During the past year over 1000 grievances, gripes, and annoyances were collected from people across the city. The Toronto Complaints Choir transform this complains into “disappointed people’s song”.

BMD studio decided to do something about it.  Studio designers Amanda Happé, Kar Yan Cheung, Chris Braden, Michal Dudek, and Paul Kawai team set up a pop-up studio, working in real-time in the Propeller Centre. They tried to design solutions in response to the complaints. A book of these ideas was also simultaneously designed, and sent throughout the city of Toronto and their citizens.

Public Design Festival is also get-together, exchange and occasion to create new opportunities for young designers to show up their ideas and projects. For that reason the festival is organizing.

PUBLIC MARKET is a marketplace entirely dedicated to self produced design pieces, processed crafts, limited edition objects.

PUBLIC MARKET is the chance to present new design ideas and sell them directly.

PUBLIC MARKET is the place where young designers can presents their works, in the contest of the design week.

PUBLIC MARKET is a market of ideas, experiences and stories from all over the world

PUBLIC MARKET will take place on Saturday 16^th at Parco Esposizioni Novegro and will be the main content of Public Design Party event, the traditional closing party of the design week.

For more information: www.publicdesignfestival.org

produced by Esterni.

You can find the direct links to the websites here:

inhabitat

treehugger

mocoloco

Jetson Green

The designers accord

The top 10 fastest trains in the world belong to Asia and Europe. Number 10, the MLU00, which ran at a speed of 248.9 mph in 1987 was engineered before I was born. As an American in 2011, it’s pretty embarrassing that our fastest train is Amtrak’s Acela Express, which travels the not-so-far distance between Boston and Washington, D.C. and only reaches speeds of up to 150 mph. On top of this, If I were to take the fastest trip from Boston to Washingtion DC today, a 6 hour, 32 minute journey (I know because I just did the search), It would set me back $235.00, but a 1 hour, 40 minute, heavy-Co2-emitting flight with JetBlue would cost me $149.00 – which is  $95.00 less…

Lets fix this, shall we?

President Obama, at the 2011 state of the union, spoke about America’s falling technologically  behind and has announced his vision for a new high-speed rail network that will connect 80 percent of Americans in the next 25 years.

Now Van Alen Institute is holding a call for images, videos, and creative text visuals that present new perspectives and suggestions about the future of high-speed rail in America. Entry criteria is pretty loose – the competition Q&A page even suggests the submission of comic strips. Winning proposals are awarded $1000 cash prize and will be include in online and print publication. There is, however, an entry fee of $30 per design submitted.  Of course, the competition advisory committee is made up of interesting, important people who will take a look at your designs,  including my recent blogging obsession, Thom Mayne:

Carol Coletta, President & CEO, CEOs for Cities,

Keller Easterling, Associate Professor, Yale University

Christopher Hawthorne, Architecture Critic, Los Angeles Times

Gary Hustwit, Director, Helvetica

Michael Lejeune, Creative Director, L.A. Metro

Thom Mayne, Founder & Design Director, Morphosis

Petra Todorovich, Director, America 2050

Sarah Whiting, Dean, Rice School of Architecture

Competition Deadline: May 21 2011

More information can be found on the online website.

And you can follow competition tweets @thespeedofrail

Featuring: Terreform ONE

Beyond “sustaining” the urban landscape to endure the lifestyles of future generations, ecological design envisions long-lasting urban waste-management techniques and, as the world’s population  climbs, long-lasting urban space-management techniques.

An average of 50 million people migrate to cities around the globe each year. As they do, more and more outside (rural) resources are being transported to cities while more and more waste is being transported out of cities to keep their populations comfortable. As global environmental and social pressures build under this unsustainable system (meaning, it won’t last – we’re drawing resources at a faster rate than they grow, and the waste is building up somewhere faster than it’s decomposing), new visions for urban consumption, waste, and space management are needed. To be clear, urbanism is not the problem we’re facing- the current design of urban spaces is. Built to serve the automobile, urban areas, as they exist today, promote the existence of an artificial boundary between the “city” and “nature” that have made it easy for urbanites to ignore their impressive impact on outside communities.

One way to meet future ecological challenges is through the design and development of self-sufficient communities- spaces that acknowledge their ecosystems and manage their own resources, eliminating the need to draw those of other spaces. Setting the boundaries of these communities will be important. Portland, Oregon, for example, Has been developing all urban planning within a greenbelt , or urban growth boundary, for years, in an effort to prevent American, suburban sprawl and it’s negative effects on rural ecosystems. Similarly, UK town planning adopted Metropolitan Green Belt policy around London in 1947, and has been in effect ever since. However, despite the environmental responsibility of sprawl prevention, these cities are still importing most of their resources from other communities. There is a necessity for ecological design to address both space and waste management to decrease urban-driven resource pressures on rural landscapes.

