100architects has designed a proposal that regenerates the Puji Road pedestrian bridge in Shanghai, China. Entitled High Loop, the proposal reimagines the 1-kilometer elevated platform, adding playfulness and color to the city, without transforming the structure.
Recycling has long been an entry point into sustainable design. It's personal, achieved at a micro scale where individuals can reduce waste and preserve energy. But between resource shortages, environmental habitat loss and the global climate crisis, there has been a shift in daily practices towards more circular thinking. Increasingly, the need to sustain life is part of a continuous process of production, resorption, and recycling where waste becomes the input for production.
The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) has released guidelines to provide cities with strategies “to redesign and adapt their streets for new uses both during the COVID-19 crisis and in the recovery”. Streets for Pandemic Response and Recovery highlights the most updated street design approaches cities are using, around the world.
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Stefano Boeri Architetti has unveiled its recent scheme for Tirana Riverside, in the Albanian capital. Tackling post-COVID 19 needs, the imagined neighbourhood, a first of its kind in Europe, is a technologically-advanced, green and sustainable novelty, designed in agreement with the Government and the City Authorities.
After Milan and Paris, London has announced its plans to transform large areas in the city, converting streets to car-free zones, as the coronavirus lockdown loosens up. Repurposing the city for people, London aims to emerge differently from the pandemic, supporting a low-carbon and sustainable recovery. Works have already started and are expected to be completed within six weeks.
Paris, just like Milan, is planning on keeping its streets car-free after the coronavirus lockdown. Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced plans to maintain the anti-pollution and anti-congestion measures introduced during the confinement period, as the city reopens.
As social distancing becomes the new norm in the fight against COVID-19, people are finding it harder to keep up with the six-foot rule in dense cities. Urban Planner Meli Harvey developed a map of New York that shows the width of sidewalks in the city, aiming to highlight public areas where social distancing can be maintained.
The city of Milan has announced its Strade Aperte plan or “Open streets” plan that favors pedestrians and cyclists over cars. In order to reduce car usage, the Lombardy area will repurpose 35km of roads, over the summer, after the coronavirus lockdown, transforming them into people-friendly streets.
Designed by Sasaki in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team including Arup, JLL, and the Wuhan Planning Institute, the Wuhan Yangchun Lake Business District master plan was approved by the city. Imagining “a progressive yet realistic vision for the district”, the project, a landscape-forward urban blueprint, will define Wuhan’s next generation of growth.
It is not your responsibility to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but you are not free to desist from it either.” —Rabbi Tarfon
On a recent flight, a gentleman sitting next to me noticed, aloud, that I was reading a book about architecture. Daring to engage in a conversation with more than two hours of flight time left, I confessed that I not only read about, but also practice architecture. His next question, with the earnest tone of a newly minted grandfather, was whether architects were “solving the housing crisis.”
David Chipperfield Architects with Wirtz International Landscape Architects have won an urban competition in Berlin to convert the abandoned industrial and production site Georg-Knorr-Park into a lively residential and commercial neighborhood.
Today's designers have inherited unprecedented global challenges, a legacy which will require radically new ways of fashioning the buildings, places, and landscapes that harbor our diverse ways of life. The College of Environmental Design offers several introductory and advanced programs for those interested in confronting these challenges in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and environmental planning, urban design, and sustainable city planning. Please visit UC Berkeley's Summer Programs website to view images of student work and learn more about the CED Summer experience.
Lateral Office, the Canadian experimental design practice that operates at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism, in partnership with CS Design, installed 12 seesaws in New York City's Garment District. The urban intervention will stay on display until the 31st of January 2020.
