Category: vegitecture
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Daily Drawdown 2: Refrigerant Management
This is the second in an ongoing series illustrating the relationship of Drawdown strategies to landscape architecture. For context, read the initial post here. Yes, I’m here today to talk about Refrigerant Management. I do this for a couple of reasons. First, it is important in terms of Drawdown, as this is, by far, the…
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Daily Drawdown 1: Lessons for Landscape Architects
As you delve into the various publications related to climate change, you find it runs the gamut from impenetrable to porous. I personally find much of design writing on the subject a bit toothless, and as far as scientific writings, the NCA4 pretty readable and compelling, whereas the IPCC reports require a bit of a…
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Living Nature
I seem to be attracted to compelling pavilion installations this month, as this interesting proposal (via Archinect)for a project ‘Living Nature’ by Carlo Ratti Associati definitely caught my eye with it’s interesting take on climate and seasons. A short description from the CRA site: “International design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati has unveiled “Living Nature. La Natura…
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Irish Hunger Memorial
I remember seeing images of the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City a few years back, and was amazed by the hovering cantilevered structure holding a metaphorical ‘slice’ of Irish landscape. The Memorial, designed by internationally renowned sculptor and public artist Brian Tolle, originally opened in 2002. It is a contemplative space devoted to…
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Connecting Green
Although not a new idea, the concept of connected green roofs that emerge from the ground on to structure is a persist, compelling idea, essentially blending building and site and maximizing green space, habitat, and square footage through layering of uses. A trio of projects show the variations on that theme. First, via Designboom, the…
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Smart Trees
Way back in undergraduate studies, I developed a project for a pedestrian street mall in Vancouver, British Columbia. The conceptual framework of car-free zones in cities was a contentious one at the time with some notable failures but the idea of removing cars from urban zones was a key driver of my design. This has…
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Why Cities Need More Green Roofs
Nice video from NPR on Why Cities Need More Green Roofs. From the summary. “We took a field trip to the largest green roof in New York City. Then we imagined what the city could be like if all of its roof space was green.”
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Hortum machina B
Really like this experimental project (spotted on a post on Architects Newspaper) by Interactive Architecture Lab. Called Hortum machina, B it’s a “rolling ecological exoskeleton” in the shape of a geodesic dome, the “half garden, half machine” hybrid is able to move through the environment using plant electro-physiology to drive the machine. The idea of…
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Treescrapers
A recent post from CityLab delves into an on-going. Entitled ‘Are ‘Treescrapers the Future of Dense Urban Living?’, explores the concept beyond the fantastical and thinks about this type of work in terms of reality and the more pragamatic elements. Weird Dune references about Passive House designers (?) aside, having some critical evaluation the points…