Participatory Design Thinking in Architecture & Urban Planning

John Odhiambo Onyango Since the Boyer of 1996 of ‘Building Communities: A New future for Architectural Education and Practice’ there has been some movements in architectural and design schools and practitioners exploring ways to inculcate a concern for larger social issues in the design process. Several alternative approaches to the education, practice of architecture and urban design have emerged rooted in the Social Architecture based on four groups of participants; the private visionary; the public professional with a vision; the professional based at non-profit organizations and the activist university. The urban laboratory model is one such model housed in the activist university. One of the arguments for this methodology is that it would lead to a better place-making process.

Arquitectura No. 386

Concursos Javier García-Germán & Alejandro Valdivieso (eds.) This editorial project aims to reflect on the major demographic, economic and ecological transformations that will occur in Madrid up to the year 2050, aspiring to propose the changes that the profession requires to provide an effective response to the challenges that the future Madrid poses. The project aims not only to anticipate the territorial, urban and architectural strategies that will be necessary, but also to reflect on the structure and competencies of the profession, as well as on the institutional framework it needs. Working on the axes of the New European Bauhaus, the proposal The Future Madrid proposes to develop six thematic issues that reflect on the city from the perspective of territory, climate, inclusion, the body, beauty and practice. Each of these thematic issues will be co-edited by two renowned architects, one from Madrid and one international. These international debates will be given local roots through projects and works that exemplify these global dynamics through the prism of the Madrid region. Each thematic issue will contain those competitions, projects, works and other Madrid initiatives that best showcase the issues under discussion, making the theoretical framework and practice go hand in hand. With Contributions of Iñaki Ábalos, Stan Allen, Burr Studio, Javier García-Germán, Fernando Maniá, Imagen Subliminal, Eduardo Prieto, Carlos Riaño, Luis Rojo, Alejandro Valdivieso, Toni Calleñas, Santiago Gómez, Javier Martínez, Silvia Muñoz y Enrique Villamuelas

Climatic Architecture

Philippe Rahm Architectes Philippe Rahm

Architecture and urbanism were traditionally based on climate and health, as we can read in the treatises of Vitruvius, Palladio or Alberti, where exposure to wind and sun, variations in temperature and humidity influenced the forms of cities and buildings. These fundamental causes of urban planning and buildings were ignored in the second half of the 20th century thanks to the enormous use of fossil energy by heating and air conditioning systems, pumps and refrigerators, that today cause the greenhouse effect and global warming.

The fight against climate change forces architects and urban designers to take seriously the climatic issue in order to base their design on its the local climatic context and energy resources. Faced with the climatic challenge of the 21st century, we propose to reset our discipline on its intrinsic atmospheric qualities, where air, light, heat or humidity are recognized are real materials of building, convection, thermal conduction, evaporation, emissivity, or effusivity are becoming design tools for composing architecture and cities, and through materialism dialectic, are able to revolutionize esthetic and social values.

AA Book 2023

Ryan Dillon, Anna Lisa Reynolds (eds.) The AA Book 2023 presents a synopsis of the 2022–23 academic year at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture. The layout of its pages has been generated by the students and tutors of each unit or programme within the school, in parallel with the development of their projects. The middle of the book comprises a series of pull-out posters featuring highlights of the year from other facets of the AA, including the Public Programme, the Visiting School and the Communications Studio. Its centrefold recreates the Front Members’ Room at 36 Bedford Square, which this year sits at the heart of the Projects Review exhibition as a visual catalogue of projects by every student in the school. Together, these elements represent a radical shift in approach from previous iterations of the AA Book towards a more nimble and less wasteful record of the work of the year. They reflect the way in which we navigate the academic year and how we face the urgent challenges of the present: as an association of voices talking loudly and together as one school.

