ed Issue 2, The Architecture of Disaster, the duo discussed their project CLIMAVORE: On Tidal Zones. Using a lightweight installation to explore the changing nature of Loch Portree's waters in Scotland, the pair explains their goals to adapt to changing ecosystems through food and architecture. A project that is both a "performance project and a form of responsive eating—a model Schwabe and Fernández have developed as a possible method for adaptation to the precarious conditions of climate change."

Featured on Archinect: Cooking Sections Explains Their Efforts to Adapt to Changing Ecosystems Through Food and Architecture. Photograph by Ruth Clark.

Recently, Schwabe and Pascual debuted their latest project, Salmon: A Red Herring, at the Tate Britain. Part o...

New Pier 26 opens at NYC's Hudson River Park

2020-10-01T14:34:00-04:00

Expanding a park usually means modifying an existing landscape. The designers of Pier 26 faced a far more daunting challenge: creating an entirely new one in the swift current of the Hudson River. [...] The latest addition to Hudson River Park, this 2.5-acre expanse is the city’s only public pier dedicated to river ecology.

Archinect Outpost to host book signing and lecture for The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What Is the Power of Shit?

2019-02-20T15:09:00-05:00

Join us at Archinect Outpost on March 6th, from 7-9pm to host Lydia Kallipoliti and her newest book, The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What Is the Power of Shit? Published by Lars Müller Publishers and Storefront for Art and Architecture, the book accompanied an eponymous exhibition surveying 37 brilliant and unusual prototypes for self-sustaining physical environments, including those from Buckminster Fuller, Jacques Cousteau and Walt Disney.

Buckminster Fuller's Geoscope, one of the 37 prototypes in The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What Is the Power of Shit?

Kallipoliti will provide a lecture, followed by a conversation with Lars Müller and a book signing. RSVP here. The book can be preordered here.

West Edmonton Mall, one of the 37 prototypes in The Architecture of Closed Worlds: Or, What Is the Power of Shit?

Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer and scholar. She holds a Diploma in Architecture and Engineering from A.U.Th in Greece, a SMArchS in design and build...

Trees can help megacities save $505 million per year, according to new research

2017-08-28T14:37:00-04:00

Megacities—those urban centers crammed with more than 10 million people—would be well served to double down on their arboreal assets, according to a new paper in the upcoming issue of the journal Ecological Modeling. A team of researchers led by Theodore Endreny of SUNY’s College of Environmental Studies and Forestry sought to quantify how leafy infrastructure pays dividends in 10 chock-full cities—and the extent to which those benefits could compound if those urban areas planted more trees.

You can check out the research paper here, as well as this 2015 report about the health benefits of more greenspace in urban centers.

McGregor Coxall to design “bird airport” wetland park in Tianjin

2017-02-16T21:12:00-05:00

Australian practice McGregor Coxall had the winning scheme to transform a degenerate landfill site into a new migratory-bird wetland sanctuary park in Tianjin, China. The Asian Development Bank and the Port of Tianjin co-launched the park design competition in response to the increasing loss of critical bird habitats and declining shorebird populations in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, which an estimated 50 million migratory shorebirds use every year. The EAAF extends to Alaska and Russia's Taimyr Peninsula in the north, East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia, and Australia and New Zealand in the south.

As a pilot project in China's national sponge city program, the project in the Lingang region is a 60-hectare masterplan of constructed wetlands, parkland, and urban forest.

Described as a “bird airport” by the architects, the wetland sanctuary will allow weary migratory birds to feed and rest, while human visitors can check out the Water Pavilion education and research center or t...

American firms aren't doing enough to reduce their carbon footprint, according to new report

2016-10-05T13:38:00-04:00

“We are simply not making significant strides in crucial metrics that predict building performance,” states Greg Mella, FAIA, Director of Sustainable Design at SmithGroupJJR and co-chair of the AIA 2030 Working Group, in a new report that gauges the progress made by firms voluntarily committing to reduce the carbon emissions produced by their buildings. “These findings should serve as a wake-up call to architects that there needs to be greater urgency to drive improved energy efficiency across their project portfolios if we are going to reach our ultimate carbon reduction goals.”

While a total of 152 firms submitted data, amounting to a 9% increase from 2014, the reports aren’t terribly impressive. A scant 4% of the total gross square feet (GSF) represented met the target of reducing carbon emissions by 70%. And just 10% of total GSF met the previous target—a 60% carbon reduction—representing a decrease of 4% since the last report. That being said, 614 design projects met the 60% tar...

A thriving ecosystem of shorebirds calls the LA River's concrete bottom home

2016-08-31T13:26:00-04:00

“By accident, we’ve created the perfect habitat there. People don’t think about that because they think that this part of the river is ugly and concrete, but it’s a critically important habitat for these shorebirds.” [...] As the city makes its decisions about the river’s future, it is called upon to be sensitive to all life that has managed to grow around it, despite its not-so-green surroundings.

