Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
“We are simply not making significant strides in crucial metrics that predict building performance,” states Greg Mella, FAIA, Director of Sustainable Design at SmithGroupJJR and co-chair of the AIA 2030 Working Group, in a new report that gauges the progress made by firms voluntarily... View full entry
The building sector has a uniquely intimate relationship to global warming. One the one hand, cities consume 78% of the world’s energy and are responsible for more than 60% of global carbon emissions; building maintenance accounts for nearly 50% of energy usage and construction is one of the... View full entry
Gasoline-powered cars may soon be a thing of the past. But the Netherlands wants to get there quicker.
The Dutch government is debating the possibility of banning new gas and diesel cars from 2025. The initial proposal, which was brought forward by the Labor Party, called for an outright ban of all petrol and diesel cars, but was eventually modified so the ban only affected the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. Traditional cars already in use will still run on the streets.
— Quartz
The proposal has since passed in the lower house of the Netherlands’ parliament. It now needs to pass through the Dutch senate.In related news:Faraday Future holds groundbreaking ceremony for $1B Nevada factoryThe "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard... View full entry
The residents of the northern Alaskan village of Shishmaref are currently voting to decide whether or not to relocate their village. As global warming brings up temperatures, the sea ice that once protected the village has begun to melt. Now the town, which is built on a barrier island in the... View full entry
As our planet grows warmer over our lifetimes, the number of cities that will be cool enough to reasonably host the summer games is going to rapidly dwindle. And that doesn’t just mean Atlanta or L.A. According to an analysis published in The Lancet last week...only three plausible host cities in the entire continent of North America may still be low risk by 2085 (or the summer games of 2088): San Francisco, Calgary, and Vancouver. — FastCo.Design
There may be zero in Africa or Latin America, and only two in Asia (Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan, and Ulaanbaatar, in Mongolia).As the article notes, the really disturbing implication of this research is less about athletics and more about day-to-day work. Half the world's population works outside... View full entry
Today the highway serves as the main artery connecting the “Last Frontier” with Canada and the northwestern U.S., bringing tourists to Alaska cruise ships; food, supplies and medicine to remote towns; and equipment to oil fields and mines that are the region’s lifeblood...
“Communities are unable to reach each other, it’s harder to get goods there,” [...] Thawing permafrost isn’t “just an inconvenience, folks; it’s a change in the way of life.”
— Bloomberg
More on Archinect:Global warming is redrawing national bordersRussia considering plans for a 12,400-mile superhighway linking London and AlaskaObama changes the name of tallest mountain from Mt McKinley to DenaliWhy American infrastructure funding keeps facing such an uphill battle View full entry
Arup announced on July 25 that they would partner with TEAM V Architecture, Lingotto, Nicole Maarsen, and Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij in the construction of a 73-meter-high residential tower. With 14,500 square meters of floor space in total, the tower, named HAUT, will house 55 apartments... View full entry
The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.
One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
— the Independent
"Only on Monday, Government advisers had warned of the need to take urgent action to prepare the UK for floods, droughts, heatwaves and food shortages caused by climate change."In related news:In a surprise announcement, UK gov to provide £540m for flood protectionBritain's last deep-pit coal... View full entry
Building walls around a city is an idea that is as old as cities themselves. In the Middle Ages, walls were built to keep out invading armies. Now they are built to keep out Mother Nature. [...]
As far as walls go, the Big U is designed to be a nice one ("a wall with benefits," as one urban designer puts it). It was one of the winning proposals in Rebuild by Design, a $930 million competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development...
— Rolling Stone
The article describes New York as having more at stake when it comes to sea-level rise than any other city in the world. A bunch of islands in a coastal estuary, New York is uniquely at risk. And, as the largest financial hub in the world with some of the most expensive real estate in the country... View full entry
It was revealed earlier this month that declassified U.S. spy satellite photographs taken above the Antarctic have inadvertently also documented how that continent has been affected by climate change. In this case, deep in the archives of national intelligence agencies are satellite photos half a century old in which scientifically useful data has been hiding in plain sight. These now-outdated spy photographs have thus found an unexpected second life as important tools of planetary science... — the Atlantic
For more on the often unexpected sources of climate data, check out these links:The 700-year old climate data recorded by Japanese monksGlobal warming may be much more catastrophic (and happen much quicker) than we imaginedLast year was the warmest since (at least) 1880Architecture of the... View full entry
"Climate change is happening so fast and on such a huge scale that it's forcing us to change the borders of a country," said head of the mapping expedition, Marco Ferrari... The borders of a country are "something we always consider as stable, as a political device, the foundation of the modern state, the most sacred thing, but this huge natural transformation makes clear how disruptive and alarming these changes are," he said. — Vice
"Even the biggest and most stable things, like glaciers, mountains—these huge objects, they can change in a few years. We live on a planet that changes, and we try to make rules, to give meaning, but this meaning is completely artificial because nature, basically, doesn't give a... View full entry
What is the architecture of forward-thinking climate change? One example is the Svalbard Seed Vault, which when full will house roughly 3 million different species of plants in anticipation of a future that may be hotter, drier, or simply climatically different than the one we inhabit now.This... View full entry
Scientists think they have found a smart way to constrain carbon dioxide emissions - just turn them to stone.
The researchers report an experiment in Iceland where they have pumped CO2 and water underground into volcanic rock.
Reactions with the minerals in the deep basalts convert the carbon dioxide to a stable, immobile chalky solid.
Even more encouraging, the team writes in Science magazine, is the speed at which this process occurs: on the order of months.
— BBC
It feels rare to hear good news from the climate front these days. Here's some more:Copenhagen divests from fossil fuelsArchitect turned sea-flooding specialist keeps Panama City afloatSan Francisco to mandate solar panels for new constructionsThe scientists trying to harness the power of waves View full entry
The City of Copenhagen will pull its investments out of coal, oil and gas companies. The city council have agreed to divest the fossil fuel holdings of the city’s €920 million investment fund
[...]
"Copenhagen decided to ban investments in companies that gain more than 5 percent of their revenue from coal, oil and gas. The criteria apply to companies that engage in prospecting, extracting or refining coal, oil and gas..."
— Cities Today
Good work Danes! For other urban efforts to curb our collective fossil fuel addiction, check out these links:What the Paris Agreement means for architectureBritain's last deep-pit coal mine closes — the end of the industrial revolution?The climate is getting hotter, and we're not... View full entry
The UAE is currently in the first stage of a man-made mountain development project as the country mulls different approaches to maximising rainfall.
Experts from the US-based University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are in the “detailed modelling study” phase, as per NCAR scientist and lead researcher Roelof Bruintjes.
— Abu Dhabi 2
For more attempts to geoengineer our way out of eco-trouble, check out some past articles:New satellite images show progress in China's island-building projectScientists Propose Using Lasers to Fight Global WarmingCan cloud-seeding clear Singapore's skies?Could scientists engineer... View full entry
