Sustainable Cities

Zeist: Home to the WWF's innovative new Dutch headquarters

Astrid Svane — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:37:19 +0100

The building, dating from 1954, used to house an agricultural laboratory. RAU Architecture elected to shoehorn a 3-storey organically shaped addition into the middle of the existing building. The addition has upgraded the existing building and brought new life to the previously so stern, impersonal structure. The reconstructed building has had its energy consumption optimised and is now carbon-neutral.

New York: Organic rooftop garden

Anna Esbjørn Hess — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:59:07 +0100

"There's about 1000 worms in here," Annie Novak tells a journalist from the New York Times, holding up a box full of worms she is about to distribute in the roof garden in Greenpoint. Annie is Rooftop Farms' head gardener and hopes that the worms will make the soil in the vegetable garden even more fertile. The garden, 15 m above the Greenpoint sidewalk, is like a peaceful oasis in an otherwise throbbing industrial district. Several of the neighbours potter about in the garden, fussing with their potatoes and carrots with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop.

Tipton: Think Before You Throw

Maria Markor Leal — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:38:32 +0100

Many people immediately associate littering in the countryside and on the street with young people and dubious morals. The interesting thing about Tipton's effort to combat littering is that the project not only makes young people aware of taking care of their surroundings and encourages them to get involved; it is also changing the public's attitude to young people. The project shows that young people can also environment-conscious and help to tidy up in the area where they live.

Mind your behaviour

Fredrik Gyllenhoff — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:55:51 +0100

Wednesday February 24th was the kick off for DAC’s series of events following the opening of 3XN’s exhibition, Mind Your Behaviour at the Danish Architecture Centre. This night’s event took place at a fully booked DAC with over 130 participants ready to tune in on Kim Herforth Nielsen and Ulrich Knaack.

Nicky Gavron: We need systemic change

Kasper Egeberg — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:16:46 +0100

Q: What are the overall challenges for cities today?
The overall challenges are urbanisation and climate change because the world is urbanising so very rapidly. By 2050, we are expecting that 2/3 of the world's population is going to live in cities. All this is driven by population growth and this extra consumption of resources means various shortages in relations to food, water, energy and so on.

Cradle to Cradle – improving the future

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:10:15 +0100

Cradle to Cradle is a holistic economic, industrial and social framework which seeks to create systems that are not just efficient but essentially waste free. It models human industry on nature's processes in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms.

Density – a still underestimated environmental aspect

Georg Guensberg — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:29:44 +0100

Urban and regional planners know about the importance of density. No doubt about that. But do policy makers know, too? Well, apparently not, but that might change.

The deep economic crisis we are still facing is a chance to put density more into the spotlight of environmental thinking. And of course, the question how we can create sustainable cities is strongly linked to the density issue.

Toronto: Road diet for safer traffic

Maria Markor Leal — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:55:47 +0100

Putting one of Toronto's main thoroughfares, St George Street on a ‘road diet’ has been a tremendous success. This involves narrowing three and four-lane roads to two or three lanes, using the extra space for bicycle lanes and wider pavements/sidewalks. The object is to improve conditions for cyclists and pedestrians, to reduce the number of cars, increase safety and to create a more aesthetically pleasing, agreeable urban space.

Ikast: Past and present bring the lakeside to life

Maria Markor Leal — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:31:40 +0100

Bølling Sø originated from a kettle hole which formed in the last ice age. Well-known figures like the Tollund man and the Elling girl lived by its shores, where the remains of many settlements have been found. The lake which has been restored is a good deal larger than the 140 hectares Bølling Sø occupied from the Neolithic period until 1870, when exploitation of the peat around the lake began and with it the excavation of drainage canals.

Get moving!

Fredrik Gyllenhoff — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:26:33 +0100

According to WHO/HEPA, 2/3 of the adult population in the EU, are not even close to being as physically active as they should. With 1 out of 5 Europeans labeled as “inactive”, the result is shocking. That’s 600,000 deaths every year in the EU, as the result of lacking exercise. That equals 5,3 million years that are wasted.

A waste of many good years that the people behind Streetmovement are set to change.

Paimio: Healing power in sustainable architecture

Christopher Mackey — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:40:39 +0100

When Alvar Aalto designed his sanatorium in 1929, he didn’t know about carbon emissions or global warming or the scientifically-supported health benefits of sustainable built environments. He only had knowledge of what was economically logical in his industrial society, what little facts the field of medicine had uncovered at the time and, notably, his intuition. Yet these factors led him to produce a building with many characteristics that, by today’s standards, would be considered sustainable.

Stuttgart: Cool city

Astrid Svane — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:20:48 +0100

Stuttgart is a city well known for its industrial productivity and affluence, and is often referred to as Germany’s ‘cradle of the automobile’. With this profile, one might expect a city littered with glass office buildings, stark urban plazas and with heavy traffic clogging its arteries.