Archinect - News

New York's Center for Zero Waste Design is hiring a project manager to shape sustainable waste strategies

2023-08-09T14:24:00-04:00

Following our previous look at an opening for a Public Interest Design (PID) Fellowship at the University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit Collaborative Design Center, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an opportunity on Archinect Jobs for a Project Manager at the Center for Zero Waste Design.

The role, based in Brooklyn, New York, calls for an individual with architectural experience who will split their team between the center and consultancy ThinkWoven. Responsibilities will include managing consulting projects, developing waste strategies, and researching the context of waste management in different cities.

Related on Archinect: Testbeds is giving discarded architectural mock-ups new life in New York's community gardens. Image courtesy: Testbeds.

Why the role interests us

The open role at the Center for Zero Waste Design offers us the opportunity to explore the work and background of an organization dedicated to sharing knowledge on zero-waste strat...

Miller Hull's redwood laboratory for UC Santa Cruz aims to be light on the land

2022-03-31T12:57:00-04:00

Seattle-based firm The Miller Hull Partnership has designed an important new laboratory building for the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) that will have a light impact on the lush natural landscape that surrounds it.

Developed to offset the anticipated growth of UCSC’s research and instruction, the new Environmental Health & Safety Facility includes space for laboratories, waste management, storage, and administrative offices in addition to providing room for life, health, and safety resources.

Per the architects: “The site includes a small knoll and is defined by the steep ravine and mature redwood trees. The building is constructed on caissons to be light on the land and allow natural drainage and existing root systems to remain below the building. All stormwater is managed on-site with direct infiltration, and a below-grade storm drain detention structure with outfall to level spreaders distributed across the site.”

Image courtesy The Miller Hull Partnership

In respons...

The complicated afterlife of spent data servers

2019-07-30T15:13:00-04:00

Investment in cloud infrastructure has surged since 2015, and the market for data-center equipment is expected to grow at an average annualized rate of roughly 16% this year and next, according to Citigroup Inc. Cloud servers, though, typically have a lifespan of only about three years, according to experts, meaning that some of the earliest equipment already has passed its use-by date.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the anticipated market for scrap metal and other components used to make cloud computing infrastructure.

As the cloud computing era gets underway globally, efforts to recycle the short-lived data servers that power the cloud have been complicated by privacy and sustainability concerns. Recycling policies vary by manufacturers, while a lack of coordination and technology industry secrecy stifles efforts to solidify a coordinated approach for the estimated 2 metric tons of obsolete equipment generated by cloud computing, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A 2017 report from the United Nations University, the International Telecommunication Union, and the International Solid Waste Association reads: “Although cloud-computing trends can lead to fewer devices because all services can be accessed from one device, more cloud computing also means more data centers and more e-waste."

Researchers propose concrete mixed with plastic for India's rapid construction

2018-09-19T16:28:00-04:00

Researchers say India could alleviate its growing shortage of sand, which is needed for concrete, by partially replacing it with waste plastic. Research carried out by the University of Bath in the UK, and India’s Goa Engineering College, has found that concrete made with an admixture of ground-up plastic bottles is almost as strong as traditional concrete mixtures.

With India's rapid urbanization, concrete construction has dramatically increased causing a shortage in the country's sand used to make the building material. Mixing in plastic bottles focuses on solving both the issue of a sand shortage and the accumulation plastic waste on the streets. While the plastic added material is not as strong as concrete, it could still be used for lower tech functions such as paving slabs.

Recycled plastic blocks are being used to create LEGO-like architecture

2018-01-10T13:37:00-05:00

A company in Colombia is tackling plastic waste issues and affordable housing with a single ingenious solution: interlocking LEGO-like bricks that can be used to build houses for a few thousand dollars per structure. Walls are formed using a slim slotted brick then framed using a thicker module used for beams and columns, locking the smaller units into place and providing rigid vertical and lateral support.

What to do with the heaps and mounds of plastic piling up all over our planet? Build LEGO's. Conceptos Plásticos' technological innovations make their plastic block homes cost only $5,000. The company is also using this new method to build emergency shelters, community and educational buildings.

These upcycled blocks are designed to be used by anyone regardless of construction experience. Conceptos Plásticos boasts building blocks that are fire and earthquake resistant, cost effective, and durable lasting about 500 years.

