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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in partnership with Architects Declare, has announced the program for the Built Environment Summit 2021, a two-day, partially in-person conference taking place on October 28 and 29, 2021. The event comes following the publication of RIBA and... View full entry
The director and speculative architect Liam Young has launched a new project, speculating on the future of urbanism within the context of climate change and urban sprawl. The project, titled Planet City, presents a future world in which urban sprawl is reversed, and humanity retreats to one... View full entry
In advance of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) taking place in Glasgow, Scotland in November 2021, the UK Green Building Council has announced 17 sustainable projects to be displayed in an online exhibition. The exhibition, titled Build Better Now, will take place in virtual reality, and... View full entry
Cities with the worst exposure to coastal flooding in the coming decades are overwhelmingly located in Asia, according to a comprehensive analysis by leading climate scientists, with port cities in India and China particularly vulnerable. — CNBC
An international team of research scientists from the US OECD and UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, among others, has found that Asian cities are now disproportionately susceptible to flooding owing to migration patterns and a host of other environmental dangers included in... View full entry
But where cities are succeeding, they’re finding that electrifying public transit can solve more than just climate problems. It can clean the air, reduce traffic jams and, ideally, make getting around town easier for ordinary people, which is why some politicians have staked their reputations on revamping transit. In many cases, city governments have been able to take climate action faster than their national governments. — The New York Times
The effort to reduce car traffic mirrors those taking shape in U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco. The cost of doing so has in a way become its own problem, as the infrastructure required to support expansive EV fleets in large metropolitan areas has proven to be a challenge for many of... View full entry
New York is aiming to ban the sale of all gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. A bill amending the state's environmental conservation law was passed by the state's Senate and Assembly and signed by Governor Kathy Hochul last week. — CBS News
At the start of this month, Assembly Bill A4302 was signed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, which would require that all in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks have zero emissions by 2035. The law also requires that all medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold in New York be emission-free... View full entry
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been formally awarded the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize at a special ceremony which took place on September 14th. The French architects were announced as recipients of the prestigious prize in March in recognition of their contribution to the built... View full entry
Known as the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA), the legislation requires New York to set an emissions standard for concrete used in public works.
If Governor Kathy Hochul signs the bill into law, New York will become one of the first states in the country to start cleaning up this highly polluting sector of the economy.
— New York Focus
The proposed law would be the first of its kind in New York and would place the state in league with New Jersey and Colorado, which just passed a similar measure aimed at reducing emissions by 90% within thirty years. Cement is the basis of traditional concrete mixes and currently accounts for an... View full entry
Across the country, the average airport terminal is more than 40 years old and further challenged by the growth of air travel. Denver International, for example, opened in 1995 with capacity for 50 million fliers; in 2019, it handled more than 69 million. — The New York Times
Airports have been argued over by various names representing differing views from varied places in the architectural community. Norman Foster recently told Bloomberg he felt the impacts of air travel have to be considered in relation to other primary drivers of climate change. The movement to make... View full entry
The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to have the Department of Water and Power transition to 100% renewable energy by 2035, as well as develop a long-term hiring plan for nearly 10,000 “green” jobs. The 2035 deadline is a decade earlier than the city’s previous goal. — Los Angeles Daily News
The plan was passed in a 12-0 vote. It also tasks the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to report every six months on the transition to renewable energy to the City Council’s Energy, Climate Change, Environmental Justice and River Committee. In March, the city of Los Angeles... View full entry
I would argue that everything has a footprint, and in relative terms, the carbon footprint of air travel is relatively small. That does not mean it shouldn’t be addressed, but I do feel passionately that we have to address the infrastructure of mobility. — Bloomberg
Norman Foster's airport projects have drawn in an increasing amount of business for the 54-year-old firm in the last two decades. Foster went as far last year as to withdraw the firm from Architects Declare, the group his firm joined the year prior to promote a broader set of climate change... View full entry
As the fallout of Hurricane Ida comes into focus in both the Gulf Coast region and the Atlantic Northeast, one area of chronic concern has become ground zero for planning gaps that are increasingly deadly indicators of race and class in cities that number among the most expensive in the world. The... View full entry
Vertical living may not be the most environmentally friendly way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Colorado, Edinburgh Napier University, and the University of Cambridge. The study, published in the... View full entry
Furniture and interiors giant IKEA has announced that it is branching into selling renewable energy to households, beginning with its Swedish market in September 2021. Titled STRÖMMA, the scheme will operate as a monthly electricity subscription that allows people to source energy from wind and... View full entry
On July 24, 2021, the AIA California Board of Directors officially declared a climate emergency to immediately accelerate the de-carbonization of the built environment. This action calls on each of us to make immediate and meaningful impacts in our profession, it enables AIA CA to move rapidly and boldly to influence public policy, and it challenges other organizations to join us in recognizing the importance of climate action and the immediacy of the issue. — AIA California
Wildfires have dominated the news cycle for three of the last four fire seasons. Architects all over the state have been proffering solutions ranging from ICFing homes to fireproof prefabricated Quonset huts. The AIA declaration comes on the heels of the UN’s devastating Climate Action... View full entry
