Month: February 2020

Design and the City is a podcast by reSITE, raising questions and proposing solutions for the city of the future. In the first episode, Thomas Heatherwick founder of Heatherwick Studios discusses the notion of Designing on a Human Scale, describes his conceptual approach and introduces his latest venture in the heart of historic Prague. Joining the interview is ArchDaily editor, Christele Harrouk.

Architecture theorist, historian, and curator Beatriz Colomina has been awarded the 2020 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture from the W Awards. As the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and co-director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton, Colomina is an internationally renowned architectural historian and theorist who has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, technology, sexuality and media.

Today’s designers have inherited unprecedented global challenges, a legacy which will require radically new ways of fashioning the buildings, places and landscapes that harbor our diverse ways of life. The College of Environmental Design offers several introductory and advanced programs for those interested in confronting these challenges in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and environmental planning, urban design, and sustainable city planning. Please visit Berkeley’s Summer Programs website to view images of student work and learn more about the CED Summer experience. 

With growing awareness of the impact of fossil fuels on the natural environment and their common usage in buildings, architects are increasingly required to specify and accommodate alternative energy sources in their design approaches. Included in this portfolio of progressive energy sources is biomass, a scalable system that combines the usage of raw, sustainable materials with a lower resulting emission of CO2. As a method often heralded as the most transferable alternative to gas and coal, we answer a simple question: what is biomass energy?

The project is conceived as two blocks, where one rests upon the other. Both with different characteristics and treatments. The lower one is treated as (one big portico / a big space structured by one single portico) that contains the social spaces, all linked and well-integrated, thanks to the use of sliding glass panels, to the exterior. While the upper one has, facing the outside, a series of archeries that reveals the partition of the spaces it contains, as well as the private condition of the same. Even so,  without losing the direct relationship with the outside world.