Snøhetta's "7th Room" is an addition to the previously existing Treehotel in Northern Sweden. The tree-canopy-level, snow-blanketed room features a pretty cool assortment of sleek furnishings and views, whether you're standing on the ground looking up, or lounging on the fur-lined chairs looking... View full entry
According to the Los Angeles Times, the sunny city of Phoenix, Arizona might become a little cooler, as the city develops a plan to give 25% of the city a tree canopy by 2030. Currently, the city has about half as much shade.The city plans to use a mix of steel 'trees', native plants like... View full entry
CALIFORNIA WON’T BE throwing much shade this summer. It would need trees to do that. Last year almost 30 million trees died in the Golden State—and that number is expected to double or triple by the end of 2016. The high mortality rates come at a time when the state needs healthy forests most, with climate change looming always and a La Niña—El Niño’s dry hermana—on the way. — Wired
"The likely outcome? California’s landscape will radically transform, starting with a surge of wildfires that will trigger mudslides, diminished water quality, and the rise of new vegetation."For more news from the dried out Golden State, check out these links:California eases some... View full entry
"We don't have a single 'style,'" Steven Holl explained in reference to his firm's new four level, 35,000 square foot Visual Arts Building commissioned for the Franklin & Marshall College. "We always try to shape a unique experience, and our approach is the same with this project. We look... 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
Completed in March of 2014, Kusukusu [...] is a marvelous feat of architecture, engineering and technology. Working with Hiroshi Nakamura of NAP Architects, the team came in and 3D-scanned hundreds of points on the tree. Based on that 3D data they then created a steel trellis that threaded through the tree, interlocking perfectly [...]. What’s amazing is that the treehouse in its entirety, never touches the tree. It’s completely self-standing so as to not harm the tree. — spoon-tamago.com
Here are a few more images of the stunner of a treehouse in Atami, Japan designed by master treehouse builder Takashi Kobayashi in collaboration with NAP Architects.To learn more and see the complete set of photos, head over to Spoon & Tamago.Photos by Koji Fujii/Nacasa & Partners... View full entry
You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the Tree Church in Ohaupo, New Zealand. A heavenly 100-seat chapel set among a 3-acre landscaped garden, the church boasts walls made of living trees planted around an iron frame. In 2011, Barry Cox, who runs a tree relocating business, decided that his backyard was missing an old stone church like the ones he had studied and admired on travels to Europe. — Slate
Get a glimpse inside the Tree Church in the video below.And here's more tree love and cool churches on Archinect:Tree-hugging in the modern ageIt's official: trees are good for your healthNew photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversaryGreat Synagogue of Edirne in... View full entry
The city of Melbourne assigned trees email addresses so citizens could report problems. Instead, people wrote thousands of love letters to their favorite trees. — theatlantic.com
One tree letter excerpt reads: "My dearest Ulmus," the message began. “As I was leaving St. Mary’s College today I was struck, not by a branch, but by your radiant beauty. You must get these messages all the time. You’re such an attractive tree.”Related... View full entry
In a new paper published Thursday, a team of researchers present a compelling case for why urban neighborhoods filled with trees are better for your physical health.
[...] they found that “having 10 more trees in a city block, on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger.”
— washingtonpost.com
"We focused on a large urban population center (Toronto, Canada) and related the two domains by combining high-resolution satellite imagery and individual tree data from Toronto with questionnaire-based self-reports of general health perception, cardio-metabolic conditions and mental illnesses... View full entry
To be recognized as a Great Tree, in New York City, is not just a matter of having the correct heritage or coming from the right family. [...]
For a person, achieving fame or prominence comes with both perks and pitfalls. But what are the advantages of being a celebrated tree? And what are the dangers? While humans have long venerated old and large trees, we've also cut them down and razed whole forests of their less superlative brethren.
— atlasobscura.com
Need to see how your backyard elm compares to America's greatest trees? Click here to search the 2015 American Forests Champion Trees national register or sign up to become a big-tree hunter in your area. View full entry
Though New York can sometimes seem like a drab warren of chain-link fence and oily pavement, the city actually has an impressive number of trees. On the streets alone [...] there were 592,130 at last reckoning, a leafy explosion you can now peruse in this great visualization of tree species.
Jill Hubley, a Brooklyn web developer whose last project involved mapping local chemical spills, made the chlorophyllous cartography with data from the 2005-2006 Street Tree Census.
— citylab.com
The city estimates that some 4,500 of its total 10,750 sidewalk miles are in disrepair. According to a 2007 USC study, the city repaired a grand total of 64 miles of sidewalks, or 1.4 percent of damaged sidewalks, improving the city’s backlog to 72 years.
The reasons for this civic embarrassment go back even longer than 72 years. They are twofold. One is political, the other arboreal.
— nextcity.org
Boeri Studio will soon realize the dream of the forest tower with Bosco Verticale, or Vertical Forest -- and they're building two. The thought of a tower "built" out of living greenery has been rendered by architects numerous times, it has reached the point where it's considered a trope of green... View full entry
Want to make a skyscraper look trendy and sustainable? Put a tree on it. Or better yet, dozens. Many high-concept skyscraper proposals are festooned with trees. On the rooftop, on terraces, in nooks and crannies, on absurdly large balconies. Basically anywhere horizontal and high off the ground. — slate.com
A REVOLUTION in cognitive neuroscience is changing the kinds of experiments that scientists conduct, the kinds of questions economists ask and, increasingly, the ways that architects, landscape architects and urban designers shape our built environment.
This revolution reveals that thought is less transparent to the thinker than it appears and that the mind is less rational than we believe and more associative than we know.
— nytimes.com
Architecture critic, Sarah Williams Goldhagen wrote a brief piece exploring the use of embodied metaphors in contemporary architecture. Looking at recent works by Junya Ishigami, Jürgen Mayer H., Zaha Hadid and Sanaa for instance, Goldhagen notes that the use of metaphors that allude... View full entry
