Bryant Park in New York. Image by ymgerman. Image via Shutterstock
One of the greatest challenges of urban planning lies in managing city growth. Year after year, major cities see their populations increase, and it is estimated that by 2050, 70% of the world's population will live in urban areas. But how can we build sustainable, healthy, and equitable cities that foster urban diversity?
In the last few years, Europe has become a leader in refurbishment architecture by renovating and remodeling buildings and historic city centers. These initiatives have halted horizontal expansion and promote equitable city development.
This trend has not only become a contribution towards the densification and revitalization of underserved sectors but has also allowed families who had been displaced to the periphery to inhabit city centers and improve their quality of life.
The building site is perhaps one of the most meaningful spaces for architects, as it is where the project comes to life, where techniques are actually applied, putting the project and the designer to the test. Many building sites are affected by work alienation, but they were once a place where craftsmen could learn and pass on knowledge. Today, with the evolution of construction techniques, centuries-old methods are in danger of being forgotten. This brings us to Guédelon Castle, located near the French village of Treigny.
The little-known and remote area of North Caucasus is an intricate assemblage of territories, ethnicities, languages, religions, and, consequently, architectures, from Tsarist-era buildings to mosques, traditional bas-reliefs, and Soviet Modernism. The setting of controversial events and a heterogeneous cultural environment, in many ways, North Caucasus is a borderland between Europe and Asia, the former USSR and the Middle East, Christianity and Islam. Photographs by Gianluca Pardelli, Thomas Paul Mayer and Nikolai Vassiliev provide an introduction to the architectural landscape of the region.
Red House. Photo by Ethan Doyle White, via Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
William Morris was one of the leading figures of the 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement. Guided by his political ideals, his practice spanned architecture, decoration, and design, eventually extending to writing—always striving to foster workplaces as spaces of pleasure and contemplation.
By now, it is clear that technology has taken over almost every aspect of our lives. It has changed the way we communicate, how we connect, how we work and study, and has even modified our buying and eating habits. Architecture and construction were not the exceptions, and technology is also now present in the way it is being thought, designed, and built.
The Neighborhood Plan is an urban planning tool that encourages residents to propose initiatives to improve their neighborhoods. It was established in São Paulo by the Strategic Master Plan municipal law with the goals of aligning local issues with the city's broader structural demands, identifying the need for public, social, and recreational facilities in neighborhoods, strengthening the local economy, and fostering job opportunities.
We’re in an age of unprecedented technological innovation. The architecture and construction industries are increasingly becoming more and more automated, as firms seek to take full advantage of new machinery and new ways of working to make the design process more efficient. With this increase in automation, however, comes lots of questions too. Will robots ever replace architects?Will the near future see a fully automated construction industry? A pertinent question, too, is the complicated case of automation and the individuality of design – does automation take away from the individuality of design?
Videos
Katsushika Hokusai - Gaifū kaisei - Public Domain. Image via Wikipedia
Escola da Cidade has shared with us a lecture series on Japanese Architecture and Culture, which is part of the Estúdio Deriva program. This series features the following lectures: "Ambience Without Hierarchy: SANAA and Electronic Music" with Guilherme Wisnik, "Contemporary Japanese Culture" with Gabriel Kogan, "The Professional Practice of Japanese Architects" with Lourenço Gimenes, "A Graphical Analysis of Toyo Ito's Mediatheques" with Marina Lacerda, "Destroy to Build: The Impact of Tokyo's Reconstruction Plans in Akira" with Beatriz Oliveira, "Jidai no nagare, the Flow of Eras: Japanese Wood Joinery" with Heloisa Ikeda, and "The Tōkaidō Road: Travel, Woodblock Prints, and Cities of the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868)" with Fernanda Sakano. Watch all the lectures here.
https://www.archdaily.com/1122348/japanese-architecture-in-7-lessonsPedro Vada
As a design feature, cantilevers can exist for any number of reasons, as rational results of form-making, impressive feats of engineering, or just unnecessary spectacles. Either way, they often result in buildings that appear both heavy and light at the same time and they present safely precarious situations for their inhabitants. The video describes what cantilevers are as well as some of the structural principles which govern their design like tension, compression, moment, and shear. It also goes over some great examples by architects like MVRDV, Rem Koolhaas, Ensemble Studio, and Richard Rogers. Finally, it concludes with appreciation for structural engineers and lists a few of the ones responsible for some of the most daring of delicate dangles.
