What if we could weaponize air conditioning units to help pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere instead? According to a new paper in Nature Communications, it’s feasible.
Using technology currently in development, AC units in skyscrapers and even your home could get turned into machines that not only capture CO2, but transform the stuff into a fuel for powering vehicles that are difficult to electrify, like cargo ships.
— CityLab
“Air conditioning,” Eva Horn once wrote, “is one of the oldest dreams of mankind. It means creating a world without heat or cold, rain or snow, without suffocating humidity or dusty winds.” However, when considering the challenges facing the current era, air conditioning yields a... View full entry
On top of being known as a man of architecture and a man of letters, Le Corbusier can now also be known as a man of photography. View of Charles IV Bridge, toward castle, Prague, May 1911. Photo by Le Corbusier.LC Foto, a book released by Lars Müller Publishers, is an archive of the architect's... View full entry
Los Angeles is a cornucopia of sites and experiences. However, beyond the city's experiential characteristics it's also home to an elaborate collection of historical landmarks and structures. This week the Los Angeles Conservancy announced its 2019 Preservation Award Recipients. The selected... View full entry
Orange, mango, strawberry, lime. If an apartment could be said to be bursting with fruit flavor it would be this three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district, renovated by Adam Nathaniel Furman, a British architectural designer, for a pair of very adventurous clients over the past two years. — The New York Times
Adam Nathaniel Furman has recently completed a spectacular new renovation for an adventurous couple's apartment in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district. Interior of apartment, designed by Adam Nathaniel Furman. Photo by Jan Vranovsky.The renovation is significant for its novel use of colors, textures... View full entry
Architect and urban designer Matthew Frederick states in his book, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, "architects are late bloomers. Most architects do not hit their professional stride until around age 50!" Taking Frederick's statement into consideration how does age play into an... View full entry
A colourful mural of a 35m-tall tree in Mexico City is one of three environmentally friendly new public works made using Airlite paint, which purifies polluted air in a process similar to photosynthesis.
[...] the mural aims to increase oxygen levels in one of the western hemisphere’s most polluted cities, where ozone concentration levels remain high despite government regulations on fuel and cars.
— The Art Newspaper
Image courtesy of Boa Mistura."Airlite paint chemically reacts with pollutants in the air, turning them into inert compounds," reports The Art Newspaper. "The roughly 1,000 sq. m mural should neutralise the same amount of pollution created by around 60,000 vehicles a year."The artists responsible... View full entry
Following World War I, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) was tasked with the design of standard kitchens for a new housing project by city planner and architect Ernst May. The Great War left rubble and a desperate housing shortage in its wake, but it also opened the way for new ideas and new designs. — Citylab
Prior to World War II, the only homes to have complete kitchen spaces also typically had servants to make use of them, while apartments and tenement housing rarely had space for a room purely dedicated to cooking. The kitchen, in other words, was a luxury before a plan to make it more standard and... View full entry
When bad things happen, we look around for someone to blame. And when it comes to gentrification, which is loosely defined as somebody not like you moving into your neighborhood, there’s no shortage of things to blame. — City Observatory
Depending on where you live it isn't difficult to notice specific changes happening within your neighborhood. From trendy housing developments, boutique shops, and independent cafes gentrification affects more than a neighborhood's curb appeal. A buzzword many have become familiar with these... View full entry
In the 1960s, Walter Maria Förderer designed eight churches in Switzerland and Germany. Influenced by Le Corbusier, and even more so by the collages of Kurt Schwitters and Gothic architecture, Förderer designed cascades of concrete blocks and strange totemic objects that now form some of Europe’s most avant-garde religious buildings. — Wallpaper
It is always a delight and a mystery when one learns of a new name to add to their account of architecture history — a delight because with their name comes new buildings, textures, contexts and drawings to discover; a mystery because their near erasure from historical canon can appear... View full entry
Everyone hates the Vessel, the stairway to nowhere for capitalism’s grifters at the heart of New York’s latest mirage of a neighborhood, Hudson Yards. Perhaps that’s why it’s so refreshing to see an observation tower that actually leads somewhere meaningful beyond an Instagram selfie frame: the Camp Adventure Observation Tower in Denmark. — Fast Company
While Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel has been a media darling (or pariah) for the last month, a similarly tall, arguably more elegant observation tower quietly popped up in a Dane forest. The Camp Adventure Forest Tower, by EffektThe Camp Adventure Forest Tower, designed by Copenhagen-based firm... View full entry
Today Sotheby's unveils its redesigned and newly-expanded gallery located in their global headquarters in New York. In collaboration with Sotheby's by Shohei Shigematsu and OMA, the redesign features updated exhibition spaces that provide optimal spatial layouts for their vast art collections... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles. (Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect profiles!)... View full entry
Even in less densely populated cities, there is a palpable sense that space is squeezed. “City populations are growing; space is finite. We need a solution to that,” says Reza Merchant, chief executive of The Collective, a UK co-living apartment operator. — Financial Times
Rather than building up, two popular responses to the housing shortage proposed by building owners have been to densify and to promote cohabitation. For consumers, escalating prices and population growth make subscribing to micro apartments and co-living situations appealing options, while for... View full entry
There is only a small handful of architects practicing today whose work can at once be described as lavish and another as altruistic - Michael Maltzan, Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma are a few of the names that come to mind. Vacation Home, by ELEMENTAL. Image via Chile Sotheby’s International... View full entry
While architecture was not taught at the school for the first half of its existence, even today we speak of “Bauhaus architecture” and feel confident that we know precisely what that means — even though, often, what we call “Bauhaus” has no connection to the school at all. — The New York Times
100 years after the inauguration of the famed Bauhaus school, we must still be reminded of some of its most essential principles. Namely, Barry Bergdoll admonishes, the Bauhaus was never a 'style' - it was a school of thought that advocated for the abolition of distinctions between the various... View full entry