Archinect - News

Archinect Field Trip: Solar Decathlon 2013, Basking in Arrays of Energy Efficiency

2013-10-15T15:28:00-04:00

Plopped down on a former Marine Corp air station in the geographic middle of Orange County, nineteen solar-powered model homes line the runway to be judged in the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2013 Solar Decathlon. For its first year held away from the National Mall in Washington D.C., the Solar Decathlon was staged in Irvine’s Great Park, which while being an abandoned airstrip surrounded by farmland, housing developments and dirt, purports to be the “first major metropolitan park of the 21st century”. For ten days, collegiate teams from around the world showcased their houses for public tours and competition in ten categories that grade affordability, marketability, design and energy efficiency. Each team has architects and engineers (sometimes from multiple schools) collaboratively design and build a fully functional solar-powered home for their chosen environment.

What does the Department of Energy do with these winning designs once the competition is over? Anticlimactically, most ...

Editor's Picks #317

2013-05-28T19:03:00-04:00

In the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect interviewed Larraine Henning who is currently seeking funding for A Practical Guide to Squatting on Indiegogo. @bawshaw commented "@LandMass - agreed. although the thesis is interesting, this is not out of the box in terms of a career"...Yet Connely Farr disagreed "@ LandMass - yep. you sound like an ass".

In the latest edition of Working out of the Box: Archinect interviewed Larraine Henning who is currently seeking funding for A Practical Guide to Squatting on Indiegogo. Buy a copy of the book “A Practical Guide to Squatting”, and help support independent art and promote the squatting movement! During the interview, she reflected "I think the most valuable thing architecture school bestowed upon me was tolerance and persistence...School taught me to bear conviction and purpose with whatever project I take on, to be earnest and to take judgement in stride"...

@bawshaw commented "@LandMass - agreed. although the thesis is interesting, this is not out of the box in terms of a career. half of my graduating class ended up taking similar paths; more as a product of the recession than anything else. these paths may be alternative to the modern career, but not to architecture specifically. i do applaud her for doing what she believes in".

Yet Connely Farr disagreed "@ LandMass - yep. ...

Editor's Picks #248

2012-01-29T21:08:00-05:00

This week the U.S. Department of Energy announced the 20 collegiate teams selected to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2013 and unveiled the competition’s location, the Orange County Great Park. caffeine junkie is disheartened by the decision "This is a real miss-step in my opinion.

In New, Energy-Efficient Technologies, Part II, the latest installment of the Contours feature, Sherin Wing, turned her attention to work from two teams at MIT who are developing the next generation of photovolotaic systems using metamaterials. Regardless of these advances however, Sherin concluded "Even then, when these super PVs do come online, to confuse availability with widespread, institutionalized use is to conflate two very different issues. Making them available will be half the battle."

In the latest In Focus feature Archinect interviewed Portland-based photo artist Jim Kazanjian. He received nothing but complements for his work in the comments.

For our third and final feature this week Columbia University GSAPP Fast Forward, Jason Ivaliotis, profiles a semesters worth of work by Columbia students made using the Vray RT rendering engine for 3D Studio Max . Therein we read "The components of the course exist as three forms of the same product: (1) the interactive comp...