Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The creation, imagination, willing of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system, achievement of a unique expection in architecture, technology, or landscape.
Carl Welty advocates that architectural and landscape design could be revolutionized by emulating Nature’s systems. Before fossil fuels, ancient cities understood the power of the sun and captured it as it traversed through the days and seasons for heating, cooling, and sustenance.
In 1974, architect Bengt Warne designed the prototype for a greenhouse home to deal with the cold winters in Sweden. Rather than converting an existing structure and moving inside it, he built a normal house — and then encasing it in glass — a Nature House (or “Naturhus” ). Inspired by these designs, a family has created a home near Stockholm integrated with the elements of earth, water, air, and fire. The electricity bills have been cut in half, heated by an eco-friendly wood-burning oven and a hot water masonry heater. The greenhouse also shelters Mediterranean-style gardens that couldn’t survive the Swedish seasons — figs, kiwi, peaches, wine grapes, etc.
As the Western U.S. continues with massive wind-driven, high-intensity wildfires that often turn deadly, Naomi Pitcairn recommends retrofitting homes on the Wildland Urban Interface for fire-resistant resiliency. This is Part I of a three-part series.
From a failed attempt to peddle influence to save an upside-down real estate venture, to a spectacularly autocratic design, Zaha Hadid’s 666 Fifth Avenue captures the Trumpian moment, in all it’s bejeweled phallic grandeur that the Bible’s Revelations warned us about.
Can re-purposed shipping containers become the next inexpensive, quick to construct, green building solution for affordable housing? Danish “starchitect” Bjarke Ingels, as well as a recent Orange County, California, project, assert yes to all of the above, but there are limitations.
Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure among architects, politicians and policy makers. A 2012 documentary unveiled the many witting and unwitting villains, including urban poverty, public policy enforced racial segregation, and urban disinvestment in favor of the White Suburban Dream.
“City planning has been way too pragmatic for a long time.” So says Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, who creates artistic environments that break down the industrial expanse of cities with faux-natural elements, hot sun, waterfalls, rivers, and take over the senses of their spectators.