Archinect - News

Pioneering UC Berkeley professor Sim Van der Ryn dies aged 89

2024-11-18T16:06:00-05:00

Dutch architect Sim Van der Ryn, a pioneer of green architecture and a longtime professor at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, has died at age 89 according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He will be remembered for his experimental teaching methods and approach to designing buildings as ecological systems, both of which later became widely accepted as either field looked to embrace sustainability as its new baseline standard.

Van der Ryn's memorial page on the CED's website also credits his work with Murray Silverstein as leading the way for post-occupancy user studies. Dean Renee Y. Chow added her own context to his legacy at the school, saying: "Sim was one of the people who laid the foundation for CED’s ongoing commitment to resilience and environmental equity. He was focused on how to build in environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, socially just ways long before 'sustainability' was even a term in the architectural lexicon. His influence, on Berkeley and beyo...

DOCOMOMO prepares for coming decade as 1970s architecture turns 50

2020-08-31T15:23:00-04:00

With the start of another decade comes the opportunity to highlight a new crop of historic architecture. Many who haven taken part over recent years in the sometimes insufferable debates over the merits of Brutalism, or in earlier conversations arguing for the legitimacy of midcentury modern architecture, will perhaps find a new conversation piece: Architecture from the 1970s.

As the 1970s themselves turn 50 years old, the age that is typically allows for buildings to be considered "historic" from a legal and regulatory perspective, architecture from this era is due for a lengthy reconsideration.

Writing for Docomomo US, Flora Chou, a Senior Associate and Cultural Resources Planner for Page & Turnbull's Los Angeles office, explains that "like the previous decades, there will be places from the 1970s that are important and worthy of preservation. Our eyes and personal tastes will gradually adjust to see the beauty in what many now consider to be outdated, ugly, and mundane."

"We are ...

Former head of Gehry Technologies picked to lead Rensselaer's Center for Architecture Science and Ecology

2020-02-11T15:05:00-05:00

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Upstate New York has named Dennis Shelden as the new director for the school's Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE).

According to a press release announcing the selection, Shelden will head "a boundary-pushing organization at a critical moment for the future of the human-made environment" tasked with bringing together intellectual leaders in the worlds of architecture, science, and business "to collaborate on innovation and implementation of next-generation sustainable built environments."

The center maintains two locations, one in Troy where the Rensselaer is located, and another in Brooklyn. Text on the CASE website describes the work of the center as focused on accelerating "a more aggressively experimental process that leads to development of new systems that produce a paradigm shift in the way that our future cities metabolize energy, water, and resources."

Shelden comes to New York following a recent tenure at the Georgia I...

North American bird populations are in crisis

2019-09-20T18:19:00-04:00

new research published Thursday in Science shows bird populations have continued to plummet in the past five decades, dropping by nearly three billion across North America—an overall decline of 29 percent from 1970.

Reflective, glass-skinned buildings are responsible for the deaths of over 1 billion birds each year in the United States. According to the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), buildings are the second-deadliest human-linked cause of death for birds; Only domestic cats kill a higher number of birds every year.

ABC bird experts recommend minimizing the amount of reflective glass used along building facades, avoiding the use of glass handrails and balustrades along balconies, and limiting artificial lighting at night to not confuse nocturnal migrating birds. When glass is necessary, the group recommends specifying architectural glass marked with fritted patterns and designing screens to break up expanses of glass, among many other approaches.

ZHA designs Alai, an ecologically-sensitive residential complex in the Mayan Riviera

2017-05-17T13:36:00-04:00

The Mayan Riviera has had a rapid increase of visitors each year—over 10% annually—and its residential population has almost doubled since 2000. In fact, it has more international visitors than any other region in Latin America. While great for the economy, this influx can have a negative effect on the region’s ecology.

Zaha Hadid Architects have designed Alai, a complex of residential buildings that marry “ecological considerations, engaging design and a reinterpretation of local architectural tradition.” Alai is sited on a plot of land previously prepped for a building never completed.

By limiting the total footprint of all residential buildings to 7% of the site, the design reduces its environmental impact and the vegetation to remain largely intact. An onsite botanical nursery is intended to aid the restoration of biodiversity that was disturbed by the previous owner. There’s also a woodland reserve and a coastal wetland restoration project.

The residential buildings themselves are...

Nothing constant but change in The Open Workshop's "Malleable Monuments"

2017-03-16T17:33:00-04:00

With a stated goal of "reconciling and choreographing how the human and environmental subject and their individual, transforming, ephemeral, and often contradictory characteristics continuously recompose a permanent work," The Open Workshop's Malleable Monuments exhibition is a tour of three years worth of work by the Toronto/San Francisco-based collective.

Photo by Abraham Chan

With projects including consulting on the redesign of Bruce Mau's office and accolades like the Architectural League of New York Young Architects Prize and the Emerging Leaders Award from Design Intelligence, The Open Workshop is building a solid reputation while delving into the ephemeral. With taxonomic drawings divided into four categories (Frameworks, Living Archives, Articulated Surfaces, and Rewiring States), the exhibition also investigates its constantly evolving territory through two large installations.

Photo by Abraham Chan

The exhibition,...

Now that the feds have abandoned reality, enter this competition to keep the SF Bay Area from flooding

2017-01-26T15:13:00-05:00

Prompted by the success of a similar competition it ran in New York several years ago, The Rockefeller Foundation has launched a completely Ben-Carson-HUD-free contest that challenges architects and urban planners to "imagine climate change solutions" for the San Francisco Bay Area. Opening for submissions in April, "The Bay Area: Resilient by Design Challenge" will have two phases. According to NextCity:

In the first, teams will participate in a three-month “exploratory research and community engagement period to develop initial design concepts for specific sites,” according to the release. The second will be a “collaborative five-month intensive design phase” in which teams will work with residents, businesses, community-based organizations and local politicians. Because three Bay Area cities (Oakland, San Francisco and Berkeley) are already part of another climate change adaptation effort, Rockefeller's 100 Resilient Cities, the two projects will collaborate.

...

"Poissy Galore" artfully frames green public space on the banks of the Seine

2017-01-05T13:27:00-05:00

Situated in Carrière-Sous-Poissy in France along the River Seine, "Poissy Galore" by Armengaud Armengaud Cianchetta (AAC) and Herlach Hartmann Frommenwiler (HHF) is designed primarily as an ecological public space for both Parisian residents and far-flung visitors. Consisting of an observatory, an insect museum and a visitor center, the project title is an apt play on the James Bond film, both in terms of its expansiveness and playfulness. The inventive timber construction and visually arresting angular framing is as much a part of the project's allure as its nuanced integration into its 113 hectare site.

As the architects explain, "With the exception of the observatory, which is a steel construction, the collection of pavilions and small 'follies' is based on a modular wood system, repeating and combining different sized and angled timber frames."

In addition to the public spaces, the project also has private offices and storage, including facilities to raise insects.

The latest in F...

Modular Cricket Pod Lets You Create An Urban Insect Farm

2016-05-02T18:40:00-04:00

Walking up to the Cricket Shelter—a new tent-like structure sitting on a dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard—it might not immediately be obvious that it's full of bugs. But inside pods lining the walls, the prototype is raising 22,000 crickets. Why? To eat, of course.

Terreform ONE has been working on combining food and shelter to solve the United Nations challenge on world hunger.

Glen Small gets podcasted by the Urban Homesteaders at Root Simple

2016-02-05T00:00:00-05:00

In seventies I would ask the architects if they were doing anything ecological with their work and they wold turn around and say who is this guy get him out of here...

Mr Homegrown interviews Glen Small.