Scott Shell is an internationally recognized expert on designing high-performance and zero net energy (ZNE) buildings. And he is based right here in the Bay Area, at San Francisco architecture firm EHDD Architecture.
The video is hosted on the aecKnowledge website here.
Noelle and I had fun at Pecha Kucha in San Francisco at the SPUR Urban Center on June 21. For those unfamiliar with the Pecha Kucha format, each speaker has 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. The format makes for a fun but focused look at what a wide range of professionals is working on and thinking about. Presentations are loosely organized around a theme. The theme this time was “Denser.”
Using my notes, I am putting together a set of posts that lists the presenters in order, along with links to their website (if I could find them) and any major thoughts I jotted down. For some presentations, I took a number of notes. Other presentations have fewer notes (maybe I was looking at the images more carefully?). All of the presentations were more interesting and beautiful than revealed by my notes and these posts.
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Julie Kim – Hot Studio
essay – “Why We Lie to Kids” – Paul Graham
suburban existence – capsule to capsule
organized chaos – systems for sharing space in dense areas
suburban promise – control enables freedom
2 symbols – house + car
urban reality – loss of control enables freedom
worlds colliding in “meatspace”, the real, physical, non-virtual world
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David Baker – Architect – David Baker + Partners Architects
crowded
hot & dirty
green
looking at density per square mile and the carbon footprint per person
Portland Pearl District full of 300 x 300 blocks
poem – “Lines in Potentis” – Ben Okri
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Gabriel Tan – Out of Stock Design, Singapore
members of the firm are from different countries, but find a way to work together online
umbrellas in internal gutter to drain
mix of handcrafts and mass production
very focused on flatpack furniture
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Antonio Roman-Alcalá – SF Urban Agriculture Alliance and Alemany Farm
“The Political Economy of Urban Land, and Its Relation to an Urban Agricultural Future”
farming and cities have co-evolved
our population is no longer “mostly farmers” – not directly tied to the land
what society values – highest-earning college majors vs lowest-earning college majors
can’t urban plan our way out of mining and destruction of rainforests
17th & Folsom = “future park” – park for kinds + urban garden
who gets to decide the best use of the land? the owner of the land or the community?
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Part 1 is posted here. Part 2 is posted here.
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Noelle and I had fun at Pecha Kucha in San Francisco at the SPUR Urban Center on Tuesday. For those unfamiliar with the Pecha Kucha format, each speaker has 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. The format makes for a fun but focused look at what a wide range of professionals is working on and thinking about. Presentations are loosely organized around a theme. The theme this time was “Denser.”
Using my notes, I am putting together a set of posts that lists the presenters in order, along with links to their website (if I could find them) and any major thoughts I jotted down. For some presentations, I took a number of notes. Other presentations have fewer notes (maybe I was looking at the images more carefully?). All of the presentations were more interesting and beautiful than revealed by my notes and these posts.
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Grady Gillies – Architect – UCLA, Suprastudio
DENSE city
dense buildings
dense population
dense space
dense community
Looked at 8 cities as part of the studio, including:
Cleveland, OH – transforming access and landscape
Flint, MI – advantage of a shrinking city’s migration is SPACE
New Orleans – blighted property presents an opportunity
Tucson, AZ – relentless expansion of the city edge
Merced, CA – looking at potential impact of high-speed rail
Toledo, OH – city’s solar industry as a new urban identity
More information on the studio and work:
http://www.suprastudio.aud.ucla.edu/
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Craig Scott – Architect – IwamotoScott
DENSER
environmental / technological performance
spatial / material geometry
urban / architectural experiences
3 focuses of firm’s practice – buildings, installations, and digital fabrications
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Robin Levitt – Detroit
(Anna’s note – his entire introduction was “Robin Levitt, Detroit” but there is a little info on the ever-helpful Wikipedia)
Talking about the de-densification of a city
Birthplace of the automobile
Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day
1950s saw Detroit’s population peak just under 2 million
[Image of reduction in building density in the downtown district]
Detroit could geographically fit San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan, but has a much lower population density
Population decline over the years
But actual geographical area of the city was expanding
Ruins now dominate the Detroit landscape
Neighborhoods have been cleared
City looking at a strategy of controlled abandonment
City of Detroit began as farmland, and in many neighborhoods it is returning to farmland
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Parts 2, 3, and maybe 4 coming soon!
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This post is part of our series exploring the ways people and communities reuse, recycle and dispose of waste around the world.
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I saw a presentation by Nina Maritz in San Francisco in 2006, and I have continued to think about her approach periodically over the years.
Nina Maritz is a Namibian architect whose work reflects local building strategies and is built with local labor.
One project that showcases her work is the Habitat Research and Development Center in Windhoek, Namibia. Among many goals and activities listed for the center are “promote sustainable and environmentally appropriate housing” and “develop local skills in sustainable housing construction methods.” The completed project is site appropriate, made from local materials, and uses a number of passive cooling methods to keep the occupants comfortable. Each design decision addresses a number of design challenges (for example, by using poles from invasive species, she could abstain from using rare local hardwood).
What I found particularly striking about Nina Maritz’s work, and what I keep returning to, is the careful reuse of materials throughout the project.
(Photos on Flickr and in ArchitectureWeek)
Wherever possible, it seems, the architect worked with local workers and artisans to reuse materials such as corrugated metal, storage drums, cans, and tires, in both functional and decorative ways. While this approach is difficult in many places because of stringent building code and the expense of labor, it evokes an entirely different way of looking at the world, where every object holds potential not just for its intended use but also for future uses.
Zero Resource 
