Ecology: The Latest Architecture and News

The architecture firm MAD Architects, based in Beijing, China, has presented the design of its first project in South America, the mixed-use "Qondesa" tower in Quito, Ecuador, which will soon become the tallest building in the city.

MVRDV has revealed the master plan to expand the Noviotech Campus, a giant in Health & High Tech Innovation, in Nijmegen, east of the Netherlands. The concept combines the campus's already scattered buildings, adds new structures where there are gaps, and integrates the site within the city, putting ecology first. The municipality of Nijmegen, Kadans Science Partner, and NXP Semiconductors will collaborate with Noviotech Campus and MVRDV in the following months to develop and refine the master plan.

The philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre coined the notion of "production of space" in 1974, breaking with the vision of space as a container or scenario of objects and social relations, to move towards space understood as a process. From this vision based on the Marxist tradition, space is a product and a producer of social relations and processes.

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World Wetlands Day is celebrated every February 2nd to raise awareness of wetlands. This day also marks the anniversary of the Wetlands Convention, adopted as an international treaty in 1971. Its enactment is because nearly 90% of the world's wetlands have been degraded since 1700, decimated three times faster than the forests. However, they are essential ecosystems that contribute to biodiversity, climate mitigation and adaptation, freshwater availability, world economies, and much more.

Green corridors, or biodiversity corridors, are large portions of land that receive coordinated actions to protect biological diversity. According to Brazil’s National System of Nature Conservation Units, they strengthen and connect protected areas, encouraging low-impact use by implementing a more comprehensive, decentralized and participatory conservation alternative.

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Looking to reformulate the relationship between humans, territories, and globalization, “Ecologies for Other Architectures” gathered for two days in Madrid emerging international architects to propose narratives on urban environments and their undergoing changes. Curated by Itinerant Office within the network of New Generations, the event featured 7 scenarios, 7 models, 7 narratives on nature, technology, bodies, material transformation, soil, participation, and (no) humans. The event employed recycled material and a fast-mounting strategy to guarantee zero impact.

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There was a time when buildings wanted to be mountains, roofs wanted to be forests, and pillars wanted to be trees. As the world began to go into a state of alert with the melting of glaciers and the consequent rise of Earth’s temperature, architecture – from a general perspective – was concerned with imitating the shapes of nature. Something close to human-made “ecosystems”, seen by many as allegoric and decorative, in service of marketable images of “sustainable development”.

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As part of the effort to make the construction sector more sustainable in the face of the climate crisis, the bioeconomy has stood out. While the road to net-zero architecture is still very complex, the emerging shift in culture and general thinking is evident, and innovation seems to be driving this transformation.

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According to the architect and researcher Patrícia Akinaga, ecological urbanism emerged at the end of the 20th century as a strategy to create a paradigm shift with regard to the design of cities. With this, urban projects should be designed from the potential and limitations of existing natural resources. Unlike other previous movements, in ecological urbanism architecture is not the structuring element of the city — the landscape itself is. In other words, green areas should not only exist to beautify spaces, but as true engineering artifacts with the potential to dampen, retain and treat rainwater, for example. With ecological urbanism, urban design becomes defined by the natural elements intrinsic to its fabric.

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In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral was coming back from a hunting trip with his dog when he noticed that some seeds kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur. He observed that they contained several "hooks" that caught on anything with a loop, and from studying this plant, seven years later, he invented the hook and loop fastener, which he named Velcro.

Vernacular architecture can be defined as a type of local or regional construction, using traditional materials and resources from the area where the building is located. Consequently, this architecture is closely related to its context and is aware of the specific geographic features and cultural aspects of its surroundings, being strongly influenced by them. For this reason, they are unique to different places in the world, becoming even a means of reaffirming an identity.

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