Archinect - News

Resilient housing prototypes designed by Marvel Architects utilized a range of self-sustaining strategies to survive Hurricane Fiona

2022-09-23T12:00:00-04:00

After Hurricane Fiona tore through Puerto Rico on Sunday [Sept. 18], roads in the small mountain city of Caguas—hit with more than 20 inches of rain—were underwater. Landslides washed away some streets. As on the rest of the island, the electric grid went down, and it wasn’t clear how many homes had been damaged or destroyed. But in two new prototype homes, the electricity stayed on.

The prototypes are single-family homes completely off-grid with electricity and potable water. They were designed by New York City and Puerto Rico-based Marvel Architects and paid for by nonprofit Acacia Network. The homes utilize hurricane and seismic-resistant components, which include an insulated concrete panel system that has shown to be just as if not more effective against earthquakes than traditional concrete block construction. They also employ passive design strategies, allowing natural cross ventilation, heat extraction, and shade. In addition, the structures are modular so that they can adapt to a variety of locations and square footage.

Jonathan Marvel, the firm's founder, addressed the cost of these resilient homes with Fast Company's Adele Peters stating, "I don't want to say 'affordable,' because the average Puerto Rican income is below the level of poverty in the United States. So this is a housing system that's going to require assistance to build." Marvel added th...

Having endured two major hurricanes, Puerto Rico's museums begin to reopen

2017-10-05T15:11:00-04:00

Three weeks after the category four Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on 20 September, devastating the US Island, knocking out power and killing an as yet undetermined number of residents, local museums are back to work and helping with community relief efforts.

While the U.S. President spent his visit in double-hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico tossing rolls of paper towels into the crowd like t-shirts at a Knicks game, the island's museums are busy assessing the damage and getting their institutions reopened to the public.

"Rum being the medium of choice", and other thoughts from "Play With Your Food", the upcoming AA Visiting School in Puerto Rico

2014-05-30T14:30:00-04:00

What do cooking and mixology have to do with architecture? Can food and drink, as prototyped and iterative objects, help us better understand architectural design? The AA Visiting School is traveling to San Juan, Puerto Rico this summer for “Play With Your Food”, to tackle these questions and, in the process, try to find the secret link between gastronomy and architecture.

Program directors Drew Merkle, Jorge Mendez-Caceres and Miguel Miranda (all recent alumni of AA’s DRL program) laid out "Play With Your Food" for us over email, touching on their own histories with culinary experimentation and why they decided to host the school in the alleged “rum capital of the world”.

What inspired AA to create a visiting school on the relationship between food and architecture?

It was really us that brought the idea to Chris Pierce and Brett Steele who are the directors of the Visiting School, and the AA respectively. The relationship between food and architecture, is something which has been aro...