Is real-estate development always good? Is a community succeeding only if it’s growing? That was the post-war assumption in this country as skylines inched upward and suburbs sprawled. But like so many economic presumptions, the growth-is-good model may now be collapsing on itself.
Popularity: 25% [?]
While the Wall stood, the zone between East and West Berlin was a potentially deadly space. But since the end of the Cold War, it has mostly stood barren. Now a Dutch landscape architect wants to transform the former no man’s land into a series of secret gardens and recreational areas.
Popularity: 44% [?]
Need to stop flooding or reduce stormwater runoff and sewer overflows? Looking to ease demand on treatment plants and avoid the cost of expansion? Seeking cleaner air or water? Interested in recharging an aquifer, rebuilding a shoreline or remediating a brownfield? Trying to stem highway pollution? Need to rebalance a watershed or ecosystem?
If so, a landscape architect may be in your future.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Chirpingbirds, rustling leaves, a burbling brook: not the first sounds that come to mind about the New York City subway.
But starting next year, the city’s subterranean soundtrack — a familiar overture of clanks, screeches, groans and beeps — is poised to add a few noises of a more verdant variety.
Popularity: 33% [?]
Every tree is a living archive, its rings a record of rainfall, temperature, atmosphere, fire, volcanic eruption, and even solar activity. These arboreal archives together reach back in time over centuries, sometimes millennia. We can even map human history through them—and onto them—tracing famines, plagues, and the passing of our own lives.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Studies have shown that hospital patients make a speedier recovery when they have a exposure to living vegetation, like trees and flowers. And certainly great metropoli are made even more liveable by their extensive parks and gardens. Now it seems that plants can also deter burglars. Sort of.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Import Export Architecten designed a new type of ‘small scale’ urban camping. The mobile UC can be implanted in any city centre that likes to experiment with this new type of camping. UC is a place where adventurous city wanderers can stay overnight, meet other campers and find a safe shelter with basic designed practical facilities.
Popularity: 43% [?]
Most “green building” solutions are actually obvious: extremely good insulation, smart ways to use natural ventilation, and, perhaps, ways to reduce water use or recycle water. If you want to get fancy with it, throw in a solar panel or two; add on a couple of smart energy meters.
But what’s next? What’s the future of green, after we address those basics outlined above?
The architect Michael Pawlyn has created some of the world’s most intriguing answers.
Popularity: 32% [?]
Leeds-based Garnett Netherwood Architects has won a quirky competition to design a tower block for animals.
The 12m-high towers – proposed for the Holbeck Urban Village project in the city centre – are designed using recycled materials from demolished buildings to provide a habitat for various forms of wildlife.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Standing on a newly renovated stretch of an elevated promenade that was once a railway line for delivering cattle — surrounded by advocates, elected officials and architects who made the transformation happen — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cut a red ribbon on Monday morning to signify that the first phase of the High Line is finished and ready for strolling.
Popularity: 28% [?]