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The culmination of the 2023 Fall semester at the University of Virginia saw a contingent of students from UVA’s School of Architecture travel to Washington, D.C., to discuss ideas for rebuilding the war-torn eastern Ukrainian city of Izium upon a special invite from the U.S. Department of... View full entry
A new collaborative project between Shigeru Ban, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture, and Hawaii Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering has been constructed in Maui, providing residents of the community with much-needed temporary accommodations following the aftermath... View full entry
Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects’ Network have shared news of their delivery of several Paper Log House prototypes in Morocco in response to the devastating 6.8 magnitude earthquake that displaced over 30,000 people recently, according to disaster response statistics assembled by the UN... View full entry
AECOM has announced that its Compass Production and Technical Services Joint Venture (Compass PTS JV) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide production and technical architectural and engineering services... View full entry
An international bridge engineering and supply company by the name of Acrow has recently supplied a modular steel bridge to temporarily replace a bridge that was destroyed during Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. When the hurricane hit the country on August 29th, the Category 4 storm caused widespread... View full entry
[Henk] Ovink’s approach called for a systematic rethinking of American traditional disaster response: to simply rebuild whatever was destroyed...In the US, the Rebuild By Design competition represents a dramatic shift in disaster planning, adopting a more comprehensive and collaborative research and design approach to address complex problems and improve resiliency...The competition was widely hailed as a success, but there was room for improvement before its approach could be replicated. — The Guardian
What's next for Rebuild By Design? Following the success of its 2013 competition, Rebuild By Design — now its own organization — is already working to continue helping U.S. cities prepare for climate change and potential natural disasters. In the article, the group looks back at how their... View full entry
As the Nepalese government continues to face criticism for the slow pace of the country’s reconstruction, Nepal’s prime minister Khadga Prasad Oli announced today that the reconstruction of key heritage sites in Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur is to finally begin, the Associated Press reports. — The Art Newspaper
A year after the devastating quake, there is some good news in Nepal. As this article notes,The World Monuments Fund (WMF) also announced today that it, in collaboration with American Express, was financing the rebuilding of the 16th-century Char Narayan Temple, which was reduced to rubble by the... View full entry
Wednesday night’s 8.3-magnitude earthquake had left 11 dead and a 175 houses damaged. While the toll wasn’t negligible, the quake — the world’s strongest this year — might have leveled less-prepared countries.
“Our structural engineering is world class,” Santos, a 62-year-old engineer at the firm Ingenería Estructuras Consultoría, said by phone. “And it’s made in Chile.”
— miamiherald.com
Related on Archinect:Deadly 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Nepal destroys architectural landmarksAre India's cities prepared to withstand an earthquake like in Nepal?First Japanese skyscraper gets retrofitted with rooftop vibration control system View full entry
In the five-and-a-half years since an earthquake killed more than 220,000 people here and displaced 1.5 million more, most of headlines from Haiti’s capital have been about dysfunctional projects, mismanagement and the overall slow pace of reconstruction.
Yet some innovative urban development work is going on here, often under the radar.
— citiscope.org
Previously:Four years and half a billion dollars later, the Red Cross has built six houses in HaitiMASS Design Group's new Open-Air Clinics in Haiti, reviewed by Michael KimmelmanRebuilding Haiti: Houses for Haiti's homelessHaiti Simbi Hubs Wins AA School and Foster + Partners Sustainability and... View full entry
Aesthetics is a primary concern for Ban—not despite, but especially in humanitarian scenarios. He believes that beauty is a basic need, an aspect of a person’s dignity. Erecting beautiful, if simple, structures can ensure that a refugee camp is not labeled a slum. So, when examining available materials in Kobe, he fussed about the color of the beer crates, choosing Asahi’s more neutral plastic bins over Kirin’s glaring red crates. — qz.com
Last week, Ban visited several U.S. cities on a brief lecture tour, captivating audiences with his thoughts about "the Temporary and the Monumental." Read Archinect's report from his Los Angeles lecture at LACMA here. View full entry
“I hate to throw things away,” explained the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban to a packed audience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last night. On the projection screen, one of his first works as an architect was displayed: an exhibition of the work of Alvar Aalto, who Ban... View full entry
A powerful earthquake shook eastern Nepal on Tuesday, shattering the halting recovery from the earthquake that hit the country less than three weeks ago, and causing loose hillsides and cracked buildings to give way and collapse. By late afternoon, Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Center had reported 42 deaths and 1,117 injuries from Tuesday’s earthquake, which the United States Geological Survey assigned a preliminary magnitude of 7.3... — NY Times
Nepal is still reeling from a devastating, magnitude-7.8 earthquake on April 25, which claimed upwards of 8,159 lives. According to the New York Times report, Tuesday's earthquake happened just as a semblance of normality was returning to the streets of Kathmandu and its environs. Landslides have... View full entry
Oakland has earthquakes, droughts and a host of other resilience problems to tackle. Now it has a Chief Resilience Officer to lead the charge.
Today, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and Michael Berkowitz, president of The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative, will jointly announce that Victoria Salinas has been tapped as the city’s first Chief Resilience Officer, a position being created in other cities across the world, as well.
— nextcity.org
Related: Resilience on the fly: Christchurch’s SCIRT offers a model for rebuilding after a disaster View full entry
Garrison Architects adds to the pressing topic of 21st-century disaster resilience for dense urban cities with their modular post-disaster housing prototype. Developed for the New York City Office of Emergency Management, the project aims to provide New Yorkers not only with reliable and adaptable... View full entry
The disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant marked the beginning of the "Robotics Challenge." Developers were rankled by how helpless robots were as they wandered through the radioactively contaminated reactor building. As they swerved around aimlessly in the steam, cables broke and the operators lost contact with the robots. [...]
They compiled a list of eight tasks that robots would have to master in the future to be capable of performing well in disaster response.
— spiegel.de
