Month: June 2014

Urban Planning and Knowledge Problems | Sustainable Cities Collective

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Yesterday a friend of mine sent me this article written by a city planner talking about the death of planning expertise. The article talks specifically about the rise of “community participation” and how it has undermined the modern planning process.

Source: sustainablecitiescollective.com

Is this good or bad – "planning  experts" created places like this in the picture  and  the people flocked in and to buy them – mortgaging their lives for 25 or more years to own them?

Who was wrong – the experts, the people or both ?

Why Tall Wooden Buildings are On the Rise: An Interview with Perkins+Will’s Wood Expert

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IZM Building / Architekten Hermann Kaufmann – Germany. Image © Norman A. Müller Material Minds, presented by ArchDaily Materials, is our new series

Source: www.archdaily.com

Why Not big wooden buildings? Sustainable wood supply is growing  and wood is beautiful – so what are the limitations?

Outdoors the durability  and indoors the structural and fire hazard limitations -is technology able to overcome these drawbacks?

Salvaged Ring / a21 studio

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Courtesy of a21 studio Architects: a21 studio Location: Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam Area: 360 sqm Year: 2014 Photographs: Courtesy of a21

Source: www.archdaily.com

From the architect. Salvaged ring is a coffee shop located along side with a highway in the countryside of Nha Trang, Vietnam. After years working, the owner, which is a local carpenter, has a big stock of scrap wood that he wishes to give another life to them rather than leaving it fall into oblivion. Therefore, an idea that a building salvages these pieces of wood has come to life.

Design Frontiers: Ekasi Water Cap | Design Indaba

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Design Indaba | A better world through creativity | Peter Krige has prototyped a pressure-tight closure that can be fitted onto easily available parts to create a shower for unplumbed homes.

Source: www.designindaba.com

Great article – thanks for the credit.Look forward to being able to take part in another co-design workshop – it was most instructive – I would like to have a project in urban design or landscape where I could apply this process.

Understanding the UN Climate Science Reports | Climate Change: Implications for Cities | The Cambridge Sustainability Platform | CISL | Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership

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IPCC: Climate Change: Implications for Cities. CISL, together with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the support of the European Climate Foundation is summarising the latest climate science for the business community.

Source: www.cisl.cam.ac.uk

Again – info on cities and climate change – are we immune to the data?

Next Generation Infrastructure Behaves Like Nature

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THE DIRT

next Next Generation Infrastructure / Island Press

Between crumbling bridges, rising sea levels, growing garbage piles, and the ravages of drought and storms, we’ve grown used to bad news when it comes to infrastructure in the United States. Old systems are failing, new challenges arising, and solutions are elusive or perplexing. Into this maelstrom enters Hillary Brown, architect, infrastructure consultant and professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture. Her new book Next Generation Infrastructure: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works, is an inspiring argument for infrastructure that behaves like nature.

Armed with simple prescriptions, Brown argues that the next generation of infrastructure cannot resemble the hard, single-function and carbon-intensive structures of yore. Rather, we need “more diversified, distributed, and interconnected infrastructural assets that simulate the behavior of natural systems.” She walks us through the principles of a new ecological infrastructure piece by piece, with abundant case studies that show that ingenious…

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From cities of movement to places of transaction

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The power of the network

Summary of Tim Stonor’s talk at the World Cities Summit, Singapore, 3rd June 2014

From cities of movement to places of transaction – a new mobility focus for city leaders, planners and everyday users

Key responsibilities for cities
1. Imagining the future of cities and mobility.

2. Designing integrated, people-focused planning to sustain cities.

3. Measuring the social, economic and environmental value created by the movement, interaction and transaction of people.

The fundamental purpose of cities
Cities are for transaction: economic and social transaction. People come to cities to trade. It is why we have cities – they are intensifications of opportunities to trade. The public realm of the city – its network of streets and spaces – is where much of this trade occurs: a “transaction machine” which, like any machine, is more or less efficient depending on how it is engineered.

The contemporary problem of cities
This essential…

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BIM in Landscape Architecture

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See on Scoop.it – Urban Choreography

As a profession, we have been quietly avoiding BIM. I know that CAD is nice, simple, and comfortable in its familiarity, but hand-drafting used to be that way…

Donovan Gillman‘s insight:

More reasons to embrace Digital Technology – if there was any doubt about he future , As sci-fi author William Gibson, has said "the future has already arrived, its just not evenly distributed yet" – if as a Landscape Architects you not part of the future yet , you will soon be part of the past ! 

See on land8.com

Digitising Landscape Architecture: Revit for Landscape Architects

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See on Scoop.it – Urban Choreography

Most landscape architects don’t use Revit, and it’s not surprising to see why. Right from the outset, even Autodesk’s description of Revit demonstrates the so…

Donovan Gillman‘s insight:

No matter what platform you choose , digitally enhanced presentation and design is what is demanded in nowadays CG dominated business marker place – you see it on TV in the movies and in everyday advertising – how can we as Landscape Architects not follow, sure use your pencil to sketch out the idea, but as one leading architect recently said to me while I was punting for work from them " ..(most) landscape architects simply don’t know how to present their ideas, the clients don’t know what they are talking about"

 

See on land8.com