Archinect - News

Global heatwave is symptom of early stage cycle of civilisational collapse

2018-08-13T18:59:00-04:00

This summer’s extreme weather has hit home some stark realities. Climate disaster is not slated to happen in some far-flung theoretical future. It’s here, and now.

Penned by Nafeez Ahmed, investigative journalist, recovering academic, tracking the Crisis of Civilization, the article points to a more urgent than urgent times in terms of civilisation and not merely the climate change.

Also an urgent quote from a friend internalizing the article for architecture, "I am surprised that with contemporary conditions that require a radical re-orientation and re-conceptualization of discipline and profession, architecture professors continue to talk about elements, tectonic, "Fundamentals", context, composition, scale, poche, sustainability... Bla,bla... Let's build a new ontology..."

-Alex Santander, Architect. Tijuana, Mexico

Discovering a lost civilization with cutting-edge technology

2017-01-02T13:57:00-05:00

Entering the ruins was a disappointment. If the Mosquitia jungle were superimposed on Times Square, the foliage would be so thick that you would have no inkling you were in the midst of a city. Even standing at the base of an earthen pyramid in the central plaza of T1, surrounded by earthworks, terracing, and mounds, I had not the slightest idea that this was the main public space of what had once been a thriving city of thousands. Only through technology did we know our location in the ruins.

Douglas Preston discusses exploring an ancient city left untouched in the jungles of Honduras and rediscovered with LIDAR technology. The city was abandoned around 1500, devastated not by direct contact with Europeans but rather with the diseases they carried:

This inferno of contagion destroyed thousands of societies and millions of people, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from California to New England, from the Amazon rain forest to the tundra of Hudson Bay. It was the greatest catastrophe ever to befall the human species. The death of T1 was but one tile in this vast mosaic of annihilation.

Discovery adds fuel to theory of 'lost world' under Lake Huron

2012-01-10T19:16:00-05:00

The recovery of a mysterious wooden pole at the bottom of Lake Huron is fuelling excitement among U.S. and Canadian researchers that they have found more evidence of a "lost world" of North American caribou hunters from nearly 10,000 years ago.