Archive for the ‘Engineering’ Category
Monday, August 24th, 2009
Santiago Calatrava’s design for a new $24.5 million foot and bike bridge for the city of Calgary, Canada has just been unveiled. This new bridge, named the Peace Bridge, will span the Bow River and accommodate 5,000 bikers and walkers daily, allowing for swift foot-powered exit and entry into the city’s downtown. Anticipated for completion in 2010, the bridge meets the City of Calgary Council’s desire for the integration and implementation of more environmentally and health friendly transportation options for its citizens.
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Friday, August 14th, 2009
The Reburbia competition, sponsored by Inhabitat and Dwell, is now open for voting on the top 20 finalists. The design competition is geared towards re-envisioning the suburbs. The current housing crisis has torn through many suburban communities and ripped them up as homes have been foreclosed and abandoned.
Suburbia will no longer be able to continue as it has, so what is the future for these sprawling communities? Can they be re-imagined into something far less generic and bland? Can the weaknesses in these areas be turned around to produce assets that move more towards sustainable, walkable communities? Or can these empty buildings be re-purposed? Here’s a few highlights from the competition…
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Monday, August 10th, 2009
the winning entries of the Bering Strait Project competition that seeks to connect the short stretch of Arctic Ocean between Russia and the United States via a bridge or a tunnel.
Here is the proposal by Paris-based OFF Architecture (Team comprised of Manal Rachdi, Tanguy Vermet, Mathieu Michel, Takanao Todo, and Lily Nourmansouri) that won the 2nd Prize in the Professional Category:
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
Deviant in form, traditional in belief
Located on the popular commercial strip in New Delhi, Tolstoy Marg, Amtek is distinctively outstanding even from afar. The Amtek Office Building concept design is an iconic building with flexible space.
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
Although electric vehicle use is on the rise, we’re certainly not out of the woods yet in terms of providing them with a steady supply of clean energy – that’s why designer Neville Mars has conceived of an incredible EV charging station that takes the form of an evergreen glade of solar trees. His photovoltaic grove serves a dual function, acting as a go-to source for clean renewable energy while providing a shady spot for cars to park as they charge.
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009
German architect Ole Scheeren of Office for Metropolitan Architecture has designed a skyscraper for Bangkok in Thailand. Called MahaNakhon, the building consists of a 77-storey glass tower. A band of shifted, box-like elements breaks up the surface and creates terraces and balconies. There will also be a public plaza, retail space, 200 homes, a hotel, bar and restaurant. Building is due for completion in 2010.
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009
The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) just announced the winners of its Rising Tides competition. Six winners will share a total prize of $25,000. The selection of six winners was an unexpected twist in announcing the competition results and illustrated just how many different promising solutions were offered.
Juror Walter Hood said it best when he stated, “San Francisco Bay is not the place for a single idea. Taken as a whole, the six winning entries begin to tell a story about adaptation to sea level rise.”
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Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
The Big Apple’s known for its bright lights, but the city’s iconic luminescence also sucks up huge amounts of power every year. Luckily, a team of designers came up with a plan to keep the city’s lights burning bright by harnessing the power of its massive rivers. One of the most exciting entries into Metropolis magazine’s 2009 Next Generation Design Competition, Richard Garber and Brian Novello’s design provides a way to power street lamps using tidal power.
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Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Let’s be clear – paving a surface does not reduce storm water run-off, but if you must create a street, parking lot, driveway, or any other form of this detriment, an apples-to-apples comparison between pervious concrete and asphalt paving will show many exciting benefits from this innovative form of paving. First of all, those little air pockets mean less material overall, and with the cost of oil as unstable as the resource itself, petroleum-based asphalt is no longer the cheapest form of paving. For the first time in history, the cost of concrete and asphalt have reached comparable dollar values.
Add in the cost of additional storm water management devices – grids of piping directed towards drains and retention ponds, and suddenly permeable concrete starts making a lot more sense. Then there is the environmental cost of leaching toxic chemicals, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) used as a sealcoat on asphalt, into what should be nature’s flow of water back to the ground table.
The key is to compare drainage ‘systems’ and not just the surface material itself. While concrete production is a major producer of green house gases, it is inert once it’s solid, and it does not require periodic resurfacing like asphalt. Pervious concrete is made of larger aggregate cementitiously bonded with a 12-20% void ratio and a flow ratio of about 3-8 gallons of water drainage per minute.
As with all design, site-appropriate material selection is key. The Concrete Network has Ten Steps to Ensuring a Successful Pervious Concrete Installation. Sites with high clay content may not be the best candidates for permeable paving because they are prone to clogging. However, one tactic being used on many projects in the Pacific Northwest, is to combine paving types, so that large drainage strips of permeable paving can replace the traditional underground piping and covered drains. Concrete Thinker has case studies of projects with permeable paving which help show how and where this intuitive paving type is best used, and the National Ready Mix Concrete Association has installation demos available. To find out more about permeable paving and where to find local ready mix providers and installers, visit www.ConcreteNetwork.com
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Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Zaha Hadid Architects has beaten Norway’s Snohetta to win a competition to design Cairo Expo City, a 450,000 sq m exhibition and conference complex. The scheme, which has elements 33 storeys high, includes a major conference centre, a business hotel, office block and shopping centre close to the city’s airport. Hadid said the fluid form of the design were inspired by the topography of the Nile valley.
She said: “As the exhibition spaces require the greatest degree of flexibility, we wanted to ensure that all the public spaces and formal composition of Cairo Expo City relate to the surrounding Egyptian landscape.
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