Archinect - News

Record high temperatures are making European cities look elsewhere for future heat mitigation plans

2022-07-20T15:16:00-04:00

Cities across Europe are scrambling to implement public infrastructure upgrades to combat rising temperatures. As a result, many areas are "melting" under the strain of heatwaves that have already claimed more than 1,900 lives in Spain and Portugal alone. Not to mention the record high temperatures in England this week, where the area reached 40°C (104 F) for the first time.

According to new projections from the United Nations, the effects of heatwaves are expected to continue in frequency until at least the 2060s. As a result, nascent Heat Actions Plans in cities like Paris (where only 35% of Metro cars have air-conditioning) are planning for tests that will likely be further exacerbated by an expected influx of climate refugees from some of the most-affected regions during that same timeframe. As news continues to break, architects and urban designers try to face the worsening impacts of climate change's increasingly moribund demands.

For example, efforts to alleviate the heat is...

New Zealand architects join international climate emergency declaration

2019-09-28T15:00:00-04:00

New Zealand architects have had enough. With the effects of climate change impacting the globe, several nations have declared an urgent international climate emergency. After UK architects issued the Architects Declare initiative in May 2019, several other countries such as Italy, Norway, Canada, and Australia have joined the movement.

According to New Zealand's ArchitectureNow publication, "The declaration takes the form of an open letter and states, The twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss are the most serious issue of our time. Buildings and construction play a major part, accounting for nearly 40 per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions whilst also having a significant impact on our natural habitats."

Banding together architects express their efforts to make changes that will help reinforce better design practices, the open letter urges architects to work with their clients to states “commission and design buildings, cities and infrastructures...

Shigeru Ban is building shelters for a Kenyan refugee settlement

2017-07-20T13:14:00-04:00

Due to the large influx of refugees, sheet walls of many temporary houses have begun to wear out. And there are other major constraints. There’s low water supply, deforestation, and extremely hot temperatures, and a rainy season which often results in heavy flooding. Plus Kalobeyei remote location creates many obstacles. There are no commercial flights to the area, and it can take up to 3 days to get there by road for the capital, Nairobi, where some materials may have to be sourced from.

Shigeru Ban has signed an agreement with UN-Habitat to design up to 12,000 new homes in the Kalobeiyei refugee settlement site in Northern Kenya. Commissioned in response to the settlement’s rapid growth, which is expected to outnumber its original capacity of 45,000 within a year, the new housing will need to be a replicable model adaptable to the influx of refugees fleeing violence and climate change in South Sudan and Somalia.

"The key thing will be to design and construct shelter where no or little technical supervision is required,” noted Ban, “and use materials that are locally available and eco-friendly. It’s important that the houses can be easily maintained by inhabitants.”

America's first "climate refugees" head for higher ground

2016-05-03T13:33:00-04:00

In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems. One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change.

"The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees."

Precisely determining who qualifies as a "climate refugee" is a notoriously difficult challenge. While the UN Refugee Agency estimates 22 million people were displaced by "disasters brought on by natural hazard events," evidence linking, for example, the civil war raging in Syria and Iraq with a prolonged drought would up that number.

In short, it's difficult to clearly isolate environmental factors, which tend to happen on large temporal and geographic scales, from sociopolitical causes of mass displacement, which are often more visible.

In any case, while a sizable chunk of the American government still doesn't believe in anthropogenic climate change, its citizens are already being displaced because of its effects....

UN Refugee Agency Commissions 10k Ikea-designed Better Shelters

2015-03-31T17:23:00-04:00

Ikea's line of flat-pack refugee shelters are going into production, the Swedish furniture maker announced this week, after being tested among refugee families in Ethiopia, Iraq, and Lebanon. The lightweight "Better Shelter" was developed under a partnership between the Ikea Foundation and the ...UNHCR... Each unit takes about four hours to assemble and is designed to last for 3 years — far longer than conventional refugee shelters, which last about 6 months.

As the Verge article notes, the announcement comes at a time when there are nearly 4 million people left without homes from the ongoing wars in Syria alone. Globally, there are 45.2 million people currently displaced by conflict and persecution according to a UNHCR report. And even that number doesn't account for the millions currently being displaced by drought, famine, rising sea levels, resource scarcity or other ecological disasters.

The Ikea Foundation's "Better Shelter" houses comprise three individual parts: the frame, the panels, and the photo voltaic system. They can be assembled on site without any additional tools or equipment. While lightweight and transportable, the units are designed to last three years. The solar panels charge an LED light that can be used at night for four hours or to charge a mobile phone.

