Archinect - News

Derek Hoeferlin wins inaugural Designing Resilience in Asia International Competition

2017-08-31T15:19:00-04:00

Derek Hoeferlin, associate professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, along with research assistants Jess Vanecek and Rob Birch, both master’s degree candidates in the Sam Fox School, has won first prize in the inaugural Designing Resilience in Asia International Open Competition.

Sponsored by the School of Design and Environment of the National University of Singapore, the competition asked participants to propose innovative water solutions to the challenges of climate change at the urban planning, urban design, architecture, building technology and industrial design scales.

Hoeferlin’s submission, titled “From the Third Pole to the Nine Dragons,” outlines a simple, two-part toolkit that would enable communities within the Mekong River Basin to holistically understand how local threats and adaptations relate to broader river basin-scaled issues — a concept that Hoeferlin defines as “watershed architecture.”

The ju...

The logistics of building NASA's carbon-dioxide insulated, "Ice Home" on Mars

2017-01-03T13:04:00-05:00

If you don't think you can handle another year on Earth, the possibility of dwelling comfortably on another planet is closer than you might expect. After announcing a winning design from Clouds Architecture Office and Space Exploration Architecture last October, NASA has released more detailed logistical plans for building a carbon dioxide insulated, ice-filled exterior home that could be assembled by robots in preparation for human habitation. The design uses naturally occurring resources found on Mars and predicts that with the planet's estimated daily water extraction rate, it would take about 400 days for the exterior to be filled with water. As the article notes:

The “Mars Ice Home” is a large inflatable torus, a shape similar to an inner tube, which is surrounded by a shell of water ice. The Mars Ice Home design has several advantages that make it an appealing concept. It is lightweight and can be transported and deployed with simple robotics, then filled with water before the...

Carlo Ratti Associati designs a floating plaza at West Palm Beach letting visitors walk on (and beneath) water

2016-11-03T14:25:00-04:00

Using some of the same design techniques used for responsive air chambers in submarines, Carlo Ratti Associati has designed a floating plaza/mixed retail center that will float on and adapt to the water level depending on how many people are currently walking on it. The plaza, which is linked to land via a comprehensive masterplan on the coast of Lake Worth Lagoon, will also include housing (whose property values will hopefully never be underwater). The plaza will also feature "an organic restaurant with its own hydroponic cultivations," making it a potentially self-sustaining enterprise.

The inventive use of underwater vessel technology is, to director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founding partner Carlo Ratti, an entirely new way of conceiving architecture. Ratti describes his project as "carving" into the water. He goes on to say that “with this project, we aim to reclaim West Palm Beach’s connection to the natural elements that surroun...