For more on the LA River's redevelopment:

Nearly a quarter of the Great Barrier reef has been killed by warming oceans

2016-06-07T13:49:00-04:00

Surveys have revealed that 93% of the almost 3,000 individual reefs have been touched by bleaching, and almost a quarter – 22% – of coral over the entire Great Barrier Reef has been killed by this bleaching event... Since tourists usually go diving and snorkelling in the middle and southern sections, there are plenty of spectacular corals for them to see there. But they shouldn’t be fooled by that – the reef is in the midst of a major environmental catastrophe.

"Many scientists are now saying it is almost too late to save it. Strong and immediate action is required to alleviate water pollution and stop the underlying cause: climate change."

For other news from the front lines of our warming planet, check out these links:

Learning from our "biological elders": take a look at this short documentary on "Biomimicry"

2016-03-24T13:20:00-04:00

The idea is that perhaps we should be looking at these mentors, at these biological elders. They have figured out how to create a sustainable world. So rather than inventing it from scratch, why don’t we take our cues from them?

Watch the full video here, "brought to you" by none other than Leo DiCaprio:

For more information on biomimicry, take a look at some past Archinect articles or visit the documentary website:

Rikers Island is an environmental (and human) catastrophe

2016-03-22T18:23:00-04:00

Rikers is built on a landfill. The ground underneath the facilities is unstable and the decomposing garbage emits poisonous methane gas. In addition to extreme heat and poor air quality, flooding and crumbling infrastructure pose a serious threat, especially when superstorms like Hurricane Sandy strike. As the violence and human rights violations worsen, so do the environmental circumstances surrounding Rikers.

The article details flood-risk, extreme heat, a lack of air circulation and other air quality issues among other problems plaguing the prison.

For related content, check out some of these links:

Global warming may be much more catastrophic (and happen much quicker) than we imagined

2016-03-22T13:50:00-04:00

An influential group of scientists led by James Hansen, the former NASA scientist often credited with having drawn the first major attention to climate change in 1988 congressional testimony, has published a dire climate study that suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned.

James Hansen, an indisputably important climate scientist and activist, alongside a group of other influential experts, has released a new, 52-page paper that revises much of mainstream expectations for global warming. Hansen has called it the most important work he's done.

A synthesis of paleoclimatology, climate models, and modern observations, the document suggests that global warming will have a more violent and catastrophic impact than previously expected.

The scientists involved believe that Greenland and Antarctica could experience ice melt at much faster rates than imagined (up to several meters in a century), and that the melt could create a feedback loop further intensifying the effects of global warming.

In short, the cold, fresh water from the melted ice sheets would trap a layer of warm seawater beneath it, leading to a process known as "stratification." Such "blobs" of cold water – which could perhaps already be forming off the coast of Greenland (see image above) – would...

The ecological footprint of your Netflix binge

2015-12-16T23:07:00-05:00

The impact of data centers—really, of computation in general—isn’t something that really galvanizes the public, partly because that impact typically happens at a remove from everyday life. The average amount of power to charge a phone or a laptop is negligible, but the amount of power required to stream a video or use an app on either device invokes services from data centers distributed across the globe, each of which uses energy to perform various processes [...]

"Still, it seems weird that most people—most engineers building the platforms people use every day, even—lack the basic comprehension that different online activities have different energy impacts, or that an individual’s online activities have energy impact at all beyond a laptop’s battery life."

Canada's 2016 Venice Biennale theme digs into the country's influence in resource extraction

2015-12-09T20:26:00-05:00

Canada's national theme for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale will be a multimedia investigation of the country's resource extraction industry, as announced earlier this week by the Canada Council for the Arts. Titled "Extraction", the project profiles and "radically rethinks" Canada's rise as a "global resource empire" by delving into the histories, architectures, and political economies of the industry. The theme was selected as the winner of a national competition. In 2014, the well-regarded "Arctic Adaptions: Nunavut at 15" exhibition represented Canada.

Considering that the Great White North is home to 75% of Earth's prospecting and mining companies, resource extraction runs deep in the country's roots. "Extraction" will include an installation, a film, and a book featuring various perspectives drawn from history, business, art, activism, and more. Catherine Crowston of the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) was appointed as the project's Official Commissioner while landscape urba...

MMYST: a crowd-funded, human-animal hybrid building by François Roche and Camille Lacadee of New-Territories/M4

2015-09-30T16:14:00-04:00

"What we propose here is a different format for making architecture," Camille Lacadee states in a deadpan tone, "with multiple clients, multiple users, backers, lovers, following a bottom-up mode of exchanges and desire." A robotic arm extends into the frame and offers her a bowl of bird's nest soup, which she takes. "Oh it's hot!"

Alongside François Roche, Lacadee heads the ever-mutating, radically-experimental architecture studio currently-known-as New-Territories / M4. For their new project MMYST, or "mke_Me_yungR_sheltR_tmptation," they've launched a Kickstarter campaign that includes what is likely one of the most wonderfully strange videos that's ever been on the crowd-funding website.

