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In hermetically sealed buildings, less fresh air gets in. [...] Eventually, this polluted indoor air – which is making more than a third of the planet sick – is expelled into the surrounding environment. This raises the question of how buildings pollute the air around them, what pollutants they produce, and whether this expelled air is sufficiently diluted once outdoors. — The Conversation
As the article mentions, the World Health Organization had previously pointed to a "lack of monitoring of air pollution levels, sources and consequences on public health" as a present danger for cities. To fix it, authors César Martín-Gómez and Arturo H. Ariño of the Universidad de Navarra... View full entry
A new mixed-use project in Oslo from Snøhetta has been completed following a nine-year design and development phase that culminated in 118,400 square feet and 18 floors with restaurants, an office component, and 40 apartment units all built in. Vertikal Nydalen is the focal point of a new town... View full entry
For the Harvard professor, founder of the university's Healthy Buildings Program, our building design and public health officials have ignored indoor air systems for too long – that is, until the COVID pandemic hit. [...]
"If you look at the way we design and operate buildings –and I mean offices, schools, local coffee shop[s] – we haven't designed for health," Allen said. "We have bare minimum standards."
— CBS News
Professor Joe Allen, who also does consultation work for developers, recently advised on the Amazon ‘HQ2’ project in Virginia from NBBJ. He and his colleagues at Harvard’s Healthy Buildings Program center their work around six research areas (Homes, Schools, Business, Materials... View full entry
When asked about why skywells have caught more attention of modern Chinese people, Wang [Zhengfeng] says that the courtyard is also designed to serve as a gathering space for families or communities, and comes with ritual meanings. "Perhaps changes in the way of life could also trigger vernacular nostalgia among people living in concrete and glass forests.”
"It won't be easy to be sustainable by learning from the past without reflecting on our current behaviours."
— BBC
Lightwells are of course, a common passive cooling method in modern Western designs, but in China, their popularity is partly driven by a budding “vernacular nostalgia” for traditional features and concepts. The government’s push towards greener building standards and a 2060 net zero carbon... View full entry
A new independent review produced by a 13-member panel made up of faculty and community members at the University of California, Santa Barbara has outlined a host of health and safety risks inherent in the contested Munger Hall megadorm design proposal. The report cited the need for Covid-safe... View full entry
There’s been a surge of demand from real estate owners for pleasant fragrances to make the air a little fresher and the workplace a little more comforting and energizing [...]
“Here in New York City, for example, real estate companies are interested in scenting the building itself, as opposed to just the individual tenant spaces [...] There are lots of vacant office spaces these days. So what can the real estate companies do to attract tenants?”
— Commerical Observer
So-called "scent profiles" have been documented to improve productivity, avoid a phenomenon known as olfactory fatigue, and achieve a psychological familiarity helpful to marketers when developing brand recognition. This is one of many approaches companies are attempting to use in order... View full entry
Lesley Stahl: Do you think that COVID will change architecture for everybody?
Michael Murphy: Everyone around the world is going through a shift in their understanding of the buildings around us. That they may make us sicker, that they could make us healthier if they were better designed.
— CBS News
MASS founding principal and executive director Michael Murphy discussed the curative father-son restoration project that led to his enrollment at Harvard and subsequent experience with the firm’s award-winning early Butaro District Hospital project in Rwanda, which helped cement... View full entry
New York-based SHoP has completed work on the Uber Headquarters in San Francisco. The 423,000-square-foot project is divided into two buildings ranging between six and eleven stories, linked by two suspended walkways. Photo © Jason O'Rear Photo © Jason O'Rear The scheme’s star... View full entry
At our peril, we have ignored Nightingale’s prescriptions. The history of the hospital contains clear lessons about the importance of air movement through buildings, the public health risks of poor design, and the dangers of technological reliance. Architecture professionals should look back to see what else has been forgotten or ignored in the race to merge art and technology. Whose lives might be at stake if they don’t? — Fast Company
Murphy is a principal at Boston-based MASS Design Group and the author of The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity, which accompanies the firm’s recent exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics on view at the Cooper Hewitt until... View full entry
In the months since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived across the world, much attention has been placed on how easy it is for the virus to spread in indoor spaces that lack proper ventilation. Writing in the academic journal The Conversation, Shelly Miller, professor of mechanical... View full entry
Multidisciplinary design firm Cushing Terrell has developed a solution for air circulation and ventilation in patient and operating rooms to prevent the spread of infection. The solution, developed by the firm's mechanical engineering team, enables standard hospital patient rooms to be converted... View full entry
Pretty much every element of MAD's design for the Xinhee Design Center factors in sustainability: water features, full-blown gardens and offices commingle on the six star-shaped floors that sprout from the central atrium, while an envelope of PTFE provides ventilation and shade.Solar panels occupy... View full entry
"My Thread - New Dutch Design on Films" is a film exhibition curated by Eizo Okada and designed by architect Hideyuki Nakayama, who also built Okada's Kyoto "O" House and was on the design team for Toyo Ito's Tama Art University Library. As part of one of Japan's biggest design events this past... View full entry
