Architecture for Humanity
Here’s word of another conference taking up the resiliency theme: On November 7-9th, 2013, your favorite humanitarian design and resiliency conference presented by Architecture for Humanity is back for another round of innovative panel discussions, workshops, Design Open Mic, and inspiring dose of industry networking. This year’s theme, Designing for a More Resilient World, will highlight the intensifying need to protect livelihood in a world which is continuously dealing with the aftereffects of issues like climate change, urbanization and population shock. Via...
Read MoreThe geometry of resilience
A challenging, but very smart read: Part 4 of the series “Toward Resilient Architectures” by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros, over at Metropolis Magazine. (See our previous mention of the series.) The authors explain four characteristics of resilience as expressed in design: differentiation, web-networks, fractal scaling, and boundary groupings. Many building projects of the last century, ranging from glass skyscrapers to the “ghost cities” of China fail the resilience test because they lack most or all of these characteristics. On the other hand, the authors...
Read MoreA great post on lack of resilience in glass towers
Lloyd Alter at TreeHugger.com posted a great blog on glass towers and their lack of resilience. There’s been quite a building boom in Toronto, and residents of those new heavily glazed high-rise buildings will be in serious trouble should there be an extended power outage. You can read the blog here.
Read MoreBigger, Longer Heat Storms Are Coming Soon: Will Your Building Keep Its Cool?
Editor’s note: Tom Phillips and I have been corresponding about the risks of temperature extremes, and I invited him to put together an article on the topic so that others could benefit from his research. I am posting that here. -Alex Wilson Floods and ice storms cause some the biggest economic losses in the US, but heat storms are the leading cause of death over the last 10 years among weather events in the US. Heat storms cause 1500 to 2000 deaths per year in the US. This number is projected to double or triple in the coming decades, and it will increase in a nonlinear fashion. The...
Read MoreIt Ain’t Necessarily So
Korky Koroluk, columnist for the Daily Commercial News, explores the contradictory effects that can result from energy-efficiency retrofits. It has been persuasively argued by some that adding more efficient energy systems tends to reduce the amount of energy used, thus lowering over-all energy costs. But that, it is argued, tends to make tenants less careful in their energy use. Extending the argument, increased efficiency lowers cost and increases demand, which increases the rate of consumption, wiping out the initial savings. That’s not a reason not do it, though. Resilient Design...
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