According to the campaign description, MMYST would comprise a 140 sqm (1500 ft²) "experimental hybrid building" to be shared by humans and swiftlets, a species of bird that makes unique nests out of saliva that are prized for their culinary applications.

Sited on an outcropping of cooled-lava in th...

Drought, climate change, misuse: SPIEGEL takes an in-depth look at the global water shortage

2015-08-19T11:00:00-04:00

It is a region where America, the global superpower, looks more like a developing nation [...]. Indeed, the water crisis is becoming a humanitarian one -- because the absurd agricultural policy of many arid regions in California is being carried to extremes. More recklessly than elsewhere, wetlands in the state are being dried out to make irrigated agriculture possible. Agriculture makes up 2 percent of California's GDP, and yet it consumes 80 percent of the state's water.

Our infrastructure is expanding to include animals

2015-05-07T14:07:00-04:00

municipal infrastructure is being expanded to include living creatures. In many ways, of course, this is simply the contemporary urbanization of a practice that goes back millennia. However, the ensuing juxtapositions – of 21st-century landscapes and cities being maintained not by high-tech machines or by specialty equipment but by neo-medieval groups of trained animals – can be quite jarring. Animal labour is once more becoming an explicit component of the modern metropolis

The absolute premise, and conclusion, here is that human urbanism is ineluctably woven within all animal ecologies, and that harnessing inter-species relationships within urban systems can be advantageous for every bit of the food web. A few instances from the piece are:

landscaping llamas for Chicago's O'Hare's "Grazing Herd"
falcons in Dubai trained to thin out pesty pigeon populations
waste-clearing pigs in Cairo

Using natural animal processes to the urban-human's advantage is all well and good, but as the article points out, it's not one that can be easily "scaled". When urban needs outpace the natural rhythms of a supportive ecological system, when we just can't scale nature big enough, humans will simply create their own animal helpers – New Scientist alludes to a future in which animals are modified to better serve human needs.

Book review: Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable Future

2015-04-22T18:40:00-04:00

I have to admit to a degree of wariness when I first opened Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World, a new book edited by Jared Green and published by Princeton Architectural Press. The introduction makes some bold claims for a rather slim book with little text. “We have the answers. We are both the cause of the problems and the solution to them,” Green writes with supreme optimism. The book is a collection of eighty projects that leading architects, urban planners, artists, critics and thinkers chose as a response to the question: “What gives you hope for the future?” The criteria for their responses stipulated that they must discuss a project they admire, not their own. And the results are as varied as one might imagine for a question that is both vague and expansive.

More than anything else, the responses highlighted the mutability of the term “sustainable” within contemporary architecture discourse. Some of the responses, such as that of Katrin Kling...

Housing developments change puma behavior

2015-02-16T18:47:00-05:00

Female pumas kill more prey but consume less when their territories bump into human development, UC Santa Cruz researchers report in a new study based on monitoring more than two dozen pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The presence of humans -- homes, roads, and other development -- means pumas are fearful and stay on the move rather than returning to a kill site to fully consume prey, the study finds

The research utilized data from tracking devices that record not only a puma's movement but also increases in speed and other behavior that signifies hunting behavior. Looking at the actions of 30 animals, the scientists were able to discern, among other things, that, "Females killed 36 percent more deer per year in developed habitats than in areas with little housing."

According to the report, increased kill rates suggest that the pumas are wasting more energy than they would in an environment devoid of human habitations. This also affects the population of prey species, in particular deer.

Studies like this shed light on the complex interdependency of human and non-human species. Architecture is never an exclusively human activity and, more often than not, we dwell at the expense of other species. For more information on this topic, check out Architecture of the Anthropocene (part 1 and part 2).

Flora of the Future & Projective Ecologies

2014-04-29T16:46:00-04:00

Landscape architects — and anyone else who works directly with vegetation — need to acknowledge that a wide variety of so-called novel or emergent ecosystems are developing before our eyes.

Places is featuring two chapters from the new book Projective Ecologies, edited by Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister and co-published by Actar and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In "The Flora of the Future," botanist Peter Del Tredici argues that the native plants movement has got it all wrong: “The task facing tomorrow’s landscape architects is not so much how to eliminate these novel ecosystems but rather how to manage them to increase their ecological, social and aesthetic values.” In an engaging photo survey of ecological niches in the city, Del Tredici makes the case for spontaneous urban plants as flora of the future.

In "Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies," the book's editors trace the origins and evolution of the over-extended term "ecology" and explain how contemporary ecological models of “open-endedness, flexibility, resilience and adaptation” can inform design thinking.

The Problem With Architecture Today (and the Solution)

2014-03-03T15:05:00-05:00

According to Travis Price, an award-winning architect and philosopher whose work is rooted in ecology and mythology, most architecture today is just plain soulless. "You go into malls and they float all kinds of Roman columns and fake images. It's Disney. It's superficial. It's mass produced. It's empty." Price, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, focuses on restoring the "spirit of place" to modern design by providing an alternative to the "sprawl, mall and tall" trend [...]