Category: planning
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Tackling Suburbia
The latest competition out there challenging entrants to envision visionary designs is Reburbia: A Suburban Design Competition that focuses on the suburbs as the venue for exploration. Sponsored by Inhabitat and Dwell, the premise is open and relatively simple: “Show us how you would re-invent the suburbs! What would a McMansion become if it weren’t…
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Interim Vacancy – Pt 2
A followup to the idea of interim use of vacant lands, the SF Chronicle surprised with expanded coverage of some ideas for these sites… and they are all pretty fun. King continues: “…a quartet of local designers see something else: a site that could become a sculpted realm of green folds spiked by artistic birdhouses…
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Interim Vacancy
Ever have one of those moments when you read, virtually word-for-word and idea-for-idea about an urban issue that you’ve been mulling and kicking around in your brain for some time. The idea of vacant land is predominant everywhere in varying levels, but offers potential for future development as well as valuable real estate that often…
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Some SDATisfaction
‘A Leaner, Greener Detroit: A Report by the American Institute of Architects Sustainable Design Assessment Team‘ is (finally) available for download. As one of the contributors, it is great to finally see it in living color. Find the link to the final report here… I will be posting on this after I’ve had a chance…
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Experimentation in Modern Communication
I’m not necessarily against new media options, but as one who does not ‘tweet’, I’m curious to see the results of this upcoming forum hosted by Balmori Associates on What Should a Public Place Be? Conducted 100% via Twitter be sure to check it out on July 13th, and who knows, if it is a…
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A Short History of America
Perhaps an homage to a weekend of bbq’s and fireworks – this panel progression from the fantastic R.Crumb highlights the long (or really, actually quite short) road from nature to excess that we like to call development in America… anyone care to refute this vision? The interesting part, to see where this leads in future…
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Growing the Shrinking City
Following up on the proposed plans for the ‘shrinking’ city of Detroit, I was excited to see this link from City Farmer News announcing plans for Hantz Farms, set to be the ‘World’s Largest Urban Farm’ using a patchwork of vacant lands on the lower east side. John Hantz, CEO of Hantz Farms explains: “Detroit…
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World Map of Shrinking Cities
Showing that the idea of shrinking cities is not a localized, unique, or recent phenonomenon, a great video spotted via synchronicity from shrinking cities. World Map of Shrinking Cities from 1kilo on Vimeo.
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Seeing Daylight
The idea of daylighting streams is compelling as an urban intervention – unearthing the natural drainage from the buried pipes and. A new project from Seattle offers a unique vision of the potential in action. Some background: “A large, paved lot once devoted to overflow mall traffic and RV parking has been replaced with a…
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Take to the Streets
I just passed a milestone of sorts… topping out at 500 posts (not to mention a few on the new Veg.itecture blog…). Seems like just yesterday I was starting this humble outlet for collecting thoughts – fighting with time to blog amidst time to work and occupying all of grey area in between. Often times,…