Sense of Place News
Bookshelf » The Urban Housing Handbook
by Aaron Britt
The Urban Housing Handbook from Wiley Publications, a new tome from Paris-based architects Caroline Stahl and Eric Firley, is a guided tour through urban housing typologies from all over the world. Concerned as much with the housing type's impact on its city block as it is with the housing itself, Stahl and Firley give a detailed account of where our urban housing has been and where it's heading.
Top 5 Greenest Schools
With back to school season in full swing, we couldn’t help but wonder which colleges and universities are rated at the top of the green class. And with all the research that high school Juniors and Seniors put into selecting their future higher education institution, sustainable initiatives on campuses are becoming an increasingly important thing to consider. We did a little due diligence of our own with the help of Sierra’s Top Cool Schools, the Princeton Review’s Green Score card, and Greenopia’s University Ranking Guide, to save you the hassle. Here’s our report of the five schools that consistently make the green top 10.
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The English at leisure
In search of a sense of place, Simon Roberts set off to photograph England at play. The results are a beautiful, lyrical body of work
This item provided by Travel news, travel guides and reviews | guardian.co.uk
Urban Sprawl Repair Kit Offers Simple Plans to Fix Suburbia
The suburban landscape consists largely of endless expanses of paved parking lots pocked with strip malls, gas stations, chain restaurants, and McMansions. Rather than razing these structures with the aim of greening the suburbs, Galina Tahchieva proposes that we retrofit them to create “a more diverse, cohesive urban fabric within a walkable and identifiable public realm.” The winner of the People’s Choice Award in our Reburbia competition with over 2,300 votes, the Urban Sprawl Repair Kit offers a go-to set of solutions for transforming 5 structures spawned from suburban sprawl into mixed-use models of urban efficiency.
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Post tags: Galina Tahchieva, green architecture, reburbia competition, Renovation, sustainable design, urban infill, Urban Sprawl Repair Kit
ANNOUNCING: The Winners of the ReBurbia Competition!
After much heated debate and a dramatic week of online voting, we’re thrilled to announce the winners of the Reburbia competition to redesign the suburbs! We received hundreds of incredible entries over the past month and it was quite a challenge to narrow them down to twenty finalists, and four winning entries.
The grand prize winner of the ReBurbia competition is…. Calvin Chiu for his ingenious plan to convert foreclosed McMansions into water-filtering wetlands that provide urban areas with a steady source of water. Dubbed Frog’s Dream, the plan stands to rehabilitate and preserve wetland environments, solve the water crisis and ensuring the sustainability of our cities in one fell swoop!
The second place prize goes to Urban Nature, F&S Design Studio, and Silverlion Design for their Entreprenurbia proposal, which seeks to foster sustainable and diverse communities with a simple change in public policy. By abolishing poorly conceived zoning laws and allowing suburban residents to operate businesses out of their homes, the plan creates a community of entrepreneurs who naturally transform sprawling suburban neighborhoods into vital mixed-use communities. The practicality and simple effectiveness of this solution really struck a chord with our judging panel - it’s elegant, easily workable, and cost effective.
The third place winner is Forrest Fulton, who conceived of an inspired plan to convert abandoned big-box grocery stores and desolate parking lots into food producing marketplaces. Dubbed Big Box Agriculture, the proposal combines sustainable practices of the past with new energy efficient technologies to shift the role of grocery stores from retailers of food grown far away to producers of locally grown food.
In addition to the three winners selected by the jury, we let you be the judge and vote for your favorite entry. With over 2300 votes and 188 comments on her proposal, the winner is… Galina Tahchieva for her Urban Sprawl Repair Kit! This go-to set of solutions offers a series of simple retrofits for converting ubiquitous suburban structures into models of mixed-use efficiency.
Thank you so much to all of our readers who cast your vote and kept up the great dialogue around each of our twenty finalists, congratulations to all of our winners, and special thanks to all of the talented designers, architects, and urban planners who contributed their solutions to save suburbia!
Many thanks, as well, to our esteemed panel of judges: Fritz Haeg, Geoff Manaugh, Thomas Ermacora, Paul Petrunia, Eric Corey Freed, and Allan Chochinov.
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