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Trauma-informed design (TID) is a practice that aims to create environments that promote healing and well-being for children who have experienced trauma. TID draws on evidence-based research from disciplines such as brain science, biology, social work, and architecture to identify and minimize potential trauma triggers and design buildings that foster a sense of safety, comfort, and choice. Four recent projects, including a school, a shelter, a mental health facility, and a retreat, showcase the principles of TID in youth-centered settings. These projects prioritize privacy, transparency, connection to nature, and the integration of art to create spaces that affirm and support the healing process. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the design and features of Arbour House, a residence in Victoria, British Columbia, designed by Patkau Architects. The house takes advantage of its site's water views and natural light, with skylights and retractable glazing allowing for a seamless connection to the surrounding landscape. The design prioritizes sociability and includes spaces for gathering with family and friends. The house also incorporates sustainable features such as passive cooling, ground-source heat pumps, and rooftop photovoltaics. The article highlights the unique design elements and materials used in the construction of the house. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores the growing interest in bio-based building materials within the architectural industry. It acknowledges the drawbacks of conventional materials and highlights the potential of bio-based alternatives to address health and environmental concerns. The article showcases various innovative bio-based materials and projects, including self-supporting bio-composite facade panels and carbon-sequestering structural blocks. It also emphasizes the use of agricultural waste materials like straw and hemp hurd, which are both environmentally friendly and renewable. The article concludes by advocating for more data, policies, and initiatives to support the wider adoption of bio-based materials in construction. Additionally, it discusses the importance of cultural sensitivity in library services, emphasizing the need for inclusive resources and services that respect diverse perspectives. The article suggests that libraries should actively seek out materials representing different cultures and provide staff training to ensure sensitivity to patrons' needs. Libraries are also seen as playing a vital role in promoting cultural understanding and fostering a sense of belonging within the community. [Extracted from the article]

"Solar Adobe: Energy, Ecology, and Earthen Architecture" by Albert Narath is a book that explores the forgotten period of experimentation with passive-solar design and adobe structures in the American Southwest during the 1970s. The book examines the critical questions raised by engagements with adobe as a building material, including how architecture is practiced in an environmental crisis and who it should benefit. It also delves into the emergence of design methodologies that address environmental challenges and the positioning of Indigenous architecture as a counter-precedent to modern urban-planning practices. The book highlights the issues of appropriation of Indigenous culture and legitimacy of voice while showcasing the work of Indigenous scholars, designers, and preservationists. Overall, "Solar Adobe" offers a new perspective on sustainability and the potential for meaning in architecture. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses three affordable housing projects that have achieved high standards of energy performance and livability on tight budgets. The projects include Betances Residence in the Bronx, New York, Coliseum Place in Oakland, California, and 981 Davie Street in Vancouver, British Columbia. The achievements of these projects can be attributed to factors such as developers' social mission, social policy and funding criteria, and long-term ownership. Each project has implemented specific strategies to maximize floor area, improve energy efficiency, and prioritize the health and well-being of residents. These projects serve as role models for environmentally and socially responsible multifamily housing. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the design and construction of NASA's Aerospace Communications Facility at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The facility, designed by Ross Barney Architects, integrates aesthetics, cost, and performance while also prioritizing sustainability. The building features a concrete block for the antenna test range, a glassy two-story lobby, and a two-story volume clad in dark blue corrugated steel for research labs. The design team optimized the building envelope and systems to achieve energy efficiency, and although the facility is designed for on-site renewables, it will offset its power demands by purchasing renewable-energy certificates due to the low utility rate negotiated by the NASA Glenn campus. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the trend of recladding buildings to improve their performance, marketability, and overall appearance. Recladding involves updating the facade of a building while keeping the core structure intact. The article highlights three recent recladding projects: 100 Stockton in San Francisco, 660 Fifth Avenue in New York, and the Arthur J. Altmeyer Federal Building in Maryland. These projects demonstrate how recladding can transform outdated buildings into modern, desirable spaces. The article emphasizes the importance of energy efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and occupant comfort in driving the increase in reclads and facade retrofits. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the importance of skillful daylighting in enhancing the experiential qualities of museums and preserving art. It highlights three new art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Frick Collection, as examples of different approaches to daylighting. The architects and lighting designers for these projects emphasize the experiential and aesthetic goals of good daylighting, while also considering technical knowledge to protect the artwork. The article also provides a checklist of considerations for illuminating art with daylight. [Extracted from the article]

DEPARTMENTS ANYONE WHOSE university residence was heated by steam probably remembers well the nighttime clanging and banging of pipes. If a loop is pulling heat from building after building, there comes a point when there isn't enough T between the water in the loop and the next overheated building for heat to transfer effectively. Because heat wants to move from warmer molecules to cooler ones, surplus building heat can be conducted into the ground during hot weather, and ground heat can be extracted when it's colder up top. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the 2024 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) medal awards and their recipients. Topics include Perry Howard's groundbreaking influence in landscape architecture, Raymond Jungles' notable design projects, and the Design Workshop Foundation's impactful pro bono services to underserved communities.

