Stacked Straw Bales Form Walls For Conceptual School In Malawi By Nudes
Indian architecture office Nudes has developed a concept for a secondary school in Malawi, with a modular wooden structure and curved walls made from straw bales. Nudes, led by architect Nuru Karim, created the concept for the Straw Bale School.
Architects Turn Empty Parking Lot Into Los Angeles’s Densest Urban Forest
SecondHome Hollywood, a Los Angeles workspace, boasts a 50,000-square-foot garden of 6,500 trees and plants and 700 tons of soil and vegetation. It is Los Angeles’s densest urban forest and is also home to 112 native species.
Design Schemes To Survive Climate Change
A new generation of architects, designers, and experts is creating infrastructure and buildings that respond to both extreme conditions and ongoing stress. Here’s a look at some of the most innovative approaches to living in a increasingly apocalyptic world.
When Memphis Fell For A Pyramid Scheme
Memphians have long sought to make symbolic connections to their city’s namesake, that ancient Egyptian capital on the Nile. The Great American Pyramid was supposed to give the Tennessee city an architectural landmark for the ages. Instead, it got a very large sporting goods store.
How The Bauhaus Kept The Nazis at Bay, Until It Couldn’t
There are few symbols of Modernist design and architecture more iconic than the Bauhaus building in Dessau. The art school’s brief run in Germany shows not a simple dichotomy, but rather how, to varying degrees of bravery, individuals tried to survive under tyranny.
Out Of Left Fields: Dutch Land Art Installation Cuts Area Airplane Noise in Half
Landscape architects from the firm H+N+S worked with artist Paul De Court and drew on the work of acoustician Ernst Chladni to create over 100 grassy pyramids. Instead of simply disrupting sound waves, though, the Buitenschot Land Art Park also included paths for cyclists and pedestrians.
XTU Architects Imagines Offshore Oil Rigs Transformed Into Radical Housing Of The Future
No stranger to an unconventional project, XTU Architects presents their latest fantastical proposal titled ‘x_lands’. The concept looks at life after oil, and in particular, what to do with all the offshore platforms that have been built in the last century to drill for the earth’s natural resources.
How Scientists Imagined And Built An Undersea Utopia For Humans
During the late 1960s many believed revolutionary social and political change was imminent, and Jacques Cousteau was no exception. Soon there would be “undersea parliaments and new nations,” he wrote; “poets, architects, and painters would be needed to give expression” to this “new world.”
How To Borrow Natural Light
With an increasing focus on sustainable design practices, the smart use of natural daylight in our homes is no longer a luxury — it has become a necessity. At the heart of any good daylighting strategy is a concept of “borrowed” light: the capture of light falling on the exterior of a home and transporting it to the spaces where it’s needed.
The 737 Max Skyscraper Vertically Stacks Boeing’s Planes To Turn Them Into Residential Complexes
Designed as an entrant for the 2020 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, the 737 Max Tower turns one of the world’s most controversial aircrafts of modern times into housing.
Songdo, The World’s Most Futuristic City
The world’s most futuristic city is Songdo, South Korea. Within the larger city of Incheon, Songdo is a $40 billion project that embraces the 21st century design concepts of Aerotropolis and Ubiquitous city.
Why Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be The Norm
In cities like New York, Paris, Rotterdam, and soon San Francisco, car-free streets are emerging amid a growing movement. Cities have limited space, and how it is allocated is tremendously important for people. The denser a place, the dearer each square foot is. Yet all over the world, cities were retrofitted to accommodate cars.
Was The Millennium Dome Really So Bad? The Inside Story Of A (Not So) Total Disaster
Twenty years later, it is still a byword for New Labour hubris, squandered resources and hideously bungled planning. In fact, it was a byword for all of these things before it even opened. It is clear that the prevailing narrative that the Dome was a total failure is not – or at least not quite – the full story.
How Advertising Conquered Urban Space
In cities around the world, advertising is everywhere. We may try to shut it out, but it reflects who we are (or want to be) and connects us to the urban past. Local signs connect us to the past, to vernacular styles, to folklore. The best examples catch our eye as children and stay with us.
Can Tiny Houses Save Detroit?
Detroit is grappling with both devastating poverty and a hot real estate market. But Rev. Faith Fowler of the nonprofit Cass Community Social Services sees a way to remedy both: Develop tiny houses, and create a rent-to-own financing mechanism to help impoverished Detroiters become owners of those homes.
The Floating Utopia Of Salesforce Park
Salesforce Park, in downtown San Francisco, sits atop the Salesforce Transit Center. It is a lush, five-and-a-half-acre rooftop arcadia of rolling meadows and meticulously landscaped, climatically harmonious, drought-tolerant flora. San Francisco’s newest public space reflects Big Tech’s influence—and a city’s anxieties.
Dracula Bosses Erect Billboard That Comes To Life At Night
The BBC decided to give Dracula fans a fright with two billboards of the show that come to life at night. A shadow of the infamous vampire appears in the center of the advert, which looks as though it has been cast by a number of wooden stakes plunged into the advert.
Chopvalue Gives Chopsticks A Second Life As High-Quality Design Material
ChopValue, a Vancouver-based company, creates high-performance designs made entirely from recycled chopsticks. Collected from restaurants, discarded chopsticks are transformed through a carbon-neutral micro-manufacturing model and reintroduced as high-value engineered products.
Climate Tile Designed To Catch And Redirect Excess Rainwater From Climate Change
The Climate Tile is a pilot project designed to catch and redirect 30% of the projected extra rainwater coming due to climate change. Created by THIRD NATURE with IBF and ACO Nordic, the project will be inaugurated on a 50m pavement stretch at Nørrebro in Copenhagen.
How ‘Landscape Urbanism’ Is Making Gentrification Look Like Fun
The High Line and its imitators are examples of “landscape urbanism,” a growing design movement that places green space in collision with old infrastructure. Rehabilitation projects follow a familiar playbook, aestheticizing the labor of the past even as they support a gentrified future.
Could Vertical Forests Improve Our Health?
A UN ‘World Cities’ report in 2016 predicted that two-thirds of the global population will live in cities by 2030. Could buildings like Bosco Verticale in Milan help tackle pollution and improve people’s health?