Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
[...] a team of Canadian science and engineering graduates is pitching a dream to plant a billion trees by 2028 using drones. The project is dubbed Flash Forest and combines the use of drones with specially-designed pods and an accelerated seed germination process. According to Flash Forest, its technology can plant trees 10 times faster than a single worker and at a cost that is 80 percent cheaper than traditional tree planting methods. — New Atlas
On their Kickstarter page, the team behind the Toronto-based Flash Forest project explains what happens before and after heavy-lift drones pneumatically fire their custom-designed seed pods into the ground: "Before we plant our pods, we pre-germinate the seeds inside using our own 'secret sauce.'... View full entry
President Trump has instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt Alaska’s 16.7-million-acre Tongass National Forest from logging restrictions imposed nearly 20 years ago [...]
The move would affect more than half of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, opening it to potential logging, energy and mining projects. It would undercut a sweeping Clinton administration policy known as the “roadless rule,” which has survived a decades-long legal assault.
— The Washington Post
The move comes as global awareness over widespread deforestation in the Amazon and other tropical regions around the world intensifies. In Brazil, where land clearance and deforestation have increased rapidly this year under the country's new president, Jair Bolsonaro, smoke from the burning... View full entry
There is enough room in the world’s existing parks, forests, and abandoned land to plant 1.2 trillion additional trees, which would have the CO2 storage capacity to cancel out a decade of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new analysis by ecologist Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university. — Yale Environment 360
Following new research, Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich estimate that there are 3 trillion trees on Earth, more than seven times the number previously estimated. Crowther argues that given this new knowledge, it is possible that new and existing forests could become more... 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
After announcing participation in this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, the Vatican has recently released more details on their Holy See pavilion. The project is officially titled Vatican Chapels, featuring ten chapels commissioned from architects in ten different countries. Each structure... View full entry
Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC, and Stand.earth formed the Rainforest Solutions Project as part of the Tides Canada Initiative. The coalition has spent nearly two decades developing a sophisticated legal and policy framework called Ecosystem-Based Management to tackle the persisting struggle over Canada's treasured Great Bear Rainforest, while also negotiating the conflicting interests of multiple groups. — Bustler
Winning over six equally worthy finalist teams, the Rainforest Solutions Project addresses both natural and cultural preservation, and it enforces stronger ecological responsibility in industrial economic pursuits. The Project resulted in a landmark 250-year agreement between all stakeholders... View full entry
'I envisage to make a forest of light. A forest which consists of countless light cones made from spotlights above. These lights pulsate and constantly undergo transience of state and flow.'
“People meander through this forest, as if lured by the charm of the light. Light and people interact with one another, its existence defining the transition of the other.”
— Sou Fujimoto
In another collaboration with top-notch designers, fashion label COS has teamed up with Sou Fujimoto to create a nature-inspired installation for Milan's Salone del Mobile 2016 next month. For COS' fifth year of taking part in the design fair, Fujimoto is creating a "Forest of Light" that will... View full entry
We all want our cities to be greener, but it is often quite hard to grow trees in a concrete environment. So, why not turn to waterfronts or lakes to place trees? Rotterdam will get its first ‘bobbing forest’ in 2016: a collection of twenty trees that are floating in the Rijnhaven, a downtown harbor basin. [...]
After experimenting with a sample tree last year, an entire floating forest of twenty trees is scheduled to be ‘planted’ on March 16, 2016.
— popupcity.net
Related Archinect news:It's official: trees are good for your healthRotterdam considers paving its roads with recycled plasticFollow the yellow wooden road into Rotterdam's new Luchtsingel pedestrian park View full entry
Resembling the surrounding tree trunks in London's Hooke Park forest, the Callipod installation was created by a group of 18 students who participated in the AA School of Architecture's Summer DLAB::WHITE at AA London and AA Hooke Parke for nearly three weeks last summer. Students in the yearly... View full entry
[...] the bridge will be closed at night, won't allow entry to cyclists or groups of 8 or more without prior booking, and will ocassionally be closed off for fundraising events. Right. So less a public bridge than a privately-managed tourist attraction, then. [...]
The east of London, on the other hand, could actually use another crossing, with or without limits to access
— citymetric.com
Previously: London's Garden bridge: 'It feels like we're trying to pull off a crime' View full entry
The forest carries deep cultural significance. Within the urban landscape, this ecologically complex, spatially layered, dynamic system is also understood to perform a wide range of essential ecosystem services. As arborists, parks departments, landscape architects, planners and community groups engage in the reforesting of cities, how are they collectively shaping the urban landscape? What hybrid ecosystems are yet to be designed? How many trees are enough? — Scenario Journal
Scenario Journal's just-released issue, Scenario 4: Building the Urban Forest, features a broad, interdisciplinary conversation between architects, ecologists, landscape architects, and artists, about the meaning and possibilities of the spatial, biological, and metaphorical construct of the... View full entry
Created by Smith|Allen Studio, an Oakland based architecture firm, the 10ft x 10ft x 8ft form adds a decidedly artificial element to the otherwise organic forest it calls home. However, despite its appearance, the Echoviren is quite environmentally friendly. Printed from a PLA bioplastic, the structure will naturally decompose back into the forest in 30-50 years. According to Smith|Allen “"As [Echoviren] weathers it will become a micro-habitat for insects, moss, and birds." — engineering.com
