Archinect - News

Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Peter Zellner

2015-08-27T08:46:00-04:00

Peter Zellner comes to Archinect's Dry Futures jury with a diverse architectural background, having worked for large, infrastructurally-minded firms like AECOM, while previously designing smaller-scale art spaces under his own firm, ZELLNERPLUS. In September of 2015, Peter will launch ZNc Architects with partner Paul Naecker. ZNc is a nimble, LEED accredited and NCARB certified architecture firm located in the LA Arts District.

We recently interviewed Peter at length on an episode of Archinect Sessions (listen here). Based in Los Angeles, Peter has seen the drought progress and intensify firsthand.

Peter's mindset on the drought combines experience living in the dry climates of Australia and southern California, to reflect on prior reactions (urban and not) to drought conditions. While conservation and sourcing are important, using every drop more efficiently by adopting large-scale recycling techniques will make the biggest impact on drought defense. Certain Californian municipalitie...

Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG

2015-08-26T11:50:00-04:00

Geoff Manaugh is a design and architecture writer, contributing to publications such as Dwell, New Scientist and The New Yorker, as well as authoring several books and the long-running design and architecture site, BLDGBLOG.

Manaugh’s perspective on the drought focuses on the ripe opportunities for improving California’s remarkably inefficient, and in some ways, “undesigned” water systems, extending from its physical infrastructures to the economic market for buying and selling water rights. “I think that the actual pragmatic, ecosystem-based solutions to this – as well as the rethinking of agriculture on a statewide basis, as well as individual water use – I think is something that is really exciting and interesting about this contest.”

In collaboration with Smout Allen Architectural & Design Research, Manaugh will be participating at the Chicago Architecture Biennial this fall.

Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition!

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Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Ian Quate and Colleen Tuite of GRNASFCK

2015-08-24T14:48:00-04:00

Ian Quate and Colleen Tuite are the co-founders of “nomadic landscape architecture studio” GRNASFCK, based in New York City. The two began collaborating as graduate students at RISD in 2011, bringing Quate’s knowledge of botany and landscape architecture together with Tuite’s art practice background to focus on “the geologic past and speculative future”. Tuite is currently an independent art practitioner and Quate works as a designer for Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

Their work under GRNASFCK is not that of an average landscape architecture firm, instead focusing on “unsettling easy or comfortable ideas about the relationship between architecture and ecology” – and their approach to the drought is no different. Their critical focus on geological time frames California’s drought as unique in the historical context of human civilization, where the overwhelming tendency in dealing with droughts is to simply up and leave.

From GRNASFCK's position on the opposite side of the coun...

Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Jay Famiglietti of NASA

2015-08-23T09:46:00-04:00

The drought is more of a climatological phenomenon, but it’s important to recognize that we need to sustain available groundwater to help us get through these periods of very little rain and snow.”

As the senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jay Famiglietti has been studying groundwater depletion globally since 1995. With his team at JPL, Famiglietti has tracked freshwater availability using satellites and developed computer models to better understand how supplies are changing.

While human water consumption draws on many sources, we rely particularly heavily on groundwater during droughts. As periods of minimal rain and snow will continue to occur, Famiglietti stresses the importance of the broader public understanding how water systems work, and how different supply chains intersect: “I think [the drought’s] really underscored the need for communication … to really help people understand where their water comes from, and those supplies can either be fluctuating wildly or decreasing or both.”

And just as the public can no longer be indifferent to water usage, the architecture profession must also refresh its standards of water efficiency. “Architecture a...

Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Charles Anderson of WERK

2015-08-22T09:39:00-04:00

I want to see the relationship between architecture and other infrastructure and landscape architecture strengthened, so that we’re building good infrastructure that relates well to the landscape and is sustainable.”

Charles Anderson FSLA is the president/principal of WERK, a landscape architecture firm based in what he calls “the heart of LA in a lot of ways, at least for the strange people,” Venice Beach. Living and working next to the Pacific, Anderson has seen firsthand the power and presence of the planet’s water system, and how the drought and rising sea levels, wrought by climate change, have wreaked havoc on California’s landscape.

After graduating with a Masters of Landscape Architecture from Harvard’s GSD, Anderson has worked to combine an appreciation of wild landscapes with his love of contemporary art. Respecting an area’s natural flora is a major motivation for his landscapes – California’s relatively dry biome was not meant for thirsty plants, but the landscape that's been built here has put unnecessary stresses on the region. Much can be learned from the plant life in similar climates, like Greece’s, where water simply isn’t as much of a necessity.

Aside from respecting California...

Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Hadley and Peter Arnold of the Arid Lands Institute

2015-08-21T15:50:00-04:00

There’s no such thing as the drought being over. There are only going to be cycles and our cycles, most models tell us, are only going to continue to be extreme. Wet will be wetter and dry will by drier."

Peter and Hadley Arnold are the founding co-directors of the Arid Lands Institute, a design-centered research platform devoted to making drylands "water-smart" the world over. Based in Los Angeles out of Woodbury University, ALI uses the American West as a case study for developing adaptive strategies to changing water systems and accessibility, as brought on by climate change.

Both Peter and Hadley earned MArchs from SCI-Arc, and have set their focus on dryland research and design since the late 1990s. Their approach to the drought is pragmatic, not alarmist: “The drought’s been handy because it’s brought an enormous amount of attention to that particular dimension of a changing climate and our need to adapt to it,” Hadley told Archinect.

Their work will continue regardless of the drought, but the increased public attention does help focus the public around water issues, especially in a region woefully unprepared to deal with a future where "wet will be wetter and dry will be drier"....

Meet the jury of Archinect's "Dry Futures" competition: Allison Arieff of SPUR

2015-08-20T18:20:00-04:00

Allison Arieff is the editorial director of SPUR, an urban planning advocacy non-profit based in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. Known in full as San Francisco Planning and Urban Research, SPUR is primarily focused on improving urban planning efforts and policy in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are excited and honored to have Allison as a jury member for our Dry Futures competition.

Previous to her role at SPUR, Allison served as editor in chief at Dwell magazine, which she helped found back in 2000. She is also a contributing writer to the Atlantic’s CityLab, the New York Times and SPUR’s The Urbanist.

Her work with SPUR and Dwell have brought popular attention to sustainable design initiatives and policy, and as a resident of San Francisco, she is well aware of the strains the drought has put on the state. But based on her work with local government and planning officials, she's also seen time and time again how inefficient or straight-up nonexistent our laws regarding water co...