Resilient by Design: The Latest Architecture and News

Following the extreme floods that affected Pakistan in 2022, architect Yasmeen Lari the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan pledged to help build one million resilient houses in the country. In 2022, 33 million people have been displaced, and an estimated 500,000 houses have been destroyed or severely damaged. In September 2022, Lari’s NGO launched a target program to start rebuilding and to help communities protect themselves against future disasters. The program is built on Lari’s expertise in working with the communities and employing vernacular and local building materials to achieve resilient and sustainable structures. According to the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, one-third of the goal has already been reached.

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New Orleans experiences the worst urban heat island effect in the country, with temperatures nearly 9 F° higher than nearby natural areas. The city also lost more than 200,000 trees from Hurricane Katrina, dropping its overall tree canopy to just 18.5 percent.

The non-profit organization Sustaining Our Urban Landscape (SOUL) partnered with landscape architects at Spackman Mossop Michaels (SMM) to create a highly accessible, equity-focused reforestation plan for the city that provides a roadmap for achieving a tree canopy of 24 percent by 2040. But more importantly, the plan also seeks to equalize the canopy, so at least 10 percent of all 72 neighborhoods are covered in trees. Currently, more than half of neighborhoods are under the 10 percent goal.

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One year after the launch of Resilient by Design's Bay Area Challenge, led by TLS Landscape has presented the final nine design concepts. The Bay Area Challenge launched with a call to action to "bring together local residents, community organizations, public officials and local, national, and international experts to develop innovative solutions that will strengthen our region's resilience to sea level rise, severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes." The idea formulated as a “blueprint for resilience” that can be replicated and utilized locally and globally. Other urban challenges will also be addressed, including housing, transport, health and economic disparity as a means of not just protecting the current regions, but strengthening them.

The elite, collaborative teams include world-renowned designers like BIG, Mithun and HASSELL+.

Read on for more about each of the final design concepts.

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Following recent natural disasters including the Northern California wildfires, the HASSELL + team have been inspired to reimagine the San Francisco Bay Area as a vibrant community hub, equipped to provide temporary facilities in an emergency. As part of the competition Resilient by Design, the ten teams were asked to provide solutions for the waterfront through site-specific conceptual design and collaborative research projects.

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Videos

From a pool of over fifty submissions, Resilient by Design have chosen ten winning teams to collaborate with engineers, climate change experts, designers, architects and community members to imagine a better future for The Bay Area in the face of potentially devastating climate change. The winning teams AECOM, BIG, Bionic, TLS, Field Operations, HASSELL, Mithun, Base Landscape, SCAPE and Gensler will spend the next year on a combination of collaborative research projects and site-specific conceptual design solutions.

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