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An industry leader in sustainability approaches has once again been selected for a project that will define the Minneapolis-St. Paul region in the 21st century. Buro Happold has been named the winner of the competitive RFP process for the Metropolitan Council’s Climate Action and Resilience Plan... View full entry
Jennifer Diamond, a spokeswoman for the team fighting the Caldor Fire, wasn’t sure who wrapped the Phillips Tract cabin but said she’s helped cover a historic backcountry building with foil in the past. Aside from historic buildings, firefighters might choose to wrap a remote cabin where property owners have already cut back vegetation, cut down overhanging trees and cleared roofs and gutters of debris. — The San Francisco Chronicle
The cabin was among many in the South Lake Tahoe region to adapt a temporary version of an adaptability approach that has become increasingly popular during a year that has already seen over a million acres scorched in California alone. The ongoing Caldor Fire has destroyed more than 700 homes as... View full entry
The City of Miami has published a draft of its Stormwater Master Plan; a $3.8 billion plan to be enacted over the next 40 years, seeking to mitigate the impact of rising sea levels on the city. The plan sets out a wide portfolio of measures, from stormwater pumps and sea walls to more novel... View full entry
June marks the start of hurricane season on the Atlantic Ocean. Even amidst the ravages of a novel coronavirus and state violence, the perils posed by a heating planet are not going away. If the city turned out to be woefully underprepared for a pandemic, what about measures to protect against storms and floods? — Urban Omnibus
Amy Howden-Chapman, co-founder of the climate change and arts platform The Distance Plan, takes a closer look at a variety of climate impact interventions at New York City's most endangered stretches of coastline: from Lower Manhattan and the Lower East Side, Red Hook, Rockaway Boardwalk, all... View full entry
Today's featured virtual event happenings, from Archinect's Virtual Event Guide, address issues from resiliency, mass timber, community engagement, residential design, art, public art, urban design, Palm Springs modernism and bamboo. Are you hosting a virtual lecture? Presentation?... View full entry
BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, has announced that it will use climate risk assessments and environmental sustainability as guiding metrics for how it makes investment decisions moving forward. The impact of this shift could have profound changes for the architecture and... View full entry
How can we make stronger building materials? An experiment conducted by Rice University's Brown School of Engineering explores this limit by manipulating materials like plastic, metal, and concrete to match the strength of diamonds. 3D printed blocks made at Rice University. Image... View full entry
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is studying the ways in which it can update its departmental building standards in order to make military bases and other sites less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including the increased frequency and intensity of natural... View full entry
Concerned that rising waves will flood runways and buildings in the coming years, officials at San Francisco International Airport are moving ahead with a $587 million plan to build a major new sea wall around the entire airport. — The Mercury News
Under the proposed plan, The Mercury News reports, a system of concrete walls and steel plate-supported earthen levees will take shape around the airport's 10-mile perimeter. The walls will be designed to guard against a three-foot sea level rise and five-foot storm surge. SFO is the... View full entry
We must continue to prepare for acute shocks—
events that could threaten our City’s ability to function, such as
natural disasters. We must also address chronic stresses—challenges that weaken our natural, built, or human resources, such
as income inequality and chronic homelessness. Stresses often
exacerbate the effects of shocks when they occur, particularly for
vulnerable populations.
— City of Seattle
The plan comes as Seattle, the fastest-growing city in the country, and the larger Puget Sound metropolitan region around it, prepare to nearly double in population by 2050. View full entry
The past two years have been particularly costly for insurance companies that are on the hook for billions of dollars in damage done by hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other disasters. As these disasters become more frequent and expensive, in part because of climate change, insurers are investing more in this research facility that studies how to protect homes and businesses from destructive wind, water and embers. — NPR
Opened in 2010, the IBHS Research Center offers full-scale testing of buildings and their materials under the harshest conditions. There, researchers are able to simulate Category 3 hurricanes and replicate wildfires in order to find best practices for mitigating the losses incurred by various... View full entry
Lower Manhattan could be the first to test out an innovative system that is being proposed as a way to protect cities from rising sea levels and future storms. Called “Humanhattan 2050,” a visionary idea from Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) that’s on view in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the project not only proposes new infrastructure to safeguard the waterfront for the next hundred years, it will also make these spaces more accessible and enjoyable. — Observer
Image via @BIGstertweets/Twitter.Avid Archinect readers will remember the "Humanhattan 2050" scheme from its initial iteration, BIG's 2014 Rebuild by Design competition-winning proposal "The BIG U" in response to the most devastating storm ever to hit New York, Hurricane Sandy, and the need for... View full entry
The Community Resilience Panel for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems was created by the Obama administration in 2015 within the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. Its chairman, Jesse Keenan, told members at a meeting Monday that its charter was being dissolved and that meeting would be its last. — Bloomberg
The Trump administration is pulling the plug on the Community Resilience Panel for Buildings and Infrastructure Systems—a group created in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that helped local officials prepare for extreme weather and other natural disasters. The multi-agency organization... View full entry
San Francisco is one of the many cities in the U.S. threatened by climate change. Scientific projections predict that sea level rise is likely to push tides upwards with accelerating force in the coming decades and a 2012 study estimated that the average high tide within San Francisco Bay could... View full entry
Tampa Bay is mesmerizing, with 700 miles of shoreline and some of the finest white sand beaches in the nation. But analysts say the metropolitan area is the most vulnerable in the United States to flooding and damage if a major hurricane ever scores a direct hit.
A Boston firm that analyzes potential catastrophic damage reported that the region would lose $175 billion in a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina. A World Bank study called Tampa Bay one of the 10 most at-risk areas on the globe.
— washingtonpost.com
Published more than a month ago, long before Hurricane Irma was even on anyone's forecast, this piece by Washington Post writer Darryl Fears tells the tale of Tampa Bay as a seeming paradise, with its 4 millions residents, hot real estate market, lofty development ambitions, construction boom —... View full entry