Green ArchiTEXT

Picturing Failure, Sketching Dreams: Liz Diller's Creative Process

By Ellen Gamerman

When coming up with the design for the High Line, an urban park on an abandoned section of elevated railroad in New York, architect Elizabeth Diller and her colleagues started with a question: What would failure look like?

The architects realized they'd fall short if they ignored the weeds and other wild plantings that had taken root around the tracks, brought there from seeds swept off passing cars and scattered by the wind. The mix of concrete and greenery is now the centerpiece of the park, a collaboration with the design firm James Corner Field Operations.

Thanks to their vision for the High Line and other projects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the firm Ms. Diller founded with her fellow architect and husband Ricardo Scofidio, is shouldering a new spate of high-profile jobs. This summer, it won the international competition to design billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad's new museum in downtown Los Angeles. Ms. Diller and her team are also working on the "Bubble," an inflatable temporary event space that will bulge over the top of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., like a giant souffle. READ MORE >>

via online.wsj.com

John Maeda: Laws of Simplicity for Design and Business

Peter Busby: Green to the Core

By Graham Livesey

Since the publication of his project "A House for the 1980s" in the October 1980 issue of The Canadian Architect, Peter Busby--then still working in Norman Foster's office in London--has made his mark on Canadian architecture, pursuing his architectural vision with singular determination. The house, influenced by Foster, Buckminster Fuller, and Charles and Ray Eames, was a work inspired by High-Tech Modernism with a strong emphasis on prefabrication and environmental responsiveness. In 2009, Peter Busby celebrated 25 years of practice, during which he transitioned from a small office to join forces with the fourth-largest architectural practice in North America. Some may see his joining the US firm Perkins + Will as a questionable move, but it is in fact a natural progression, one that demonstrates Busby's evolving skills and his response to expanding opportunities, and also reflects significant changes occurring across the industry.

...

Busby has always sought to achieve innovation, and has had a longstanding commitment to research (including 4% of the bottom line invested in research) in his practice. Today, the firm's research group comprises six members of his staff and is growing, providing internal services to the firm in terms of researching products, materials and systems. They also act as a semi-independent consulting group providing expertise to a range of clients. Kathy Wardle, an Associate Principal at Busby Perkins + Will and the Director of Research, has been with the Busby practice since 2002. Trained in environmental and resource management, she directs the research efforts of the firm, and is a co-chair of the SDI program. With increasing demands to understand biology, ecology, chemistry and mechanics, the research group provides vital expertise and is reminiscent of the interdisciplinary "environmental design" model pioneered in the 1960s. Again, the investment in research is something that needs to be more widely spread thoughout the architecture, development and construction industries. Interdisciplinarity is key to the Busby Perkins + Will approach, particularly the integration of advanced engineering into the projects' designs from initial conception.

 

via www.canadianarchitect.com

Bob Berkebile: On Responsible Design, LIving Buildings and Restorative Communities

The latest issue of Cascadia's terrific Trim Tab magazine features an interview with Bob Berkebile of BNIM. See "Bob Berkebile: A true pioneer in the sustainability movement".

Bruce Mau's Massive Change: A Design Manifesto

From Bilt Magazine:

Too often we ignore homegrown heroes for those who were born further afield, reared on fairy dust and magical fruit and who must have something better.

BILT doesn’t believe in fairies and so is giving a whoop-whoop where it’s due, to Bruce Mau, a northern Ontario boy who’s is talking revitalization of his hometown of Sudbury, while dabbling in a little redesign of Mecca and changing the face of the planet one visionary project at a time.

From Mau's 1998 “Incomplete Manifesto to Growth”:

1. Allow events to change you.
2. Forget about good.
3. Process is more important than outcome.

...and 40 more tips...

via avnerd.tv

Toward an Architecture of Place

By Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces

Good design involves much more than making bold and innovative aesthetic impressions; design should help people find solutions to the major urban issues confronting the world today – from environmental destruction to economic decline to social alienation. The current economic slump provides opportunities to emerge armed with bold design innovations that can be used to strengthen local communities and economies and establish a new kind of architecture rooted in a sense of place and the mission to help improve people’s lives.

The most successful cities are being defined by their public destinations, which presents a major challenge and opportunity for design today. Examples of these public destinations are Bryant Park and Central Park in New York City and Lower Downtown in Denver, and are found in cities like Barcelona, Copenhagen, and Melbourne.

The best public destinations are defined by the local community. Nearly every city can point to at least one success story in which determined residents, guided by the principles of place making or creating great places, have made a difference in their hometowns.

via www.pps.org

Malcolm Wells, an architect ahead of his time, dies

Malcolm Wells, the visionary Cherry Hill architect who died Nov. 27 at 83, was considered a crackpot in 1964 when he gave up lucrative commissions for the RCA Corp., and began advocating underground buildings with earth-friendly sod roofs. But he lived long enough to see some of his most radical ideas become standard practice.

via www.philly.com

Art Like Earth Like Architecture: Biomimicry on a Grander Scale?

CREDIT: ALOS/ESA                                         CREDIT: Aqua/MODIS/NASA
CREDIT: EO-1/NASA

Amazing photos found on guardian.co.uk taken by the European Space Agency and NASA. Gives new meaning to the ideas of "Earth Architecture". (top left) The Tanezrouft basin, in the Sahara desert, south-central Algeria, (top right) Fires burned along the coast of Queensland, Australia, and (above) Caldera on the southern end of Onekotan Island, located off the southern tip of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula.

See all 19 photos at “Satellite eye on Earth: October”.

Return to IslandWood

I was pleasantly surprised to come across a “Virtual Tour of IslandWood” posted recently on Mithun Inc.’s blog. This may be one of the greenest, restorative, 255 acres on the planet. IslandWood is more than just an environmental education center; it’s an experience in design: integrated, biophilic, educational, transformational. The slideshow recaps the visit made by a group of ‘Mithunees’ in July, from IslandWood’s ‘entrance sequence’ out front and throughout the heavily-wooded site.

Even after seven years, IslandWood stands out as one of our best examples of green design, a place I was privileged to visit for nearly a full day while writing Integrated Design: Mithun. As described in "IslandWood, A Light in the Forest", the center’s very concept was experimental, with Mithun’s design process a mix equally of exploration and collaboration. Overarching goals for the project included:

• Protection of the entire property through environmentally-intelligent design
• Best practices in environmental education for a state-of-the-art facility
• Buildings that function as interactive learning tools
• Connections to nature

Located only a few miles from downtown Seattle on Bainbridge Island, IslandWood is both a return to another time and a glimpse of a possible future. In addition to the six-acre campus of buildings (3 of them LEED Gold), the site features a solar meadow, living machine, tree house, PV arrays, and healthy use of sustainable design strategies for daylighting, rainwater collection, natural ventilation, recycled materials, and more.

For more on IslandWood, see Mithun’s IslandWood and “A Light in the Forest”.

Bob Berkebile: 40 Years of Leadership

A very nice postcard/annnouncement from BNIM on founder Bob Berkebile's recent Heinz Award:

The email also read: "BNIM would like to congratulate our guardian Bob Berkebile on receiving a Heinz Award from Theresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation for his leadership and commitment to the environment."

Congrats Bob!