The article focuses on the 2024 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Student Awards and the innovative solutions proposed by students. Topics include the diversity of award-winning projects such as "The Embers of the Rainbow" in Analysis & Planning, the "Where the Street Ends" communications project by the University of Washington, and discussions on the role of artificial intelligence in landscape architecture.

Without cooling strategies, the indoor heat index in the model unit climbed off the chart, which maxes out at 124 degrees, and stayed there for 63 percent of the heat event's duration; for the rest of the time, the heat index remained in the danger zone, over 104 degrees. HEAT IS THE TOP weather-related cause of death worldwide. In response to heat-related suffering, and with climate change predicted to increase heat wave frequency, duration, and intensity, there are calls for building standards to mandate air-conditioning. [Extracted from the article]

A series of stepped terraces, with conversation benches at each level, connect the building to the street, and a prominently located social stair also connects to the rooftop terrace. With that very much front of mind for the design team on the Heron, the LEED Platinum- targeted building is designed as a resilience hub where residents can shelter in place during a crisis. An innovative hybrid typology, the Northtown Library and Apartments, collocates 44 units of affordable senior housing and a new branch library in a 65,000-squarefoot complex located in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. [Extracted from the article]

"In Norway - and I think everywhere - we have a lot of these poor-performing 1970s office buildings", says Siv Helene Stangeland, founding partner at Stavanger-based Helen & Hard, architect for the renovation. In time, however, Sverdrupsgate 27 lost its luster, the Petroleum Directorate moved on, and, by 2018, when the current owner, the development company Smedvig Eiendom, acquired the building, it had dwindled into an underperforming, energy-inefficient candidate for demolition - or complete overhaul. FOCUS ON WOOD IF, IN 1978, a Corbusian villa had migrated to Norway, fully embraced Brutalism, and tried to fit in as an office building, it might have turned out something like Sverdrupsgate 27, the headquarters for the then newly established Norwegian Petroleum Directorate in Stavanger. [Extracted from the article]

For Shadow of a Face, the monument to abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman (scheduled to open on March 9), suppliers and fabricators were less familiar with the issue of modern slavery in materials' supply chains. "Architects are a powerful lobby, with a history of helping to create a more equitable world", says architect and educator Harriet Harriss, also a member of Design for Freedom's working group. (Tier 1 is the direct supplier of the final product, Tier 2 is the suppliers to them, and so on through as many tiers as it takes to reach the constituent materials' points of origin.). [Extracted from the article]

EUROPE IS a clear leader in mass-timber construction - home to 60 of the world's 84 tall timber structures (eight-plus stories), according to a 2022 count by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat - and there's no shortage of ambition to scale up. Waugh Thistleton Architects, designer of a six-story mass-timber office building in London (above), is collaborating on efforts to create prewarrantied wood-construction details for both the residential and construction sectors. [Extracted from the article]

When Colgate made its carbon-neutrality commitment in 2009, the campus was generating baseline emissions of 17,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalents per year, including 8,385 metric tons in Scope 1. In 2020, the University of California, Merced (UC Merced), became America's first public research university to reach carbon neutrality, defined in this case as achieving zero net greenhouse-gas emissions for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission sources. The dozen or so American campuses that have announced carbon neutrality account for their operational emissions only (not embodied emissions). No institution has so far achieved carbon neutrality without relying on carbon offsets - a reduction in GHG emissions that is used to compensate for emissions that occur somewhere else. [Extracted from the article]

Located on the shore of Lake Kilimbi, southeast of the capital city of Kigali, RICA is approached via a MASS-designed road that prioritizes cyclists and pedestrians, with forage grasses for community harvest along the shoulders. LOCAL ARTISANS and cooperatives collaborated with MASS to create RICA's furniture and fittings, such as the lighting fixtures (opposite) at the upper-year housing complex (top and above). CONTINUING EDUCATION THE OPPORTUNITY to build an entire university campus from scratch, with a mandate to offer solutions to some of the world's most critical problems, is a rare thing. [Extracted from the article]

