Green ArchiTEXT

The Plan to Decarbonize Chicago's Central Loop

Renowned architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill (AS+GG) recently completed the investigation phase of a massive plan to “decarbonize” Chicago’s Loop. The firm’s goal was to assess variables such as the age, use, condition, and energy consumption of the 500 buildings in this central core area of the city. Carried out in cooperation with the Chicago Climate Action Plan, the monumental project calls for a retrofit of half the city’s commercial and residential buildings to result in a 30% reduction in energy use by 2020. AS+GG took on this tall order with very well thought-out, research based, holistic ideas that beg to be implemented.

via www.inhabitat.com

Wetlands as Urban Connectors

IMAGE: SWA Group

Framework For many years people have become increasingly interested in the way water is conveyed not only off a site but within a site as well. It has been through several trial-and-error attempts that humans have been able to find a system that works effectively for the particular site. We have found it to be that when dealing with stormwater issues near a site it is best to design or redevelop the area to allow for water overflow as an amenity to the urban setting. This is commonly done through the use of water retentions/detentions or other on-site methods. In a fairly recent example SWA group completed a project in Houston, Texas along Brays Bayou that called for the development of stormwater management areas along some of the more urbanized areas and infrastructure in the city.

Experience In a fairly recent example SWA group completed a project in Houston, Texas along Brays Bayou that called for the development of stormwater management areas along some of the more urbanized areas and infrastructure in the city. Three ways they looked at solving this problem was to develop their ecological system 1.) alongside Brays Bayou, 2.) at the mouth of an already developed, but rarely used park, and 3.) on both sides of the bayou in an attempt to use this bayou as an amenity passing through a larger system that was on both sides of it.

via lab.visual-logic.com

Driving Green: New Freeway Cap Parks for L.A.?

  IMAGE: AECOM

Plans to develop four so-called freeway cap parks have recently been announced in Los Angeles. The cap concept, which essentially covers a portion of a freeway with a planted concrete lid, has gained popularity in the last decade as an urban “greening” solution. The multibillion-dollar projects are meant to knit together previously disparate neighborhoods, theoretically creating cohesion and larger-scale community gathering places without having to destroy or displace existing infrastructures.

The four projects are spread across Hollywood, downtown LA, and Santa Monica. Hollywood Central Park would be built atop the 101 Freeway on a proposed 44-acre site between Santa Monica Boulevard and Bronson Avenue.

via www.archpaper.com

City Under the City in Amsterdam

IMAGES: Zwarts & Jansma Architects

Amsterdam is bursting at the seams: the space is limited and the narrow streets are often congested. The architectural office Zwarts & Jansma further developed a concept by Dutch engineering company Strukton, which foresees a city under the city.

AMFORA (Alternative MultiFunctionele Ondergrondse Ruimte Amsterdam – Alternative Multifunctional Underground Space Amsterdam) solves the space and traffic problems of Amsterdam: almost 50 km of tunnels will be built underneath the canals in the town centre. They will accommodate extended parking space, sport and leisure facilities like cinemas and others.

AMFORA is CO2-neutral. Heat pumps provide the energy for heating and cooling. Excess energy could be used for temperature control in the buildings aboveground. Moreover, the Amsterdam air will improve: exhaust fumes will be filtered using state-of-the-art technology, particulate matter and other harmful substances will therefore no longer reach the atmosphere.

via www.zwarts.jansma.nl

The City is a Brain

Thought-provoking ideas on city design from a10, an architectural studio in Mexico City:

“the new city should generate situations rather than things.”

FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY:
In the course of pursuing any sufficiently ‘complicated problem’ (the city), the subgoals that engage our attentions (the topics of study) can become increasingly detached from the original problem (the city).

Virtually any problem (city) will be easier to solve the more one learns about the context world in which that problem (city) occurs. No matter what one’s problem is, provided that it’s hard enough, one always gains from learning better ways to learn.

