Archinect - News

Milan and Costa Rica among winners of the inaugural Earthshot Prize

2021-10-18T19:27:00-04:00

The Duke of Cambridge appeared in apt attire last night as he announced the first slate of winners of his newly-launched Earthshot Prize celebrating innovations in the ongoing fight against climate change.

The city of Milan was among the five inaugural winners of the prize, which is the brainchild of Prince William and famed British naturalist television presenter Sir David Attenborough. Awards were given out across five separate categories each with a £1 million ($1.37 million) prize.

Image courtesy Earthshot Prize

The Italian city won in the ‘Build a Waste-Free World’ category for its food waste scheme that can recover around 350 kg of food a day from supermarkets and restaurant venues and redistribute it to the city’s different areas of need.

Image courtesy Earthshot Prize

Costa Rica took home the inaugural ‘Protect & Restore Nature’ award for a Ministry of Environment program begat in the late 90s that pays citizens to plant trees and eventually help restore the country’s greate...

Shohei Shigematsu of OMA reveals Miami Beach's first underwater sculptural park and artificial reef, The ReefLine

2020-11-20T13:50:00-05:00

Shohei Shigematsu of OMA announces the firm's upcoming project, the ReefLine, in collaboration with cultural placemaker Ximena Caminos. Leading the project's masterplan and structural design will be Shigematsu and his team, while Caminos will lead as its artistic director.

Known for its high-end coastal amenities and luxury living, the project seems like a fitting attraction to add to Miami's growing list of "must-sees" aiming to entertain as well as inform.

Image courtesy of OMA

The first of its kind in Miami Beach, the 7-mile park and artificial reef aims to "protect and serve Miami's marine life and coastal resilience efforts." Set to be completed in phases, the design team plans for the project's first mile to open in December 2021.

The first phase will open with permanent installations by Argentine conceptual artist Leandro Erlich (b. 1973) and Shohei Shigematsu/OMA. Image and text courtesy of OMA

"Erlich will create an underwater incarnation of his popular sand-sculpted “tra...

Can a commute be beautiful? These colorful rendered maps show us they can

2018-12-05T20:25:00-05:00

Everyone can relate to daily commutes. Whether it's fifteen minutes or an hour, infrastructures in various cities dictate how transportation affects our daily lives. Through the use of data visualization, Craig Taylor, Data Visualization Design Manager at ITO World uses color and form to portray commute distances in an artistically beautiful way.

A project that depicts city infrastructure in a whole new light, Taylor blends art, urban planning, and science together to create beautifully rendered images of street networks in 40 major cities. The project appropriately called, Coral Cities, showcases how far one can travel by car 30 minutes from the center of major cities across the globe. Growing from the inside out, the visual depiction of city infrastructures resembles the form of growing coral.

Depending on the geological features of the city, each "Coral City" is unique to its region. According...

The scientists trying to assist evolution and breed "super-coral"

2016-04-15T12:47:00-04:00

“A lot of people want to go back to something,” [said Ruth Gates]. “They think, If we just stop doing things, maybe the reef will come back to what it was. [...] Our project is acknowledging that a future is coming where nature is no longer fully natural.” [...] The power of selective breeding is all around us. Dogs, cats, cows, chickens, pigs [...] But the super-coral project pushes into new territory. Already there’s a term for this sort of effort: assisted evolution.

“'In the food supply, in our pets, you name it—everywhere you turn, selectively bred stuff appears,' Gates observed. 'For some reason, in the framework of conservation—or an ecosystem that would be preserved by conservation—it seems like a radical idea. But it’s not like we’ve invented something new. It’s hilarious, really, when you think about it.'”

As the world heats up, seas begin to rise, and farmland goes dry, our inherited ideas of "nature" are put under pressure. Here's some Archinect-exclusive features on unnatural nature and other aspects of life in the Anthropocene: