Brilliant inventions usually result when someone asks the right question at the right time. Taja Sevelle, the founder and executive director of Urban Farming, a Detroit-based nonprofit dedicated to eradicating hunger, had just such a query for architect Robin Osler when the two met last year for the first time: If sedum and other non-edible plants thrive on green roofs and walls, why not tomatoes, peppers, and onions? If so, she reckoned, these gardens could supply free, healthy food for economically distressed neighborhoods. Images courtesy Urban Farming Food Chain In Los Angeles, walls covered in food plants are being installed
One of the world’s great architecture patrons has hired two distinguished architects—the Indian Modernist Charles Correa and Pritzker Prize winner Fumihiko Maki—to design a $200-million cultural and religious complex in Toronto.
In a white paper released last week, Michelle Kaufmann Designs, a California-based firm, laid out the case for a “sustainability” labeling system for houses that mimics the labeling system for packaged food.
In an effort to foster best practices for integrated project delivery (IPD) and design-build, the American Institute of Architects is publishing six new documents. Two are contract documents coordinated with C195-2008, or the Standard Form Single Purpose Entity (SPE) Agreement for IPD, issued earlier this year. C195 sets up a limited liability company that contracts with a team to design and construct a project. The new documents, C196-2008 and C197-2008, enable the SPE to contract with its owner- and nonowner-members. C196 makes the owner a collaborating partner and spells out the terms for funding the SPE. C197 specifies services and
Yale students have constructed a prototypical residence in New Haven, Connecticut, for a disabled female veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces and her family. Responsible for both design and construction, 64 students took the project from start to finish in just over five months as part of the Yale architecture school's Building Project, a mandatory course for first-year graduate students. This year's project was completed in collaboration with nonprofit developer Common Ground and the Connecticut Veterans Administration at a cost of $200,000'in addition to plenty of free labor and donated materials. Photos ' Susan Surface Yale architecture students have built
Aditya Prakash Aditya Prakash, a British-trained Indian architect closely affiliated with Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh project, died August 12. The 85-year-old was traveling to Mumbai with a community theater troupe to perform in the play Life Never Retires.
Images courtesy Urban Lab “Eco-boulevards” inserted into Chicago’s street system would clean wastewater. In 2007, the nine-year-old architecture studio UrbanLab won The History Channel’s City of the Future ideas competition with its entry, Growing Water. Most notably, the submission envisioned how Chicago could insert “eco-boulevards” into the street system that would clean wastewater and storm water by bioremediation. The concept has gained traction among decision makers in the city’s transportation and environmental departments, as well as the mayor’s office, according to Martin Felsen, AIA, UrbanLab coprincipal with Sarah Dunn. But for a young office juggling a gamut of residential and
From October 17 to 30, a temporary prefab “neighborhood” in Philadelphia will offer an optimistic view of what a revitalized city might look like in the near future.
Photos courtesy MacArthur Foundation John Ochsendorf (top); Jennifer Tipton (above). On Tuesday, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the recipients of its 2008 MacArthur Fellowships, commonly known as the “genius grants.” Among the 25 winners are engineer and architectural preservationist John Ochsendorf, and stage lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. The annual fellowships provide each recipient $500,000, paid in quarterly installments over five years, to use as they please, with no strings attached. Winners are selected for their “creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future,” according to the foundation. The fellows typically span a wide
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