INTELIGEN.CITY
Intelligence emphasizes swiftness and efficiency. Taking as accounted, that a city should work as a brain, which means that it can learn and solve problems by itself and be functionally autonomous...

via a10studio.tumblr.com

De-Industrializing the City

By Alex Steffen

One of my favorite quotes by Bjarke Ingels:

"Engineering without engines. We should use contemporary technology and computation capacity to make our buildings independent of machinery. Building services today are essentially mechanical compensations for the fact that buildings are bad for what they are designed for—human life. Therefore we pump air around, illuminate dark spaces with electric lights, and heat and cool the spaces in order to make them livable. The result is boring boxes with big energy bills. If we moved the qualities out of the machine room and back into architecture’s inherent attributes, we’d make more interesting buildings and more sustainable cities."

These are all ideas very much at the core of green building, but there's a focus here that I think is important: that sustainable cities involve removing machines designed to do ecologically stupid things, and that new technology should reorient the city around the human body.

Fewer machines. Smart surroundings for people.

via www.worldchanging.com

The Architecture of Healthiness

It was only his first hour as the city’s new health commissioner, but Dr. Thomas Farley had already singled out a new target in the fight for New Yorkers’ well-being: elevators. “Over the past 60 years, we engineered physical activity out of our lives,” the rail-thin infectious disease specialist told a conference called Fit City, held at the Center for Architecture in July. Elevators and escalators seemed “like a good idea at the time,” but now New Yorkers needs more stairs, the doctor ordered. Moving up and down by foot isn’t just cheaper and more energy efficient than using an elevator: Just two minutes of stair climbing a day burns enough calories to eliminate the one pound an average adult gains each year. If we engineered physicality out of our lives, Farley added, “we can engineer it right back in just as easily.”

via americancity.org

Imagining Austin

Austinites begin a new comprehensive plan for the city's future

By Katherine Gregor

"If we do our jobs right, we'll create a plan that has a profound influence on our generation and the next."

Do those words make your heart leap? John Fernsler, a principal with consultants Wallace Roberts & Todd, offered them up to inspire a dozen tables of engaged Austinites who attended a comprehensive planning kickoff community workshop at Scholz Garten last August. If you're like the folks in that room, planning and community activism already quicken your pulse. You're likely a planning or policy wonk or involved with a nonprofit or neighborhood association or task force – and probably a habitué of City Hall. But for many, talk of a comprehensive plan can be a real eye-glazer: What is it, and why should I care if the city of Austin is doing one?

The short answer: Cities create comprehensive plans to holistically address all community needs. Citizens come together to express common values, visions, and aspirations for the future; those will get translated into a comprehensive plan, according to the city of Austin, that "will drive the way the city grows, spends, and conserves its resources."

via AustinChronicle.com

A New Vision for Dallas

If all goes as planned, a self-sustaining, mixed-use project conceived by a team of Portugese architects will be constructed on a city block in Texas.

In December, Portugal-based Atelier Data and MOOV were named the winners of Re:Vision Dallas, an international competition put on by the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation (CDCDC), an affordable housing organization, and Urban Re:Vision, a national nonprofit group dedicated to responsible city planning.

Launched in January 2009, the competition brief asked entrants to design a complex with residential, retail, and commercial space that would be built on a 2.5-acre site across the street from Dallas City Hall. The scheme needed to offer a new “urban framework” and address issues such as energy, waste, transportation, sustainable construction, and the health of local economies.

via archrecord.construction.com

IBM's Focus on Cities: Five Innovations in the Next 5 Years

Recently IBM has looked into their crystal ball to determine the 5 most important innovations that in the next 5 years will have the potential to radically change our lives. IBM’s fourth annual “Next 5 in 5″  is focused this year on Cities. The companies future thinkers have complied a list of innovations that have the potential to change how people live, work and play in cities around the globe over the next five to ten years:

Here are the 5.

• Cities will have healthier immune systems
• City buildings will sense and respond like living organisms
• Cars and city buses will run on empty
• Smarter systems will quench cities’ thirst for water and save energy
• Cities will respond to a crisis — even before receiving an emergency phone call

via www.mygreeneducation.com