The discussion around how we plan the cities we want to live in is a never-ending conversation. As our world experiences shifts that impact urban designs in both predictable and unpredictable ways, some principals have held true- that cities that rely less on private transportation, create walkable neighborhoods, boast a multitude of public parks and spaces, and are designed at a more human scale tend to be favored and well-recieved by the people who inhabit them. Enter the concept of New Urbanism. Backed by these ideologies with a modern spin on is how they might apply to our 21st-century lifestyles, New Urbanism a planning strategy that has been both praised and critiqued since its implementation.
Throughout the 113 years of celebrating Japanese immigration, discussions surrounding Japanese culture have gained considerable attention. As Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside the archipelago, the country's connection to Japanese cultural expressions is clear. Many cities settled by Japanese immigrants preserve their Japanese history and culture to this day; consequently, the architectural field has consolidated itself primarily through buildings that represent the political and social dimensions of Japanese immigration, fused with new technologies and construction methods.
Paul Rudolph, Rudolph Apartment at 23 Beekman Place, New York (1977-1997). Perspective Section, 1997. Digitized drawing | 4732 x 3416 px. The Paul Rudolph Archive, Library of Congress, Print and Photograph Division, LC-USZ62-123771. The cut shows the complexity of the space that Timothy Rohan describes as exemplary of Rudolph's approach to the private domain.
A growing number of theorists and practitioners have been discussing the impact of gender and race on the profession and theory of architecture. Issues linked to the relationship between the built environment, sexual orientation, and gender identity, however, remain particularly understudied, perhaps because of their relative invisibility and less clearly identifiable discriminatory consequences. Moreover, they are also completely neglected by design theory in the Francophone world. This article partially remedies the situation.
Robot-Printed 'Cloud Village' / Philip Feng Yuan's Team. Image Courtesy of Philip Feng Yuan
3D printing (as known as three-dimensional printing) is a type of rapid prototyping technology. It is a technology that uses powdered metal or plastic and other bondable materials to construct objects by printing layer by layer based on digital model files.
Martin C. Pedersen talks with Ron Rochon, managing partner at Miller Hull, about Carbon and the role of architectural firms in eliminating emissions. Discussing the EMissions Zero initiative, the current shortcomings of carbon offsets, and the way forward, the piece also questions the possibility of setting goals with the absence of an internationally, agreed-upon carbon cap.
What is the role of corporate offices today? The coronavirus pandemic highlighted profound needs and transformations in all of our lives: in relationships, work, consumption habits, and rising inequality. Unquestionably, the question of workspaces came to the fore during a historical phase when, for the first time in the postmodern era, people saw their personal freedoms restricted.
Most people were forced to work from home, and since the beginning of quarantine, reflecting on the future of workspaces became inevitable. Interesting data shows that the coronavirus merely accelerated a practice that had been gaining traction for years in some countries. According to studies conducted jointly by Global Workplace Analytics and FlexJobs, between 2005 and 2015, the number of professionals in the United States who do at least 50% of their work from home or another location outside their offices grew by 115%, and today this number reaches 4.7 million, or 3.4% of the workforce.
ODA has just launched its latest project, an urban vision for the future of the streets of New York. The project titled Beyond the street- Reimagining the flower district proposes to transform a city block from the outside in, altering the pedestrian experience and introducing new zoning changes that would give landowners air rights or tax credits in exchange for handing over their inner courtyards to be transformed into public/private spaces.
ArchDaily had the chance to talk with Eran Chen, founding principal and executive director of ODA, about the firm’s very special proposal that seeks to improve our urban environment. Check the interview and watch ODA’s explanatory movie.