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Radical Architectures: The Relevance of “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man” to the Climate Crisis

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In the public eye, the success of architects is inextricably connected to the scale and number of buildings they have erected. Monumental architectures are the most obvious kind of legacy. However, in the fight against climate change and ecological devastation, theoretical plans for the future have often contributed more than immediately attainable ones. Paolo Soleri’s 1969 book, “Arcology: The City in the Image of Man”  is filled with incredibly complex plans for buildings that were never built. Despite this, Soleri significantly contributed to the world of climate change design by expanding the public consciousness, demonstrating the importance of architectural storytelling when advocating for a greener future. Climate change media is often judged by its relevance to the modern day. Yet, the transformative societal shifts that must happen in order to prevent climate disaster necessitate a lack of “practicality” when imagining climate solutions. Solari himself saw only one pat...
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Garage Greening: Modular Interventions in Car-Driven Infrastructures

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    Downtown Houston in the 70s           In the average American city’s downtown, more than a fifth of total land is used solely for parking . In the most extreme cases, in places like Arlington, Texas, parking takes up almost half of the city’s area . By contrast, Central Park occupies only six percent of Manhattan’s land area . Despite these staggering numbers, forces both commercial and governmental have been constantly pushing developers to free up space for even more parking. Recently, however, several factors such the death of malls and the shift to online work have left many parking garage floors eerily quiet.  This is, primarily, a design issue. Our current parking systems are wildly inefficient and wasteful. A recent study showed that eight car spaces exist for every car in the United States. This is partially because developers tend to plan parking lots with more spaces than can usually be filled. Mall garages are designed to accommodat...
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Technology and Control in the Crystal Palace and Larkin Administration Building

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The Crystal Palace interior, public domain        The Great Exhibition of 1851 lasted five months and left behind a completely transformed society. Heralding several monumental shifts in design and architectural theory, The Crystal Palace [Paxton, Hyde Park, London, 1850-1851] was a new sort of exhibition space- one defined by massive scale and innovative materiality. Around half a century later, Frank Lloyd Wright would employ many of the same technologies and ideas when designing the Larkin Administration building [Wright, Larkin Administration Building, Buffalo, NY, 1904-06] Both buildings exemplify the use of architecture as a tool to standardize human behavior and productivity within the constraints of the machine. This is achieved through the introduction of mass produced building elements, as well as the development of new systems of organization and the introduction of new structural technologies that allow for open-plan, easily surveilled interiors. These co...
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Space Architecture and Designing the Future

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  Credit: Rick Guidice/NASA      One of the things that has always interested me about design history is tracing back the threads that made the modern world what it is today. There is something fascinating about reading the façade of a building and tracing back its features to a long-forgotten art movement, or listening to the story of how curb cuts came to be on the podcast 99% Invisible (https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/). However, it is easy to get so lost in the historical design decisions that changed everything to realize that choices of a similar magnitude are being made every day. And one area that I believe will change the future is the design of living spaces beyond Earth.     Designing on Earth means designing buildings that fit into the patchwork quilt of the built environment. It means designing within a societal structure that has existed for tens of thousands of years. This can be beautiful- there is something poetic abou...
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Is Art Nouveau the Future of Architecture?

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  © Dover Publications      All across Europe, scrolling vines and metal flowers weave across iron railings and carved doors . Art Nouveau is a movement that is often associated with a brief moment in the past. Yet, if one looks closely, is it clear that Art Nouveau continues to influence and inspire the present and future of the design world.       Originally, Art Nouveau was meant to be the style of the future. Its swirling, vining forms twined through the most forward-thinking architectural works of the time, from the Eiffel Tower cafe to the spires of La Sagrada Familia. It was like it suddenly sprouted from the pavement of the most avant-garde cities of the age. Contrary to this first impression, there was an unseen web of factors behind the popularity of Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau exterior of the Pavilion Bleu, a cafe that was located on the Eiffel Tower site for the 1900 World's Fair      Like every design movement, Art Nouv...
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