Green ArchiTEXT

Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations

Design for Social Innovation: An Interview With Ezio Manzini

By Sarah Brooks

Ezio Manzini is an Italian design strategist, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable design, author of numerous design books, professor of Industrial Design at Milan Polytechnic, and founder of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability) network of university-based design labs. His work over the past 30 years in sustainability and social innovation has coalesced around four watchwords: small, local, open and connected. On a recent Friday morning we spoke via skype and I was immediately impressed with his easy manner, warmth and balanced optimism.

Q: What's most interesting to you right now?

A: Right now, what’s most interesting me is what we can do to catalyze the most abundant resources we have on the planet, which are our human capabilities. This is, if you want, my motto and it is also a very deep philosophical issue. If we consider that we have a very small heavily populated planet, to move to sustainability we have to make best use of all the resources we have.

We can look to the people of the planet in two ways. We can see 7 billion people on the planet today or 9 billion people tomorrow as the biggest threat and the biggest problem, because we are a little planet. But given that those 7 billion people are you, me, my friends and the people we know, we see them not as problems but as people with capabilities, intelligent operators. So the planet is very rich with potential intelligent operators. What does it mean to enable all the potentialities of so many intelligent people? The system can help in catalyzing the best, or catalyzing the worst. Or in making people more stupid than normally they are. I think this is a very big challenge. This is the biggest challenge with the most potential. Collectivity can help. READ MORE >>

via www.shareable.net

ArchNewsNow: 2011 Rudy Bruner Award Winners Offer Innovative Models for Urban Placemaking

The Rudy Bruner Award, now in its 13th award cycle, has a longstanding commitment to promoting excellence in urban placemaking, and has honored more than 65 projects since its establishment in 1986. Acknowledging the dynamic interplay between process, place, and community values in realizing successful design, the award engages an in-depth, on-site evaluation process that strives to recognize outstanding interdisciplinary approaches to transforming urban challenges into community opportunities. These projects comprise a rich collection of well-documented case studies that serve as a growing resource for practitioners and community leaders alike.

Five projects from around the U.S. were recently honored with the 2011 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. The prestigious biennial award recognizes exceptional civic places that harness collaborative design processes to improve the urban environment. At a time when conventional approaches to project development have been plagued by economic challenges, this year’s award winners exemplify flexible, resilient strategies for effecting lasting positive change within their communities. As the Gold Medal recipient, the Bridge Homeless Assistance Center in Dallas, Texas, will receive $50,000, while four Silver Medal recipients will receive $10,000 each.

While encompassing a wide range of disciplines and approaches, this year’s winners reflect a common understanding of the critical role that citizens, institutions, and governments play in the creation of successful civic places. Each project offers a powerful example of the positive influence that community-minded design and development can have in empowering local communities and addressing pressing social issues. READ MORE >>

via www.archnewsnow.com

Detroit copies Torino’s public markets to support its regeneration

By Andrea Rossi

Who would have thought that the regeneration of a city can start from a market stand that sells fruits and vegetables, or clothes? But it’s true: one of the pillars that Detroit has chosen to structure its very difficult relaunch around, is the development of a network of local public markets, based on the “Torino model”.

Facing an uncertain industrial future, having lost nearly half of its inhabitants in fifty years, and with a fragile urban fabric that needs to be rethought, Detroit is looking in the mirror and discovers it has much in common with the situation facing Torino fifteen years ago. So now, building on the newborn Fiat-Chrysler connection between the cities, Detroit is retracing the steps of Torino’s regeneration. The city’s urban and (particularly its) social fabric needs to be knitted back together, and the Michigan heart has decided where to start from.

It may seem bizarre to us, but for the Americans it isn’t. Yesterday morning a delegation landed in Torino led by Kathryn Lynch Underwood, the City Planner of the City of Detroit. And with her came a group of about ten managers, experts and market operators. The first thing they did was taking a plunge in the heart of the Porta Palazzo market. Then they gathered in an office, to be briefed in detail on Torino’s 45 local markets by the city’s administrators in charge of local commerce and public spaces.

As of today they will visit them one by one, trying to understand how they can export their DNA and adapt them to the Detroit context. “They are interested in understanding the social, economic and cultural functioning of the markets and of the nearby businesses, which in Torino constitute one of the more distinctive aspects of urban life,” explain deputy mayors Ilda Curti and Giuliana Tedesco.

It took the American delegation only one day to understand that the replication – even in a reduced version – of the “Torino model” could be the engine of the urban regeneration process that the Michigan capital will have to undertake if it wants to rise up again. “Ours is a feeble system, made up of only six markets,” explains Pam Weintestein, who is in charge of one. “In Turin, however, everyone does their shopping at the market stands irrespective of their social background or their income level.” Dan Carmody is in charge of the Eastern Market, Detroit’s largest. He is surprised: “What makes the difference here is the sense of community that transpires from your markets. It is obvious that they add value to the urban context.” READ MORE >>

via www.experientia.com

Designing the Building-Landscape Interface

By Bill Millard

Nature has been prototyping designs far longer than humans have. And as architects strive to keep up with the rapidly evolving world of green-building standards, some of them are looking to exploit that experience by bridging the gap between nature and the built environment. The end goal: creating a functional interface between the two that improves building performance.

In the second half of the 20th century, buildings and landscape became disconnected. Many architects saw nature as an unruly force to be excluded at all costs. Nonetheless, a small but vocal group maintained interest in the interplay of the built and natural environments. And today, architects increasingly see biomimetic and biophilic approaches as practical strategies.

Contemporary systems that exemplify this interplay include green and blue roofs, green façades, living greenwalls, porous pavements, and associated systems for managing water and soil. But putting these green machines to work isn’t plug-and-play; it calls for patient cost-benefit assessment. Well-deployed natural features can improve water management and thermal control and reduce operating costs, but they are not a panacea. READ MORE >>

via www.architectmagazine.com

Montreal discovers it's not easy going green

By Alex Aylett

Loving Montreal in the winter takes practice; loving it in the summer is easy. Festivals crop up everywhere, café tables spill out onto the streets, and parks overflow with people taking in the beauty of the days. This is the season when we show off our colours to the world. But according to a new Green Cities Index produced by The Economist, one colour that is not on display is green.

Released last week, the index evaluated 27 North American cities in nine key areas ranging from carbondioxide emissions to how they govern environmental issues. Montreal ranked 19th overall, and last among the four Canadian cities in the index - trailing Calgary by four spots. Other Canadian cities fared much better. Vancouver was ranked second overall, and Toronto also finished in the top 10. That a city as dynamic and creative as Montreal should have ranked so low raises important questions.

It is not all bad news for Montreal. We earned high marks in transportation, thanks to our high rate of non-automobile commuters (second only to New York,) and investments in public transit and cycling infrastructure. In total 29 per cent of us leave our cars at home when we head to work every morning. That's more than double the index average of 13 per cent, and well above Detroit's laggard four per cent. Our ranking was also bumped up because of our low per-capita carbon-dioxide emissions (thank Hydro-Québec for that one) and our high recycling rates.

You could probably have guessed that Montreal would have done well in those areas. They are all the result of decades of municipal and provincial investment. Where we've ranked poorly is more telling: Montreal has among the fewest per-capita LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)-certified green buildings in the index; we use more energy per capita than the index average; and the carbon and energy efficiency of our local economy is abysmal. For every dollar of local gross domestic product, Montreal uses almost three times more energy than the index average. READ MORE >>

via www.montrealgazette.com