Believing firmly that "architecture is [...] too important to leave solely to architects", Ole Bouman embarked on diverse activities throughout his three decades of work, reflecting on “architecture, not so much as the art or technique of making buildings, but architecture as the intelligent way to organize our lives on earth, and infuse it with purpose”.
After having shared Bouman's essay Finding Measure, ArchDaily had the chance to discuss with DesignSociety’s founding director his thoughts on the role of architecture, the current challenges of the world, the digital revolution, and many other thought-provoking topics.
Climatic conditions are changing around the world, and with more extreme temperatures and limited resources, architectural and urban solutions must also change. How could our homes look and function effectively in a post-climate change scenario? Analyzing in detail the forecasts of these climatic variations, the architects of W-LAB have developed a Low-Tech habitat proposal for humid, hot, and arid climates, incorporating bio-materials, transportable solutions, and configurations that promote life in small and resilient communities.
According to the UN, more than 7000 extreme weather events have been recorded since 2000. Just this year, wildfires raged across Australia and the west coast of the U.S.; Siberia charted record high temperatures, reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit before Dallas or Houston; and globally, this September was the world’s hottest September on record. As the effects of the climate crisis manifest in these increasingly dire ways, it is the prerogative of the building industry – currently responsible for 39% of global greenhouse gas emissions – to do its part by committing to genuine and sweeping change in its approach to sustainability.
One of the most challenging aspects of this change will be to meet mounting cooling demands in an eco-friendly way. Cooling is innately more difficult than heating: any form of energy can become heat, and our bodies and machines naturally generate heat even in the absence of active heating systems. Cooling does not benefit equally from spontaneous generation, making it often more difficult, more costly, or less efficient to implement. Global warming and its very tangible heating effects only exacerbate this reality, intensifying an already accelerating demand for artificial cooling systems. As it stands, many of these systems require large amounts of electricity and rely heavily on fossil fuels to function. The buildings sector must find ways to meet mounting demand for cooling that simultaneously elides these unsustainable effects.
https://www.archdaily.com/949585/cooling-interiors-will-be-the-architectural-challenge-of-the-futureLilly Cao
As the world is slowly reopening, easing lockdown measures, everyone is adapting to new realities. Imposing drastic adjustments to our lives, the coronavirus has introduced a new “normal”, changing our perceptions and altering our priorities. Driven towards questioning and evaluating our environment, we are constantly reacting and anticipating a relatively unknown future.
A casual conversation between two editors at ArchDaily generated this collaborative piece that seeks to investigate the current trends, predict the future, and offer insights to everyone/everything related to the architectural field. Tackling the evolution of the profession, the firms, and the individuals, especially young adults and students, this article, produced by Christele Harrouk and Eric Baldwin, aims to reveal what is happening in the architecture scene.
With the current economic volatility and a looming recession, this conference brings together the brightest business minds in our profession to provide you with insights, guidance and tactics to not only survive the next few months, but thrive. AIA Houston invites you to participate in an exciting two days of virtual learning. The conference will educate and inform architects on tools and strategies to navigate the current global crisis and anticipate the new normal beyond.
The disruption caused by the coronavirus may have opened doors that many have been waiting for. Preliminary studies support that we experienced a faster technological revolution during the last three months than ever before. Forced to adapt, and to ensure the liveability of urban fabrics, policymakers are reviewing data protocols and legislations, giving way to tech-powered urban health solutions. However, many of those amendments will stay post virus. The precedence gained as a legacy will offer cause for both wonder and worry for our urban future.
https://www.archdaily.com/938484/the-cause-of-wonder-and-worry-over-digital-cities-post-virusZaheer Allam, Gaetan Siew and Felix Fokoua
Yesterday, on the 20th of April, we passed the cap of 111 days of the pandemic. During this time, we’ve been busy fighting in supermarket aisles over toilet paper in Australia, lining up for marijuana purchases in Amsterdam and boosting gun demand in the USA. We are conscious none of those will help in fighting the virus, but we do it, nonetheless. Beyond the bizarre human psyche, this pandemic unveils interesting trends that will, whether we like it or not, impact on Architecture and Cities.
https://www.archdaily.com/937928/introducing-an-illustrated-series-architecture-and-cities-post-virusZaheer Allam, Gaetan Siew and Felix Fokoua
While technology and construction have progressed rapidly in recent years, allowing structures to be built taller and faster than ever, remnants of colossal ancient monuments remind us that construction techniques from as long as hundreds of years ago had enormous merit as well. In fact, many of the innovations of antiquity serve as foundations of modern construction, with the Roman invention of concrete serving as a cogent example. Other essential ancient construction techniques, such as the arch and the dome, are now often considered stylistic flourishes, with designs like the Met Opera House reinterpreting classical typologies in a modern context. Yet perhaps the most relevant reinterpretations of ancient construction today are those that do so in the interest of sustainability, renouncing high-energy modern construction methods in favor of older, more natural techniques.
