Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream
at the MoMA
The home-foreclosure crisis of the last five years has shaken Americans’ confidence in the future of the country’s suburbs. Suburbs have long been the sites of a key component of the American Dream: personal ownership of a single-family home, an investment that once guaranteed stability for the next generation. This exhibition proposes that these crises have a silver lining: they have created opportunities for radically rethinking the building blocks of the United States’ fast-growing urban fringe and developing a new national conversation on issues of housing, transportation, and public space.
During summer 2011, five teams of designers (including architects, urban planners, and landscape architects), economists, ecologists, and engineers—led by the principals of the architecture firms MOS, Visible Weather, Studio Gang Architects, WORKac, and Zago Architecture—began a cross-disciplinary conversation, imagining the redesign of specific sites across the country, from older east coast suburbs with rail connections to newer subdivisions accessible only by highway. Working in studios at MoMA PS1, they discussed their projects with the public in a series of open houses. Their work, presented here, is not a set of blueprints for the development of specific places so much as an array of visions that will help us rethink the physical and financial architecture of living, working, and commuting in the extended metropolis.
Thinking ecology is not separated from the probes sent from other entities, the probes we find embedded in us as a condition of existence.
The increase of construction of apartments had a serious impact on Japanese cities’ green areas. The fact that these cities lack of space tends to a land conflict. Green areas have been sacrificed for building construction. Recently, Japanese cities made a serious effort to replant green spaces. Even apartments cohabit with plants and other green spaces as this picture took at Yoyogi-Uehara shows. Constructors and architects are encouraged to include vegetation. Here no vertical green walls but balconies and interstices are filled with plants. Balconies for instance offer the most practical method to include vegetation without sacrificing significant floor area. The gap between building are also a good method for planted areas without disturbing the adjacent buildings, which, on the contrary, profit from the presence of these green areas since they shade the buildings during hot summers, foster biodiversity and beautify the buildings.
Living Systems by Ethel Baraona Pohl in Domus
Abstract:
Living Systems is the first retrospective exhibition of Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, among the most renowned and innovative artists on the international media and interactive art scene. In a natural and intuitive way, their work develops interactive interfaces that apply principles of the theory of living systems related to ecology, artificial life and the complexity science.
by ethel baraona pohl in domus
Right In Your Backyard: Climate Change Threatens Health by The Energy Collective
Abstract:
The picture taking shape across the country shows some communities drought-stricken and stressed for adequate safe, clean water supplies; others coping with historic flooding; hotter, drier summers, with greater wildfire risks and more air pollution; most of the nation sweltering under extreme heat; and residents in many states hearing the buzz of mosquito activity for longer and longer seasons each year. Many areas face a combination of these multiple climate-health vulnerabilities. Now consumers have access to a new tool called “Climate Change Threatens Health.” These pages (www.nrdc.org/climatemaps ) bring the effects of climate change down to the local level. Users can zoom in on 5 US maps, see how their health is vulnerable to climate change, and learn about what’s needed to protect their families and reduce climate change.
by the energy collective