The link between climate impacts and social inequities is what climate justice is about, and it's a link that's especially strong in the built environment. CLIMATE JUSTICE THE MOST recent report on environmental impacts, adaptations, and vulnerabilities from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in February, is "a further code red warning for humanity", according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Complicating the challenge is the fact that the localized nature of many community-based climate-justice initiatives is at odds with the scale and speed of change that's required to mitigate the climate emergency. [Extracted from the article]

CLIMATE JUSTICE A HOME is the basis of stability and security, the center of most people's social, emotional, and even economic lives - a place where residents can live in peace, security, and dignity, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to adequate housing. BuildX Studio is developing zero-carbon, prefabricated housing in Kenya (above). Where BuildX is tackling the issue of affordable, climate-smart housing through the supply chain, and Modulus is working at the building scale, Singapore-based climate tech venture Billion Bricks is tackling the problem with an ingenious paradigm flip. [Extracted from the article]

So how are firms with ambitious climate commitments navigating these client discussions? CONTINUING EDUCATION THE DEGREE to which an architect can mitigate the climate impacts of a building often depends on the degree to which that building's owner is on board. The firm's "create your own client" playbook guides staff in framing sustainability in terms of client goals generally, and then more specifically, according to three main project types. [Extracted from the article]

LCA SCENARIO COMPARISON CSULA PHYSICAL SCIENCES BUILDING RENOVATION THE LCA of ZGF's California State University project reveals that, over 60 years, embodied emissions account for 22 percent of total carbon. To prevent differential settlement of the old and new floor plates from fracturing the slabs, with knock-on damage to the facade, the construction team left a gap of one structural bay between the old and new elements, completing the connections after the new structure had settled. And in Denver, Gensler adapted a failing 1960s telecom building as a mixed-use workplace (2021), reducing embodied carbon by 68 percent of what new construction would be, while revitalizing a moribund stretch of a historic city block. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on Effigy Mounds National Monument's challenges, including damage to Indigenous earthworks and mistrust between tribes and the National Park Service. Topics discussed include the significance of the mounds, cultural landscape restoration efforts, and the importance of ongoing consultation with Indigenous nations to rebuild trust and protect the site's integrity.

The article delves into the evolution of Spokane's Riverfront Park from its Expo fairgrounds origin to its recent revitalization, led by the Berger Partnership. It explores the historical significance of the park's location along the Spokane River, its cultural ties to Indigenous tribes, and the impact of urban development on the area's transformation.

EXPERIENTIAL GRAPHIC DESIGN AS A VISITOR passes through an office-building lobby, images that are partially glimpsed in one wall - raindrops, time-lapse clouds, a school of fish - subtly respond: the rain softly falls; the fish swim alongside. Engaging building users with architecture-integrated interactive media is a key EGD strategy at the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Biology Research Building at Stanford University. "The more integral the dialogue between architects and experience designers, the better the project serves its audience", says SEGD's Jones. [Extracted from the article]

When the pandemic started shutting down projects in Gensler's corporate workplace practice, the firm asked building-owner clients if there was something that would be helpful in the interim. Reimagining the City CEU AMONG THE MANY aspects of daily life that the pandemic has transformed, perhaps irreversibly, is the expectation that corporate office work takes place in a corporate office. 4 Identify strategies for providing access to daylight and fresh air when adapting a large-floor-plate office building to housing. [Extracted from the article]

Ingels describes the solution for the tower as a in one, a simple meeting of requirements; the lower buildings, by contrast, represent most of the detailed design work. BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,029 TALL BUILDINGS DOWNTOWN Vancouver's location on a small peninsula on the Pacific coast comes with all-natural non-negotiable boundaries to urban growth. Vancouver House - a 515-foot, 53-story mixed-use development designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and completed in 2020 (it sold out in 2014) - reinterprets the tower on a podium in response to a uniquely challenging site. [Extracted from the article]

Key to achieving food security in a way that's more sustainable than current practices is urban agriculture - not as an outright replacement for rural farming, but as a crucial component in a balanced system. URBAN AGRICULTURE IT'S BEEN 10,000 years since the agricultural revolution gave rise to cities. Food security, as defined by the United Nations, means that all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that serves their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. [Extracted from the article]

Interior streets are designed as slow streets where vehicle access is limited to local traffic, with the central interior roadway becoming a pedestrian zone that serves as more of a front yard, similar to the Dutch woonerf, or living street. " Based on public outreach to better understand neighborhood needs, Chicago has implemented 125 blocks of shared streets and an outdoor dining program in which about 500 establishments are participating at 250 locations across the city. URBAN FUTURE DO YOU THINK you have the answer to why the chicken crossed the road?. [Extracted from the article]

