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Redesigning the Road to Net Zero: How CO Adaptive Architecture is Breaking New Ground

March 24, 2022 Eric Baldwin 0

The climate crisis has reshaped contemporary architecture. Sustainability has become a central guiding force in design, and in turn, architects are rethinking how to build today. For CO Adaptive Architecture, addressing the climate crisis begins with a process oriented practice. Together, Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston have created a firm that embodies how a values-based approach can tackle the most pressing issues of our time. The result is elegant and impactful architecture brought to life with poise and finesse.

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Daylight Helps Transform a Once Victorian Prison into a Luxurious Hotel

March 24, 2022 Eduardo Souza 0

Commercial building refurbishment projects present architects with design challenges. Transforming 18th century Bodmin Jail into a modern hotel meant an acknowledgement of restrictions in relation to the building’s infrastructure. Listed buildings often have construction regulations to preserve historic and architectural interests, impacting thermal comfort and how daylight is introduced to transform building spaces.

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Frank Gehry Reveals New Design of Colburn Center in Los Angeles

March 24, 2022 Dima Stouhi 0

The Colburn School, Los Angeles’ renowned school for music and dance, has unveiled architectural designs by Frank Gehry for the Colburn Center, a 100,000 square-foot campus expansion that aims to inspire and promote the region’s young performing artists and organizations. The center will serve as a cultural and civic hub in the heart of Downtown LA through public programs, as well as performance and educational collaborations with local and touring artists.

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Greyhound House / Murado & Elvira

March 24, 2022 Valeria Silva 0

The house is built in a long and narrow plot in a quiet residential area in Madrid, unused for years due to its unusual proportions. It accommodates the floor plan requirements inside a volume only 4 meters wide, resulting in a thin and compact prism. On each level small outdoor spaces are inserted, allowing for a rich spatial experience while keeping the necessary privacy in a dense residential neighborhood. This sequence encompasses a courtyard on the basement level, a garden with a swimming pool on the ground floor and a double-height terrace on the first floor to expand and complement the tight interior of the house. Thus, the usual sequence of stacked levels is challenged and turned into a dynamic vertical landscape.

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UNStudio Wins Competition for Mixed-Use Tower in Dusseldorf

March 24, 2022 Andreea Cutieru 0

UNStudio revealed a mixed-use high-rise building design in Dusseldorf integrated within the new Belsenpark masterplan. The tower, designed in collaboration with OKRA Landscape Architects, results from an international architecture competition held by private developer Pandion and features a diverse ground floor programme tied together by a pocket park. The project integrates prefabrication and modular design, thus reducing the building’s environmental impact.

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50 Shades of Green: The Contradictions of Greenwashing in Architecture

March 24, 2022 Camilla Ghisleni 0

Nowadays everything is “painted” green. It’s green packaging, green technologies, green materials, green cars and, of course, green architecture. A “green wave”, stimulated by the environmental and energy crisis we are facing, with emphasis on climate change and all the consequences linked to global warming. This calamitous situation is confirmed by the second part of the report entitled Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and presented in recent weeks. It reveals that, although adaptation efforts are being observed in all sectors, the progress implemented so far is very low, as the actions taken are not enough.

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Cat Furniture: More Comfort and Health for Felines at Home

March 24, 2022 Equipe ArchDaily Brasil 0

In architecture, the most common is to design for humans only. However, covering the scope of the project for other species is an exercise that has been proposed in several orders. From specific furniture to interior design planned for the animal, the possibilities of creating a more playful and comfortable ambience, both for humans and animals, are diverse.

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Can Exterior Green Walls Contribute to a Carbon Neutral Architecture?

March 24, 2022 Valeria Montjoy 0

A carbon neutral building is achieved when the amount of CO2 emissions is balanced by climate-positive initiatives so that the net carbon footprint over time is zero. Considering their unmatched ability to absorb CO2, planting trees is often viewed as the best carbon offsetting solution. But as cities become denser and the amount of available horizontal space for green areas drastically reduces, architects have been forced to explore other approaches. Therefore, to address these climatic challenges and connect people to nature, exterior green walls have become a rising trend in increasingly vertical cities. Even if there is research to claim that these can positively impact the environment, many question if they can actually contribute to a carbon neutral architecture. Although the answer may be quite complex, there seems to be a consensus: green walls can be effective, but only through good design.