A waste sorting facility for the unused space beneath Paris' ring-road

2017-01-27T12:15:00-05:00

DATA Architects, a young French firm, has designed a waste sorting space in an unexpected corner of Paris—the space beneath the city’s ring-road. The ring-road demarcates the edge of the Paris you imagine when you think of the City of Lights, and the beginning of what used to be the heart of the city’s industry. For several decades, the area has seen the emergence of a slew of formally-daring architectural and urban objects: Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette and, most recently, the Philharmonie of Jean Nouvel. According to the architects, “To fit into this area, the waste sorting center becomes an object of curiosity too and transforms the underside of the ring-road in a flowing milky way.”

More images in the gallery below.

Tracing New York's waste management

2016-10-27T13:27:00-04:00

Each day, New York’s public garbage trucks collect nearly 7,000 tonnes of residential mixed solid waste. After finishing their routes, most of these trucks will deposit the garbage in one of New York’s waste transfer stations located throughout the city. From there, the garbage will eventually be loaded on to a barge or train and carried as far as 600 miles to its final stop. For most of New York’s mixed solid waste (about 80% of it by tonnage), this last stop will be a landfill.

"The remaining 20% will end up at a waste-to-energy plant, where it will be incinerated and converted into energy."

For more on the infrastructure of waste, follow these links:

Shitting bricks: researchers experiment with making concrete from sewage

2016-07-13T13:52:00-04:00

Malaysia has too much sewage sludge and not enough concrete, a problem which naturally prompted an "aha!" moment among researchers. By burning and drying wet sewage sludge cake and then grinding and sieving the dry cake to produce Domestic Waste Sludge Powder (DWSP), the Malaysian researchers are attempting to create an additive that can be mixed with cement to produce concrete.

So far, they've found a mixture of between 3% to 15% DWSP in cement produces fairly strong concrete, although the higher percentage of DWSP, the less strong the concrete becomes. Variables abound: according to this report, higher incineration temperatures can produce better DWSP, and the more DWSP in the concrete, the higher the water absorption.

More waste-related news:

Hyperloop, but for New York City's trash

2016-02-04T13:43:00-05:00

[A former sanitation policy director for New York City, Ben] Miller is working with his partners at the planning firm Closed Loops, with funding from state grants, to bring pneumatic tubes to New York’s High Line. Rather than rotting in landfills, carrot peels and apple cores from nearby restaurants could travel under the feet of unsuspecting tourists through pneumatic tubes hung below the elevated park. A small facility could turn them into compost right there in the neighborhood.

More on garbage disruption and the very pressing problem of waste management worldwide:

The Uber of waste management is coming for your trash

2015-07-07T17:38:00-04:00

Unlike Waste Management and other garbage giants, Rubicon doesn’t operate its own trucks or own any landfills. Instead, it runs a tech platform that connects small, local haulers with major companies that want to cut down on their garbage costs and increase their recycling efforts.

Rubicon Global, which previously helped Fortune 500 companies save money with their own garbage management, is now bringing their services to the regular folks. The app for on-demand waste pick-up was largely devised by Uber's founding CTO, Oscar Salazar, who is now working as Rubicon's CTO. Pent-up demand for "disrupting" the waste management system seems, naturally, pretty high, and Rubicon's co-founder / CEO Nate Morris seems assured of the app's success: “We know from the past that when technology competes against brick-and-mortar assets, technology wins every time.”

Tracing how your litter ends up in the ocean

2015-04-03T17:55:00-04:00

Even on a dry day, tens of millions of gallons of dirty water dumps into the ocean through the region’s vast storm drain system. The 3,500-mile network was designed and built to empty streets of rainwater, but tons of litter also flow into the ocean through the intricate system of curbside drainages, underground channels, pumps and creeks. Stormwater pollution puts beach swimmers at risk, particularly after it rains. Marine animals and plants can also get sick or die

This is a really fascinating piece that attempts to trace how a cigarette butt flicked into a gutter in Bel Air could make its way across LA and end up in the ocean via Marina del Rey. Visualizations like this feel important because, while we may notice signs on the sides of the sidewalk saying that the gutter leads to the ocean, it's difficult for the individual to comprehend the complex way in which they participate in a problem like marine pollution.

For a more specifically architectural perspective on this issue, check out Architecture of the Anthropocene, Pt. 1.