In an article posted last year, Architectures of the Disaster, I consider other design projects addressing the global refugee crisis.

The Most Relevant News of 2014 (for Architects)

2014-12-30T14:02:00-05:00

Sometimes it's easy to pretend that architecture exists outside of this world, erupting instead in the blank of a 3D space governed only by the laissez-fair laws of software. But sometimes a news headline will penetrate through this fog of imagination, appearing as a blazing light shining forth from an image of some distant row of houses hollowed by mortar fire and colored with the blood of a strangers' body. "This is the real of architecture," the news seems to silently implore.

As gravity serves as the counterweight to the feverish, technofuturism fashionable to today's students, news events seem to ground architecture just at the moment it seems like it may finally escape into the vapors of idealism. While it may seem that architecture is increasingly consigned to the building of institutions or expensive residences, the demand for buildings and dwellings simultaneously grows louder and more desperate with every unfolding disaster.

A year-end round-up is as fraught as a ranking. If...

What Does the Syrian Refugee Crisis Mean to Architecture?

2014-09-02T15:22:00-04:00

As a result of the Syrian civil war, there are now 3 million Syrian refugees registered in neighboring countries — an exodus that began in March 2011 and shows no sign of abating, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. The record figure was 1 million refugees more than a year ago, and an additional 6.5 million are displaced within Syria, meaning that "almost half of all Syrians have now been forced to abandon their homes and flee for their lives," it said.

As the Islamic State rampages through Syria and Iraq, thousands are being displaced to add to the growing refugee population created by a civil war against Bashar al-Assad. The Islamic State actively uses infrastructure, specifically hydoinfrastructure, as a militaristic tactic exacerbating conditions for these displaced people. Many architects have developed projects specifically oriented to the global refugee crisis, of which Syria is part. In a past article, I asserted that this is not just a general ethical imperative, but also specific to architecture. The problems of a refugee camp or urban enclave are often architectural issues that require design solutions. Additionally, architecture can be considered complicit in the forces generating the crisis as millions are displaced because of climate changes, which architecture contributes to significantly.

Typhoon Threatens Japan's Already Vulnerable Infrastructure

2014-07-08T17:29:00-04:00

As Okinawa and Kyushu prepare to take the brunt of what was until Monday categorized as a “super typhoon,” local infrastructure will be pushed to its limits, especially in Kyushu, where the area is saturated from heavy rains last week.

Typhoon Neoguri is the strongest typhoon of the 2014 season, thus far. As it barrels through the Ryukyu island chain and towards mainland Japan, the storm is already taking its toll. Reports claim 25 people have been injured, thousands are without electricity, and 540,000 have been ordered to evacuate to temporary shelters.

Japan is particularly vulnerable as it struggles to recover from the tsunami that led to the catastrophic Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown in 2011. While new national policies have temporarily shut down other nuclear facilities, apparently three are currently at risk from Typhoon Neoguri.

Scientists believe that hurricanes and typhoons will continue to increase in severity as global warming raises ocean temperatures. Maintaining aging infrastructure systems will become increasingly difficult in the next few decades, particularly for countries with extensive coastlines. And without them, providing adequate shelter and resources to temporary climate refuge...

Relocation or Adaptation: Kiribati buys land in Fiji

2014-07-02T13:23:00-04:00

Aiming to avoid a humanitarian crisis, Kiribati recently purchased land in Fiji — about 1,200 miles away — where its residents would be relocated in the event that sea-level rise drowns the Pacific island nation and displaces its population of just over 100,000 people [...] Contributing very little to the greenhouse gases that most scientists agree fuel climate change, Kiribati is among the least responsible for the present climate crisis.

As atmospheric CO2 levels near 402 ppm without any significant curtailing of industrial production by the major nations of the global economy, time is running out for many of the poorest and most vulnerable countries. The UN and other transnational bodies are beginning to seem like echo chambers for the leaders of island nations like Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. The sad irony of global warming is that it is countries least responsible for it that will bear the most burden.

Some architects are producing imaginative designs for adaptive structures. For example, LILYPAD is a project by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. Described as a "prototypical auto-sufficient amphibious city," the project would adapt to rising sea levels while serving as a shelter for climate refugees.

But let's be real: adaptive strategies are fundamentally out of the question for countries without the resources for expensive architectural projects – ie. the countries that need them the most. Efforts by n...