DESIGN FOR NEURODIVERSITY DESIGN FOR NEURODIVERSITY NO ONE expects that a person who uses a wheelchair could live their best life in a world without ramps. Design strategies developed for Quad by New York - based Verona Carpenter Architects (VCA) suggest options for making any school more supportive of students' neurodiversity. Quad's renovated upper and lower schools each occupy a floor of separate commercial buildings - 18,000 square feet (completed in 2019) and 32,000 square feet (completed in 2017), respectively. At both the upper and lower schools, acoustic ceiling spray eliminates echoes and reverberation, soaks up background noise, and generates a calmer acoustic environment. [Extracted from the article]

Having socked away more atmospheric carbon than its construction entailed, the house was carbon negative at its completion in 2019. The embodied emissions of the structural panel, at 27.5 kgCO2e/m2, amount to about a quarter of those of a standard new exterior wall; taking into account the atmospheric carbon stored in the panel's biogenic material would make it carbon-negative. While there's excitement around the prospect of bio-based alternatives for such common components as insulation board and MDF, the availability of substitutes for structural and envelope components - often among a building's highest embodied-carbon materials - remains limited. In these harsh conditions, the maintenance requirements typically associated with wood might well have trumped its ability to store atmospheric carbon at about 50 percent of its dry weight, and led the house's owners to prefer a higher-carbon option. [Extracted from the article]

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), bisphenols and phthalates, highly fluorinated chemicals, flame retardants, antimicrobials: these are some of the problematic substances commonly found in building materials. VOCs are a prime cause of respiratory and other illnesses, and are common in plywood, particleboard, glues, fabrics, and foam insulation. They are low-VOC and formaldehyde free, contain no substances identified as chemicals of concern by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and are LBC Compliant ("LBC Compliant", as opposed to Red List Free, means a product may contain some Red List chemicals temporarily exempted until commercially viable alternatives are available). Health certifications in progress weren't certain to be complete in time to meet the project's schedule, and the architect ended up specifying fiberglass and aluminum windows despite their higher embodied energy. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on the transformation of Les Habitations Saint-Michel Nord, a social housing development in Montreal, through a three-year landscape-integrated renovation project. Topics include the creation of a "setting for life" (milieu de vie) that addresses security and social needs, the design of a living street (woonerf) as a central connecting element, and the use of color, outdoor spaces, and community engagement to foster a sense of identity and belonging among residents.

Biological materials and the processes through which they're generated represent the fruits of about 3.8 billion years of research and development. And unlike, say, concrete manufacturing (which is responsible for 4 to 8 percent of the world's CO2 emissions), this natural carbon-sequestering process is environmentally benign. Discuss the role of additive manufacturing techniques in the fabrication of biomimetic materials. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the potential of prefabricated (prefab) modular construction methods in helping fix the global housing crisis as of 2019. Topics covered include their advantages of faster delivery of projects, improved safety and quality control, higher environmental performance, and reduced risk. Also noted are the contrasting concepts and technologies of flat-pack mass-timber housing, and steel-framed module system from construction firms Katerra and Skender, respectively.

The article discusses the role of smart technologies and analytical tools in helping architects understand and address urban design challenges. Architect Carlo Ratti explains how spaces are becoming permeated with the Internet of Things. Information on superblocks, an initiative being instituted in existing neighborhoods in Barcelona, Spain to address increasingly congested streets and associated noise and pollution levels, is provided.

The article discusses parking garage design innovations which may be attributed to evolving features of automobiles and changing needs of the public. Topics explored include the increasing need for autonomous vehicle hubs and electric vehicle charging stations, the transformation of Peckham Levels multistory carpark by Carl Turner Architects, and the notable design of the Center Street Parking Garage in Berkeley, California.

The article focuses on the emergence of the architecture for vertical expansion of school buildings in urban sites as a response to the need for urban schools to grow amidst the challenging condition of real estate for many of these institutions. Topics covered include the extension of the Berlin Metropolitan School in Berlin, Germany by Sauerbruch Hutton, and the glassy frieze built for Streatham & Clapham High School in London, England by Cottrell & Vermeulen Architecture.

The article reviews the architectural design of Temple of Light, a sanctuary designed by Patkau Architects for Yasodhara Ashram, a yoga retreat and study center in Kootenay, British Columbia.

The article evaluates the architectural design of Place des Fleurs-de-Macadam in Montreal, Canada which was designed by NIPPAYSAGE Landscape Architects and EXP.

The article discusses guidelines and rating systems that help architects design buildings that can respond to a broad range of threats in the U.S. Topics discussed include the Resilience-based Earthquake Design Initiative (REDi) and the U.S. Resiliency Council rating systems, strategies that will help the building remain habitable even without power and frameworks that support resilience planning.