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Recharge City, by Barry LehrmanRecharge City evaluates pragmatic options for recharging the groundwater in Los Angeles County by recycling the 502 million gallons of water that is dumped by Hyperion Treatment Plant and the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant into the Pacific each day. This is... View full entry
What if the Valley could have multiple wells placed around the city in contingent locations for maximum water replenishment back into the Aquifer?Liquifying Aquifers, by Lujac DesautelThe story of water in the San Fernando Valley is the by-product of the American frontier to the West and the... View full entry
Every drop countsLiquid Bank, by Juan SaezLiquid Bank confronts California’s drought from both a local and global perspective. The project addresses the relationship between domestic water consumption and the global water crisis with the development of water related infrastructure in emerging... View full entry
even given that the Hyperloop whitepaper was a rough sketch, the most important elements of the plan—its speed and price—have been vastly oversold. [...]
But there’s a final reason to be skeptical, not just of the technical details of the Hyperloop, but of the supposedly utopian motives behind it: It may not even be Musk’s idea.
— fortune.com
More on the much hyped (and griped) world of Hyperloop:Elon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to university students and engineersLA's Arts District now home to Hyperloop World HeadquartersThe town that Hyperloop builtDon't write off Elon Musk's Hyperloop yet...Designing the Hyperspace: UCLA... View full entry
San Diego may be known as "America's Finest City," but — at least this week — it's also the epicenter of the desalination and water reuse movement. [...]
The area had one of the first desalination plants — opened in Point Loma in 1961 — and will soon see a $1-billion facility open in Carlsbad. [...]
a sustainable water future depends on two things: "political leadership and public engagement, whether it's desalination or reuse."
— latimes.com
Desalination is just one large-scale technology for treating potable water, but it's attracted recent attention in places like Santa Barbara and San Diego as the California cities ramp up their water-conservation efforts and learn how to market the large upfront costs of desalination as long-term... View full entry
Mountain lions, bobcats and other wildlife would have less chance of becoming roadkill if [California] adopts a plan to build a [165-foot-wide, 200-foot-long] landscaped bridge over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills...Urbanization has taken a toll on Southern California’s mountain lion population, spurring battles over shrinking territory and a depletion of genetic diversity because of inbreeding. — Los Angeles Times
Related on Archinect: 33-story endangered species picture showFancy $48M animal terminal to open in JFK Airport next yearChinese sinkhole develops its own eco-systemOur infrastructure is expanding to include animalsHummingbird Drones and other Bio-inspired Robotics View full entry
Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Fall 2015Archinect's Get Lectured is ready for another school year! Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any... View full entry
Peter Zellner comes to Archinect's Dry Futures jury with a diverse architectural background, having worked for large, infrastructurally-minded firms like AECOM, while previously designing smaller-scale art spaces under his own firm, ZELLNERPLUS. In September of 2015, Peter will launch ZNc... View full entry
Geoff Manaugh is a design and architecture writer, contributing to publications such as Dwell, New Scientist and The New Yorker, as well as authoring several books and the long-running design and architecture site, BLDGBLOG.Manaugh’s perspective on the drought focuses on the ripe opportunities... View full entry
Got a sketchy blueprint for a greywater purifier lying around? An unfinished section drawing for the next drought-friendly Californian front yard? Some e-commerce market for exchanging water rights? Designs for a better reservoir? Gussy up those plans and submit them to Archinect's Dry Futures... View full entry
Ian Quate and Colleen Tuite are the co-founders of “nomadic landscape architecture studio” GRNASFCK, based in New York City. The two began collaborating as graduate students at RISD in 2011, bringing Quate’s knowledge of botany and landscape architecture together with Tuite’s art practice... View full entry
I want to see the relationship between architecture and other infrastructure and landscape architecture strengthened, so that we’re building good infrastructure that relates well to the landscape and is sustainable.” — Charles Anderson
Charles Anderson FSLA is the president/principal of WERK, a landscape architecture firm based in what he calls “the heart of LA in a lot of ways, at least for the strange people,” Venice Beach. Living and working next to the Pacific, Anderson has seen firsthand the power and presence of the... View full entry
There’s no such thing as the drought being over. There are only going to be cycles and our cycles, most models tell us, are only going to continue to be extreme. Wet will be wetter and dry will by drier." — Hadley Arnold
Peter and Hadley Arnold are the founding co-directors of the Arid Lands Institute, a design-centered research platform devoted to making drylands "water-smart" the world over. Based in Los Angeles out of Woodbury University, ALI uses the American West as a case study for developing adaptive... View full entry
Allison Arieff is the editorial director of SPUR, an urban planning advocacy non-profit based in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland. Known in full as San Francisco Planning and Urban Research, SPUR is primarily focused on improving urban planning efforts and policy in the San Francisco Bay... View full entry
Dublin is building a water park — in the middle of the worst drought in California’s modern history. [...]
“It just looks bad, frankly ... It looks like we are out there thinking, ‘Let’s just go out there and build a water park,’ when the rest of the state is suffering.” [...]
“Even if the drought weren’t to end,” said Lori Taylor, a spokeswoman for the city, “there will be a need for places where kids need to learn how to swim.”
— nytimes.com
More on California's drought:Will California's drought turn the state into something like the Australian outback?Coating the LA reservoir in "shade balls" will save 300M gallons of waterCalifornia drought sucks San Jose's Guadalupe river dryArchinect's "Dry Futures" competition featured by MSNBC... View full entry