The idea of reuse embodies the goal of guiding our society to a more sustainable reality. Efforts of recycling, or even upcycling, are continuing to gain strength with how we can utilize resource streams that were once thought of as only waste. Recycling efforts have taken hold at the municipal and state level across the country to help mitigate the amount of waste that is headed for landfills, but it is rare to see the idea of reuse applied to infrastructural systems that offer a reconditioned life for extended service. Continue Reading…
New York Resource Neutral
Associated Press – October 17th, 2050 – New York, NY
Yesterday afternoon, New York City’s administrators reported that the city has reached its goal of resource neutrality. This is a culmination of a multi-decade effort marred by numerous setbacks, including the Hurricane Katie in 2017 and Superstorm Heather in 2032. With less than two months before the end of the year deadline New York joins several international urban centers in completing the challenge set forth during the 2016 Sochi Accord. The Accord countered the once widely accepted practice of structuring cities as dense sinks of resources, requiring outlying rural and suburban land to survive. Continue Reading…
The long term trend of car dependence has been a source of growing debate among scholars and enthusiasts, whether or not the shift to the millennial generation is marked by a decrease in car ownership and a change in driving patterns. Given the rippling effects that significant declining car use could have on the American economy and its development moving forward, eyes are watching closely to see whether or not its actually happening.
So are we driving less? U.S. PIRG says, “yes.” According to a recent report that compiled data from 100 urban locations around the U.S. from 2006-2011, the once unquestionable dedication to cars seems to be retreating across the country. Continue Reading…
Even as real estate markets in most of the United States are still in the early stages of recuperating from the throes of the recession, there are still developing countries that are riding an economic wave of a real estate boom. These changing cities bring an opportunity to explore how the density of the urban environment can adapt and evolve to different environmental resources and climatic restraints around the world—what some designers would see as an inherent recipe for variability and evolution. The problem is that all too often these new versions of urban space are merely copies of western norms, lacking the site-specificity needed to link them to their surroundings. Continue Reading…
The most recent set of flashy renderings of Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino, California make the goals of the building unmistakably clear. With a design from Norman Foster, the tech company’s mothership is depicted as a pristine white ring nestled in a large site strewn with greenery. When we look at the images that include different combinations of white, glass and foliage it is hard not to say “of course.” Of course this is Apple’s new corporate club house. The design is sleek and detailed for modern simplicity. Everything about the building’s appearance resonates with an image of next generation technology. It is kind of like a big iPhone. I would say that the new campus is the perfect manifestation of Apple’s entire business in almost every way, save for one thing: it is trying to be green. This new headquarters is making some strides in its attempts to be more environmentally friendly, but some key aspects still raise the question of whether it is really all that sustainable. Continue Reading…
Imagine a group of dedicated architects banding together to march up to Capitol Hill and lobby for our government to create new mandates to increase the average home size in the country. It is hard to wonder what the argument would be. ‘Two car garages just are not enough.’ ‘That second guest bedroom really comes in handy once or twice a year.’ ‘The survival of the American Dream depends on more space!’ At this point, consumers are supporting purchases along those lines by themselves without the help of architects. Continue Reading…
Critics of proposals to make our country more sustainable often suggest that such measures would raise the prices of products and make it more difficult for the nation to do business–forcing our coveted Gross Domestic Product downward. This argument would suggest that it isn’t possible, or at least very difficult, to reduce the amount of carbon we emit while simultaneously lifting GDP. The thing is, apparently we did that in 2012. Continue Reading…
A Lighter Image of Power
All Imagery Courtesy of COOKFOX Architects & Terrain
Talking about the “power grid” in the U.S. can bring to mind images of high tension wires strung across massive metal towers and hefty brick buildings with large smokestacks built in the mid-20th century. For a lot of our electricity infrastructure this picture would be accurate. Our power grid is showing its age–not only in our continued reliance on a dirty fuel source, but in the plants that burn it as well. The boom of building coal-fired generation in this country spanned from the 1960’s to the 1990’s when new capacity turned to natural gas. While most of the natural gas plants we have are less than 20 years old, 71% of their coal-burning cousins have been around for over three decades. These older plants represent not only the dirtiest, but often least efficient components of our grid–sometimes with net efficiency as low as 33%.
Fortunately, we are at a pivotal point where the nature of how we produce power is changing. COOKFOX Architects along with landscape architecture firm Terrain are working together on a new breed of power facility in Salem, Massachusetts that questions many of our infrastructural assumptions not only in functionality, but urban presence and response to the local community. The Salem Harbor Station exemplifies the near term transition that we need to encourage in order to take quantifiable steps in improving the rate of pollution and carbon emissions attributed to our power supply.
One of the biggest dangers of coasting along in the mentality of business-as-usual is that inefficiencies can become cemented into the forces that are considered to be essential to our daily lives. At some point, rectifying the problem can require more time and effort than most are willing to stomach. Our tendency to allow historical experience to evolve into present-day gospel can lead us to miss opportunities for innovative improvement, especially when it comes to sustainability.
Let’s take one of the pillars of American energy usage: our cars. Every living American can look back on the constant of gasoline serving as the energy source for our mobility. Meanwhile we have watched cars become more efficient over time, bolstering our confidence in the system. As part of this mindset, the bulk of our efforts in increasing efficiency have revolved around the puzzle of how to make cars get more miles for every gallon of gasoline they consume. But what if instead of doing more with gasoline it was actually more efficient (maybe much more) to burn oil to create electricity and use it to power cars instead? Perhaps the cultural constants that we assume are the best solution actually don’t hold as much as water as we think.
As it turns out, it is true. Continue Reading…
In less than a year since its devastating run-in with Hurricane Sandy, the City of New York is already adopting new measures geared towards higher levels of urban resiliency. Yesterday, the City Council approved the first batch of proposals from the Building Resiliency Task Force, marking the first step for updating codes that leave the city better equipped for future storm events. Continue Reading…