Historic England is taking action as preservation advocates in the country prepare for what could be a seminal decision that might alter the face of building conservation in the UK for years to come. More than 50% of the country's historic department stores have reportedly closed since... View full entry
Electric car company Polestar has overseen the construction of KOJA, a treehouse designed by Finnish designer Kristian Talvitie which they say balances architectural beauty with a commentary on the climate emergency. KOJA. Image © Polestar Originally awarded an honorable mention at the... View full entry
The timing couldn’t be more urgent. As Lang notes, 80% of the buildings projected to exist in 2050, the year of the UN’s net zero carbon emissions target, have already been built. The critical onus on architects and developers, therefore, is to retrofit, reuse and reimagine our existing building stock, making use of the “embodied carbon” that has already been expended, rather than contributing to escalating emissions with further demolition and new construction. — The Guardian
Tonkin Liu’s Stephen Lawrence Prize-winning Water Tower project is cited as one of many examples of the growing influence of adaptive reuse in the market as evangelized in Ruth Lang’s new book Building for Change, which is due out in September from the German publisher Gestalten. In a... View full entry
A group of 49 arts institutions has been awarded a total of $3 million in clean energy grants as part of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI), now in its second year. The Initiative is part of a larger $10 million effort being developed along with RMI and... View full entry
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has announced an ambitious new city-wide plan that would eliminate the use of fossil fuels in new developments and major renovations in an effort to take "every possible step to climate action." If passed, the Home Rule Petition to the state’s new Bill H.5060 would make... View full entry
Researchers from the American Chemical Society have developed solar panels that can take on a range of colors without sacrificing their efficiency, improving their attractiveness and, thus, their marketability. As the popularity of solar panels has grown, their application isn’t... View full entry
Last month, we used our Job Highlights series to profile an opportunity to design rural getaways at the full-service Brooklyn studio HUTS. The role offered an example of architectural careers intersecting with popular culture; in this case, the alluring cliché of leaving a bustling city to find... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Microsol Resources With the passing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), expectations about the infrastructure sector in the U.S. have heightened. That legislation will be both a boon to the sector, but it also has the potential to exacerbate the... View full entry
A new report from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has outlined the potential impacts and trade benefits of the provisions included in the Biden Administration’s recently passed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, that is set to be signed into law in the coming days. The $... View full entry
California Governor Gavin Newsom has unveiled a new plan to enable the state to secure its water supply in the face of a hotter, drier climate. The strategy is in response to a prediction that California’s existing water supply could diminish by up to 10% by 2040, the equivalent of losing more... View full entry
Researchers from Flinders University’s Chalker Research Lab have developed a more sustainable alternative to making bricks by using waste products. The team used low-cost feedstocks to make lightweight but durable polymer building blocks, which can be bonded together with an... View full entry
Industry groups are applauding lawmakers after the passage of the Biden Administration’s recently proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, pointing to its more than $5 billion in provisions they say are “critical” to enacting climate change-related policies and modernizing... View full entry
Environmentalist blog Treehugger has published an exchange between the author of an anonymous new Twitter manifesto that outlines in 25 points the need to combat the capitalistic notion that endless growth is the only option for modern industrial societies. Patrik Schumacher and... View full entry
The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture's Materials Lab and Interior Design Program have been awarded a $60,000 grant from the Angelo Donghia Foundation. The money will be used to reimagine how students learn about materials by reframing the Materials Lab’s existing collection... View full entry
Chicago’s steel-framed architectural identity may be about to change thanks to the reintroduction of mass timber as the primary building material in a new 9-story tower designed by local studio Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture for developer Sterling Bay. Noted in a report from... View full entry
