News

Sky1, reports back from day two of the University of Toronto's Out of Water conference. The conference prompted sky1 to write It seems the gap between academia and real-world development even today in the world of integrated design, is unbridgeable. While some extremely intelligent people are brilliantly envisioning alternative futures for urban development, highly conscious of limited natural resources- in this case water- but ignoring the complexity of the economies behind their execution, others are busy developing instant-money generating yet environmentally responsible forms of urban development, decorated by solar panels and energy saving strategies. Who should be the one apologizing really?

UC Berkeley Prof. Ronald Rael of Oakland-based Rael San Fratello Architects has developed a proposal, Border Wall as Infrastructure. With the proposal Professor Rael seeks to do something intelligent, something incredible? I envision not just a ‘dumb wall,’ but a social infrastructure that connects and improves lives on both sides For more information see link.

Norwegian practice A-lab won the open international ideas competition on climate efficient urban development on Furuset area in Oslo. The project goal is to condense the suburb Furuset i Groruddalen outside Oslo with 2,500 new homes and 1,500 new workspaces, and to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2030.

The Animal Architecture Awards were just added to Bustler's list of upcoming competitions. Animal Architecture invites your critical and unpublished essays and projects to address how architecture can mediate and encourage multiple new ways of species learning and benefiting from each other – or as we say it here: to illustrate cospecies coshaping.

School Blogs

Now that just screams FAT doesn't it? At least more than this one.

Lian at Harvard's GSD live-blogged Ryue Nishizawa's lecture at MIT. This lead to a small discussion re: non-native language lectures and the tension between a straight forward vs theory heavy lecture and Q+A. Is their an obvious innocence" to SANAA's work and design process that is transparent or can it be interrogated?

Anthony Columbia University GSAPP just had his 3/4 review and for his thesis will be designing a book decomposition factory in the mid-manhattan library and examining urban strategies and applying it to a building.

Matthew at University of Illinois Chicago provided bit more info on the Department of Urban Speculation and describes their current project on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the UBS 12x12 exhibition.

Stephanie Kunstacademiets Arkitektskole continues the discussion from last week which started in the comments of her last post regarding words vs visuals. She writes What I would like to see more in design schools is the encouragement of students to clarify their ideas through writing.

Shannon at University of Manitoba has finally deconstructed their house/thesis project enough that Daylight and black out coexist for the first time in our images

Discussion Threads
sevensixfive wants to talk about how the artist Ai Weiwei was taken into custody last sunday, and his studio has been raided by Chinese police: Specifically 765 is interested in what others think, here at what feels like a transitional moment, of Weiwei's relationship to architecture? Especially given the explicit hopes voiced by many western architects in the first half of the last decade, that bringing new form to China would help engender the emergence of new social structures?

changeup11 is looking for the pros and cons of starting a career abroad.

St. George's Fields is curious if there are Any precedents out there (other than the Russian Pavilion at the World Expo) using gold leaf in modern and contemporary architecture?

pass_mal wants to talk grey and black water recycling.

Additionally
Amanda Levete talks about her 'spectacular failures', and also her many thrilling triumphs with Stuart Jeffries.