At their exciting studio in Brooklyn, New York City, Mitchell Joachim and his Terreform ONE [Open Network Ecology] design group, envision projects for the future of cities that both eliminate urban pressures on rural environments and promote innovative design processes. Urban-based mobility has been an important theme at Terreform ONE, where proposals for stackable “soft” cars, human-powered river gyms, bus blimps (pictured above), and the long awaited human jet pack have developed. The biotechnology constructed tree and meat architecture that Terreform ONE is researching  have also attracted a lot of attention. These innovative ideas have been shared at TED conferences (Joachim is now a TED fellow), the Colbert Report, The Economist’s Ideas Economy video Series, many many interested journalists, as well as with the NYU students whom Joachim teaches when he crosses the bridge to Manhattan.

It is Terreform ONE’s  radical re-imagining of the city as a ecological, biological, self-sufficient system, rather than focusing on an incorporation of carbon-curbing solar panels and other “green” technologies, that makes their work revolutionary innovative. The Planetary ONE Urbaneering Brooklyn 2110, City of the Future model presents a re-design initiative for NYC’s Brooklyn borough. The intensified version of Brooklyn supplies all vital needs for its population. Food, water, air, energy, waste, mobility, and shelter are radically restructured to support life in every form, making Urbaneering Brooklyn 2110 an exciting example of what future, self-sufficient communities could look like.

Using the existing street grid as a foundation for new networks, the Urbaneering Brooklyn project re-eingineers obsolete streets with radically robust and ecologically active pathways.  The construction of “ecologically active structure” is proposed with the use of natural grafting processes, supported with prefabricated CHC reusable scaffolds.

Teerform ONE’s ecological design combines biological and technological potential to produce smart models for developments that reach far beyond zero-carbon targets. As Joachim puts it, the term sustainability is “not evocative enough” . The ecological challenges that architects and city planners face today require solutions that not only work to curb environmental exploitation, but also add new, creative inventions that support more positive urban lifestyles.

Radical envisioning of the future of cities is what gave us technologies like the elevator, which Joachim sites as one of the most influential technologies for architecture and urban planning. The ecological design research being advanced in his Brooklyn office provides cities with technological potential to bring together computer science, structural engineering and biology for comprehensive resource, waste and space management that also-  importantly – enhances the urban experience.

Organized by Planet One and Terreform One, the One Prize: NYC 6th Boro challenge is accepting design proposals that envision New York City´s 6th borough as the water that surrounds it. These propositions should describe a plan for a ¨NYC Blue Network¨ including the expansion of waterborne transportation, linking the five boroughs with transit hubs, incorporating ferries, water taxis, bike shares, electric car-shares, electric shuttle buses, providing in-water recreation, educational events, cultural activities, pavilion halls and climate resilience. If you can pull all of that off, you´ll be entered into the competition  for the 10,000 dollar cash award prize and ten tickets to the NYC Clean Tech World Expo 2014. There are also three Honorable mention prizes worth 1,500 dollars plus one Expo ticket each. And hey, if you don´t make the top 4, well at least you´ll be recognized by some of the U.S.´s top leaders, academics, practitioners, and thinkers for trying to make the world a better place.

Here are the important dates to know:

April 30, 2011: Registration closes
May 31, 2011 by midnight EST: Submission Due
July 15, 2011: Finalists announced
July 28, 2011: Award Ceremony; Exhibition launched

We all know, It´s not enough to engineer a building´s electricity to run on solar panels if it´s not perpetually sunny out. For  temperate, seasonal climates, a variety of ¨green¨ design elements are usually used to lower energy consumption for ¨sustainable¨ building projects.

Beyond utilizing technologies like solar panels and wind turbines, ecological design processes embrace seasonal and environmental changes, planning and designing to meet them halfway. Projects have an evolving, informal structure, and take direction from nature herself. Rather than install bike racks to gain LEED points, ecologically designed architecture is structured, from the very core, to respond to change and challenges of the local environment in which it stands.

My last ecological design fundamentals post featured the Druk White Lotus School, set in the northern heights of ladakh, India. Arup engineers faced considerable climate challenges when designing the campus which, because of it’s 9,000-25,000 ft altitude, is very, very cold. However, because of its 9,ooo-25,000 ft altitude, it is also very, very sunny. The building´s design, which revolved around natural lighting and heating techniques for the local conditions, is another reason to consider the campus a prime example of ecological design.

Another, perhaps more high-profile, example of ecological design that holds an evolving, responsive structure, is Morphosis’ FLOAT house design for New Orleans. The building was developed in 2009 for Brad Pitt’s Lets Make it Right foundation, which hires architects to redesign and rebuild homes for Hurricane destroyed 9th ward. Thom Mayne, principle architect, stresses the importance of the building’s functionality. It has been designed to, in the case of a flood, float vertically on guide posts for up to 12 feet. The house is also equipped with rooftop solar panels, rainwater cisterns for water use, energy-efficient electrical systems and geothermal heating and cooling. 

The design is special in that, unlike other approaches to 9th ward re-designs that raise homes 10 feet in anticipation of more flooding, the FLOAT house is built at the same level as the traditional shot-gun houses of new Orleans, preserving the area’s cherished porch culture. The design is also notably affordable- with total building costs coming in at only 150,000.

