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Stanton Williams completed a new design extension for the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. The £21.5 million expansion utilized the existing site's potential in creating The Simon Sainsbury Centre. The Centre will serve as a versatile hub in providing flexible... View full entry
In case you haven't checked out Archinect's Pinterest boards in a while, we have compiled ten recently pinned images from outstanding projects on various Archinect Firm and People profiles. (Tip: use the handy FOLLOW feature to easily keep up-to-date with all your favorite Archinect profiles!)... View full entry
A social housing project in the Netherlands plans to adopt a Vertical Forest designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti. Now Eindhoven will join the list of Vertical Forest cities Milan, Nanjing, Utrecht, Tirana, Lausanne, and Paris. The client, Sint-Trudo, has instigated the first Vertical Forest... View full entry
Long before foam insulation and concrete tower blocks, humans were finding ingenious ways to address their needs through architecture. Using local materials and inherited construction techniques, societies have ensured that buildings provide protection and comfort. In Tonga, traditional curved roofs offered aerodynamic protection against storms and cyclones. In the Uros islands of Lake Titicaca in the Andes, reeds were used in houses due to the insulating properties of their hollow stems. — cnn.com
A key issue in sustainability lies with imported building materials, leading architects to look for more ways to use local resources. As attention is turned towards existing materials, traditional design solutions must also be taken into account as each culture has its own history of building in... View full entry
Dan Becker, president of the Safe Climate Campaign, told E&E News that "a sewer problem at HQ headquarters has resulted in poop exploding out of water fountains." — The Outline
In a somewhat unusual, and fitting turn of events, the EPA's offices are beginning to speak up and not necessarily in the most conventional way. The building itself has found its mode of most eloquent communication by using sewer plumbing inadequacies to flood the Washington offices with black... View full entry
In January, tenants will move into a six-storey Vancouver apartment building designed to be so energy efficient, you could heat each bedroom with a 100-watt light bulb. [...] Others are under construction and many more are at the rezoning stage, including a residence that will house 750 students at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus and two 40-plus highrise towers in Vancouver that aim be the tallest passive house buildings in the world. — cbc.ca
Until now most passive houses have been single-family homes, but Canada is changing that. With several projects underway, architects are tackling the issues of scaling up this sustainable technology for larger buildings. Without using furnaces and air conditioners, these green buildings are... View full entry
Since 2008, Solidia Technologies [...] has been quietly developing a new cement-making process that produces up to 70% fewer CO2 emissions at a cost that DeCristofaro claims is on par with or better than conventional cement.
Solidia, which was formed in a bid to commercialize ideas developed at Rutgers University in New Jersey, is not the first company to attempt to make environmentally friendly cement. But industry experts say it’s the most promising yet.
— Quartz
"Of course, the startup now needs to show that this lower-emission cement can be made into concrete that’s at least as good as others, and can be scaled up in a way that’s affordable," Quartz explains. "That’s what Solidia is working on right now." View full entry
London-based architect Miguel Bolivar recently released his side project Archisutra, an architecture and design take on the Kama Sutra. This manual gives you all the data with annotated scale drawings and informative descriptions including categorizations of 'Typical Location' and... View full entry
"By investing in Framework, our city will now be home to the first skyscraper made from wood in the United States. This project not only reflects Oregon’s leadership in the newly emerging wood products industry of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), it also demonstrates our city’s commitment to finding innovative ways to quickly deliver affordable units during our housing crisis,” said Portland Mayor, Ted Wheeler. — Portland Housing Bureau
LEVER Architecture's project, Framework, has been awarded 6M from the city of Portland as a recipient of the City's "Fast Starts" Affordable Housing Program. The program aims at providing financial and city level assistance in the development and deployment of affordable housing projects that aim... View full entry
Spurred by concerns over climate change and the negative impacts of concrete manufacturing, architects and developers in France are increasingly turning to wood for their office towers and apartment complexes.
Concrete was praised through much of the 20th century for its flexibility, functionality, and relative affordability. [...] Today, however, wood is lauded for its smaller environmental footprint and the speed with which buildings can be assembled.
— Citylab
The company argues that organic waste would ameliorate rising levels of waste and shortfalls of raw material, as well as providing industry with cheap, low carbon materials. — Global Construction Review
Beyond being delicious, peanuts, rice, bananas, potatoes and mushrooms have something else in common—they are all being proposed by Arup group as potential building materials in their new report titled "The Urban Bio-Loop." THE BIOLOOP Nature becomes an endless source of feedstock for the... View full entry
Designed by Foster + Partners, Bloomberg L.P.'s new European headquarters in London has been dubbed as the “world's most sustainable office building”, the architecture firm announced. Housing Bloomberg's 4,000 London employees, the office building was rated as “Outstanding” in the BREEAM... View full entry
I’m particularly interested in how sustainable buildings might affect the experience of landscape differently — actually better, differently — because, as a human being, I’m hoping for more sustainable architecture, and, as an academic (and as an architect), I’m thinking the consequences should be revolutionary to architecture. — Places Journal
Unlike earlier technological revolutions — the development of the steel frame, or the invention of concrete — sustainability in architecture has not yet had any significant, self-identifying formal consequences. Instead, the experience of sustainable space has to be hyper-mediated. In his... View full entry
The architecture firm of William McDonough, who co-developed the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy, unveiled the scheme for a new 20,000 square-meter academic building at the Universidad EAN in Bogota. The project marks the firm's first signature building in Latin America. They also hope the new... View full entry
In March, Tesla cut the ribbon on this groundbreaking grid-scale battery installation, a key test of the viability of energy storage in making renewable energy a more reliable part of the grid. With 50,000 solar panels and 272 batteries, the combined solar-and-storage plant provides enough energy to power 4,500 homes for four hours.
If Tesla can help keep Kauai solar-powered around the clock with its batteries, then it can apply what it has learned elsewhere in the country, and around the world
— grist.org
In her Longreads/Grist piece, author Amelia Urry explains the changing nature of solar power challenges that off-grid dwellers as well as smaller, geographically isolated microgrids face now that battery storage on an industrial scale is becoming more lucrative. The article tells the story of a... View full entry
