Henning Larsen has revealed the designs for Europe’s largest timber logistics center. Located in Lelystad, on the Dutch island of Flevopolder, the center is a testament to the future of timber structures. Serving as Bestseller’s new 155,000 sqm Logistics Center, the design is committed to reduced emissions, fair working conditions, and following circular design principles in order to minimize waste.
In the contemporary context, as has been said a multitude of times, we seem to be living in what is classified as a digital age. A worldwide pandemic has enhanced the popularity of digital avenues to communicate — such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and the multiplatform messaging app WhatsApp is reported to have over 2 billion active users. From an environmental standpoint, we see the migration of businesses to the “cloud” heralded as a sustainability win. In simplified terms and to pick out a specific example, companies can refrain from storing data on external hard drives, opting instead to store their data on online file hosting services.
Data centers, automated assembly lines, telecommunications facilities, and warehouses represent a very utilitarian aspect of the built environment, and yet they compose a particular kind of infrastructure within contemporary society, one that is fundamental to the development of everyday life. Rarely discussed within the profession, these new typologies have more recently penetrated the architectural discourse, raising questions about the architectural significance and design potential of the spaces sustaining the mechanics of today's world.
MAD Architects led by Ma Yansong, unveiled renderings of the MoLo, short for Mobility and Logistic hub, a new gateway situated along the western boundary of the Milano Innovation District (MIND). In collaboration with Architect Andrea Nonni, Open Project, and Progeca, the 28.5 meters high complex brings together several facilities across 68,700sqm of surfaces. Designed as an integration of nature and architecture, the MoLo “performs as a welcoming entrance and education space for issues related to mobility in which visitors can drop off their cars to explore the district on foot and see innovative transportation technology in person”.
Before the pandemic, the world was already facing a series of global transformations in the field of construction, where emerging countries were at the forefront of a powerful economic shift. As the world's population is expected to reach the 10-billion milestone before 2100, the construction sector should be able to understand and adapt to the megatrends that are reshaping the globe.
Stores in Santiago, Chile, ran out of yeast in mid-March, such as it happened after the beginning of the social crisis in 2019. Given that Chile has the second-highest bread consumption per capita in the world, it would seem that Chileans handle uncertainty stocking up ingredients for bread making. Everybody wants to make bread, including myself.
The following article was first published by Volume Magazine in their 47th issue, The System*. You can read the Editorial of this issue, How Much Does Your System Weigh?, here.
For the United Parcel Service (UPS), space is valued insofar as it grounds the socio-technical assemblages that secure the company’s economy of speed. Holding one of the largest airline fleets in the United States, UPS’s services range from delivering cargo for the US Air Force and e-commerce packages to relocating endangered animal species and partaking in disaster relief. It operationalizes logistics in the space between military and civilian domains and from the scale of cargo for large corporations to small packages for individuals. UPS runs a global logistics network that crosses more than 200 countries and territories and delivers about 17 million packages every day through its planetary ring of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Anchorage-Louisville-Cologne-Dubai.[1] It participates in the making of trans-border infrastructural systems and influences national politics towards the lifting of legal barriers to transnational trade. Yet what makes UPS significant is not its volume of shipment, infrastructural capacity, or magnitude of operational precision, but rather its resiliency and acute performance within the tides of uncertainty.