We’ve seen Mayne’s architectural focus on functionality take the shape of LEED certified buildings before, however, this project goes one step further, as the structure is not only responsive to temperature changes. The FLOAT house also responds to the vernacular build and special culture of 9th ward inhabitants- and protects  thier homes from future environmental catastrophe.

What is ecological design? Human-nature Interaction.

Features  of ¨green¨and ¨sustainable¨architectural design often emerge as solar panels, green roofs and other technologies that make up the checklist for LEED certification. But to identify features of ecological design  is more complex.

Healthy ecosystems exist in a dynamic equilibrium of nutrient cycles and energy flows. To design ecologically is to consider the relationship between built structures and social structures as an evolving support system for environmentally responsible living. Ecological design does not only aim to produce low-impact architecture, but also works to support healthy relationships between culture and natural earth processes.

The word ecology is derived from the greek  word Oikos, meaning home. Although we may have drastically changed the structure of our habitats over the course of  our history, humans will always, fundamentally,  belong to a  larger, biotic family. Ecological design recognizes and reflects this truth in the form and function of built structures –  allowing, even pushing, building users to interact with external, natural elements.

Architecture that encourages  supportive, engaged interaction between building users and the natural cycles of the ¨exterior¨world exemplify the most basic of ecological design principles: acknowledgment that humans belong to and are dependent on – to put it simply – nature.

Arup’s design for the Druk White Lotus school combines sustainably managed local materials and traditional construction techniques with leading-edge environmental design.  Solar strategy has played a particularly large role in how the campus was designed. A Trombe wall system in the residence buildings keeps users warm without relying on oil, gas, or electrical heating systems, acting as a special double layered  window-wall that provides warm air exchange within the building.  Flaps on the inner window/wall  are opened  to allow warm air from the solar-heated cavity to flood into the building. At night, the flaps are closed again, to keep the cool night temperature from entering.

This Trombe wall-window heating/cooling system is operated, manually, by the students themselves, teaching a valuable lesson about how the sun -  as a natural resource -  is just as efficient as earth harming oil-burning systems used in most 21st century building designs. There is a lot of understanding required by building users – they must be able to operate the building themselves in order to get hot water and heat. In a place where old traditions have been carefully preserved, the buildings introduce new traditions for adaptation to 21st century life. These traditions, taught alongside the Ladahki-western school curriculum should, through cultural understanding,  sustain themselves.

The holistic approach to designing the Druk White Lotus school is not only an example of sustainable building practises – Its focus on preserving both the culture and nature of the surrounding area make it a prime example of Ecological design.

With Local River, french designer Mathieu Lehanneur has introduced a whole new dimension of conscious eating for fish-eating locavores.  His freshwater aquarium-refrigerator design allows conscious foodies to raise their own fish and grow a vegetable patch in their living room. The system is supported  by the natural exchange and interdependence between fish and plants: The plants extract the nutrient-rich water for growth while simultaneously acting as a natural filter, purifying the water to provide a healthy environment in which the fish can grow themselves. This process mimics natural pond ecology and maintains the vital balance for the ecosystem in which the fish live. It also allows fish eaters to better trace their culinary footprint, which, in an age of fish-decline due to extreme overfishing, is something worth acknowledging.

Leveraging the power of plants as purifiers is something that we, at ecosistema urbano, are excited about too. You may remember our post about our water-purifying prototype at the Plaza Ecopolis - a design that we have entered into the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. It works similarly , as a water purification system that has been engineered to assist natural macrophyte purifying processes in plants. After purifying the water, ecosistema urbano´s  natural system stores water for reuse on the project site or within the surrounding community.

Public Design Festival edition n° 3 will be held in Milan from 12 to 17 april 2011 with a new formula: site specific projects scattered all over Milan from the city centre to the outskirts of town (Lambrate, Cadorna, Porta Romana, Garibaldi). Young designers, architects and projects makers can submit their projects to realise interventions, services, installations and public design projects.

Deadline January 31.

Public Design Festival is made of a constant research that brings to Milan selected projects  from all over the world with the aim of giving space to public space in building future cities. Cities shall be citizen-friendly, they shall be built on people and relations, cities to live in, not to survive in. The winning projects for this edition will be presented in a urban course that will be visible for the whole city and ready to be experienced from the citizens and visitors of Public Design Festival.

The aim of the call for projects is to make people sensitive to public space, to create a relevant new contest for designers – the pro-activity of all the citizens in the public agenda of our town. We want to create the possibility for all the designers to express their creativity in a festival that speaks of public space in a high prestige frame like the Salone del Mobile.

You can submit projects of any kind – installations, communication projects, urban services, actions, urban furniture elements, performances and any idea you can think of.
Deadline: 31 January 2011
Selected project publication – 1 march 2011

http://www.publicdesignfestival.org/publicdesignfestival/bando/2011/IT/home/

http://www.publicdesignfestival.org/portal/IT/contents/generic_home.php

+