https://www.archdaily.com/933010/the-future-of-the-old-how-ancient-construction-techniques-are-being-updatedLilly Cao
DesignTO’s fifth annual symposium brings nine multidisciplinary experts into one room for an inspiring discussion on a Future without Work, covering topics such as the Indigenous workforce, meaning of work, space of work, labour markets, economic systems, and other thought provoking topics. Hear from Jonas Altman, Antonio Cesare Iadarola, Komal Faiz, Carol Anne Hilton, Keith Jones, Symon Oliver, Heather Russek, Jessica Thornton, and Lexi Tsien. Supported by George Brown College School of Design and Gensler.
Population growth, increasing urbanisation and social change pose new challenges for architecture and urban planning. Reflecting these processes of change, Superscape opens a creative space for unconventional ideas meant to deliver new impulses to real-life architectural output and urban development. The biennial prize seeks to encourage innovative and visionary architectural concepts that explore new models of living and strategies for inhabiting an urban context over a broad expanse of 30 years. www.superscape.at/eng/
MIXED-USE CITY Living, Working and Urban Production
Like the earlier industrial revolution, it is now the digital revolution that is influencing social, economic and socio-cultural processes and, hence, making increased demands
Will architects be one of the professionals who will be replaced by AI in the near future? New York-based artist Sebastián Errázuriz recently opened the debate in one of his latest Instagram videos.
Errázuriz, also known for his critique/proposal of the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame church, says that it is very likely that the future of the profession as we know it might disappear. Thanks to technological advancements, only a small elite of architects who maintain architecture as an artistic practice might be the ones who will continue to practice the discipline as we know it.
Home automation, from voice-controlled virtual assistants to app-controlled thermostats, has quickly and unexpectedly ushered the future into our own homes. As technology continues to progress, the way we interact with our environment will likely only grow more and more futuristic – even spaces as personal as our home bathrooms. While the prospect of such a highly digitized personal life may be daunting to some, others see this trend’s potential for improving not just comfort, but health and safety as well. Below, we outline some of the technologies that we hope to see in the bathrooms of the future.
https://www.archdaily.com/926022/what-will-bathrooms-look-like-in-the-futureLilly Cao
Never before have there been such fundamental uncertainties about our future. Obvious signs of climate change, a political landscape in flux, rapid advances in technology and their consequential societal changes are making us anxious about our personal life in the next decades.
The Laboratory is a cross-disciplinary initiative that brings together architects, artists, designers and researchers to speculate about the near future through an exploration of our social, cultural, spatial and technological present. What could the impact be onto our shared future? Avoiding dystopia, the workshop aims to come up with productive narratives about the future that try to
It is often claimed that “there is nothing more outdated than science fiction.” Indeed, history is awash with speculation on future ways of living, as futurists imagine how advancements in technology, trends, and social norms could alter how we live, and what we live in. The period between 1958 and 1963 could be described as “The Golden Age of American Futurism” where technological milestones such as the founding of NASA coincided with cultural icons such as The Jetsons. Some of this era’s wildest ideas centered on how the houses of the future would look.
Architects are not endowed with designing just buildings but with time, they are now building ecosystems. This expanded role of architecture is becoming more and more evident with the passing century, where the profession found itself from making enclosures for functions, to defining how the functions would be. As we enter into the 2020, these changing definitions are becoming more noticeable. As architecture evolves these themes continuously shift with amazing trails behind. And this, in context of South American subcontinent looks more real than ever.
Framing the world capital architecture as a place of dialogue, the time to build architecture for architecture
The Architecture and Urbanism Research Academy (AURA) Istanbul invites you to its inspiring summer program, “Istanbul: Past, Present and Future.”
The melting pot of the East and the West, the great city of Istanbul, now a city of more than 15 million people, has been the capital of two glorious empires, the Byzantine and the Ottoman. With its eight thousand years of human history, it presents researchers a vast amount of architectural legacy to discover and analyze. Join us in Istanbul for a month of comprehensive analysis of the city with lectures from leading experts in their respective fields.
Crime, whether we like it or not, is a driving force behind a large proportion of technological ‘progress’. In 1817, a burglary at a British dockyard led the government to start a competition, challenging locksmiths to invent an unpickable lock. The result was the Chubb detector lock, and it remained ‘unpicked’ for 33 years.
In the past, adding another lock, or increasing the wall thickness of a safe was the obvious solution to deter theft. However, money is no longer physical, it is now predominantly a data set shared via telecommunications, secured via encryption, transacted via smartphone or
As our future megacities are defining themselves every day with bustling streets and soaring skyscrapers, a city still craves for many things but mostly - an identity. The 21st century from its onset is rapidly changing how we live and how we perceive the definitions of a city rampantly.
