local code’s entry for the WPA 2.0 competition is an incredible use of grasshopper and ArcGIS to locate publicly owned abandoned sites in major cities across the US and design a landscape intervention that responds to solar, thermal, and water issues that’s specific to each site.
it’s an incredible use of grasshopper as an analysis tool and seems to pose the question- if grasshopper can create a design response for environmental data for multiple sites, could it also create a design response for environmental, programmatic, code, structural, and any other data for one site? could this be the dawn of an MVRDV-esq software that actually works?
an interesting blog post from dc.streetsblog.org compares how the states of california and new york are spending their federal stimulus money in terms of transit improvement versus highway improvement.
california does better than the national average with a 66 – 33 split, but new york is planning on diverting more than 50% of their stimulus package to improving transit… the most progressive of all the states to announce their plans so far.
revit 2010 is a far, far superior version to 2009. I don’t think there’s any debate on this. but the one thing that is a little less than popular is the new autodesk ribbon interface. commands appear and disappear, menus rearrange themselves… at the very least it takes some getting used to.
so if you’re not used to the interface and don’t want to bother learning it- there’s help. whatrevitwants posted a little work around that allows you use the revit 2009 interface in 2010. I actually found this when I was working on a machine in a different office and wanted to get back to the 2010 interface… this post is pretty helpful if you’re trying to do that as well.
interesting social data on global warming from textmap.com. textmap looks at the use of different terms across the web and graphs frequency of their use, use of the terms by location, and how the terms relate to other terms.
a fascinating article on a prospective aquaponic farm as a vehicle for urban renewal in denver. Urban Organics, the potential facility profiled, not only would provide locally grown food and produce, but also cooking, nutrition and sustainability workshops.
what’s interesting about this project, is that it is engaging the local community in sustainability and health on a very basic level. by providing both a model of how people could grow their own food and lessons in how they could create their own food production systems, Urban Organics is providing the opportunity to create a behavioral shift. I’ve written about this a lot on TOSD, but I feel strongly that we can create as many technological advances as we want, but until we actually start effecting our collective culture we won’t make any significant change. sustainability isn’t about having the most fuel efficient car, it’s about changing your behavior so you don’t use one at all. Urban Organics wouldn’t just providelocally grown produce and fish, it would give an entire community the vision and means to do it themselves.
I came across some very interesting maps that show population density effecting geography… they are definitely very revealing to exactly where populations reside and where countries are more sparse.
it’s easy to get mired in a view of design that focuses data exchange between ecotect and grasshopper, performative skin systems in generative components, and scripting architectural solutions, but once in a while you find a completely different take on what design is and what you really should be doing to be creating a design solution. james rojas of g727 and metro has one of these takes on design on an urban scale: let the community members design it themselves. if you haven’t seen one of james’ installations for yourself, you can’t imagine the vast amount of trinkets, toys, and other items that people can use to construct their own vision of their environment. by using either items we recognize as toys or elements taken out of context, the users have a remarkably high amount of creativity and exploration.
read more about one of james’ installations on ::industrianism.
gizmag reports that adding green roofs to an urban area the size of detroit would be the equivalent of talking 10,000 SUVs and mid-sized trucks off of the road. that would be incredible in itself, but I find myself wondering if 1/5 of the USA’s vehicular emissions are from the transportation of food, then what would the be impact if these roofs weren’t just green but agricultural? what would be the impact if the vegetation wasn’t just counteracting vehicles emissions, but actually replacing the need to have emissions in the first place?
my name is alex webb and I am an architectural designer who is primarily interested in performative algorythmic design, environmental sustainability, sustainable transit and building information modeling (BIM).
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