deCoding Asian Urbanism

Farooq Ameen (ed.) deCoding Asian Urbanism is a captivating exploration into innovative architecture and urban interventions reshaping the landscape of Asian cities. The book highlights projects that embrace the rapid growth, cultural richness, and intricate complexities of the contemporary Asian urban fabric. The magnitude and speed of 21st-century urbanization are extraordinary, with projections suggesting that Asia's urban development in the next two decades could surpass the total global urban growth of the past two centuries. As we stand on the brink of this urban revolution, deCoding Asian Urbanism brings together the minds of visionary architects, historians, sociologists, urban designers, and activists from around the world. Their essays offer unique insights into the diverse and multifaceted nature of Asian cities, each an intricate tapestry of history, culture, and aspiration. This enriching journey through the book is accompanied by a multitude of images, analytical diagrams, maps, and captivating photographs. You'll find yourself immersed in the ideas and spirited discussions captured in symposium panels at Harvard University's South Asia Institute. Here, contemporary thinkers and practitioners from various disciplines reveal their innovative design and planning approaches for Asian cities. deCoding Asian Urbanism transcends the boundaries of mere globalization; it delves into the essence of systemic innovation, elevating the Asian city to new heights. The book is thoughtfully organized into three sections: Decoding the City, where the context is set and the urban puzzle begins to unravel; Mediating the City, which unveils strategic approaches to address the complex urban challenges; and Transforming the City, the grand finale showcasing projects that breathe life into urban spaces, infusing them with vitality, renewal, and transformation. With Contributions of Kenneth Frampton, Rahul Mehrotra, Ken Yeang, Farooq Ameen, Saskia Sassen, Edward Glaeser, Diana Balmori, Kongjian Yu, Jonathan D. Solomon, Steven Holl, Weiping Wu, Stephen Kieran, Kashef Chowdhury, Qingyun Ma, Frances Anderton, Kazi Ashraf, Nate Berg, Nondita Correa Mehrotra, Terence Young, Rafael Vinoly, Satoshi Toyoda.

Soil Lab

A Built Experiment Eibhlín Ní Chathasaigh, James Albert Martin, Anne Dorthe Vester, Maria Bruun / SOIL LAB This anthology is a critical reflection on the making of Soil Lab, a project built with a community in North Lawndale, Chicago, and hosted by the Danish Arts Foundation at the 2021 edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The pages give space to a conversation that stretches far outside both the confines of the Soil Lab’s site in North Lawndale and the short duration of the biennial. The book is a meeting place for the voices which contributed to the Soil Lab project, and maps their constellation of disciplines—across architecture, art, anthropology, ecology, craft and community work—and global geographies, including the US, Denmark, Ireland, Puerto Rico and Austria. The story of the project, and the many lives and threads that it brushed up against, is told through histories, criticism, photographic essays, instruction manuals, soil recipes and interviews. With Contributions from Catherine Fennell - anthropologist (US) Emmett Scanlon - architect, writer, curator (Ireland) Sami Akkach - architect and rammed earth specialist (Austria) Traci Wile – architect, educator and community liaison (US) Craig Stevenson – artist and community liaison (US) Calvanita Fipps AKA Nini – artist (US) Anjulie Rao – journalist and critic (US) Ta-Nehisi Coates – writer and journalist (US) Annette Skov – art facilitator and advisor (Denmark) Amara Abdal Figueroa – agroceramist, artist and environmental advocate (Puerto Rico, Kuwait) Will Quam – photographer, writer and brick specialist (US) Ellen Braae – landscape architect (Denmark) Benita Marcussen – photojournalist (Denmark)

Treacherous Transparencies (ENG ED.)

Thoughts and Observations Triggered by a Visit to Farnsworth House Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists. The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. The architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely alliance: Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in common: their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day. Published in the context of the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP). Launch of the publication series by the inaugural MCHAP award winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron for their project 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. Buy German Edition EBOOK VERSION

Knowing and Unknowing

The lives of Repair Mauro Baracco & Louise Wright with Linda Tegg The exhibition invites you to look anew at a plant community that has been overlooked as a site only for human use, to the extent that there is only 1% now left and to reflect on the ground, what it supports, what is displaced. As presented through our premier cultural institution, La Biennale di Venezia, this exhibition will live on through seed the authors of this investigation have already started to collect and through relationships they are building with research institutes in Europe.

Buildings & Living Things

Garden House Mauro Baracco & Louise Wright with Rory Gardiner This holiday house is conceived as just a little more than a tent: a deck and raised platform are covered by a transparent 'shed'; the interior perimeter 'veranda' is garden space; the soil and natural ground line are maintained and carried through; a low lying site with terrestrial orchids and lillies, flood waters seasonally move through the site unimpeded; similarly the indigenous vegetation has begun to grow inside.

Iaac Bits 10: Learning cities

Collective Intelligence in Urban Design Areti Markopoulou The digital intelligence that is inevitably starting to penetrate every aspect of our previously analogue systems of living, working or social interacting calls for new models of designing our city and opens new territories of experimentation in the processes related to urban design. While the idea of intelligent machines that simulate “cognitive functions” such as “learning” or “problem solving” is not new, its extensive use, in recent years, in the urban design discipline opens up a series of new possibilities – as well as plenty of cultural, ethical or even aesthetic hesitations and risks. How do our cities learn? Can machines design and what? Is crowd intelligence appropriately harvested in our evolutionary and generative design processes? And has our current big data analysis approach reached the limit of human and computational intelligence? Learning Cities explores the “intelligence” applied in the processes and outcomes of designing our urban environments. From a variety of applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning for urban planning to co-creation processes that merge crowd intelligence with digital technologies, Learning Cities highlights that “intelligence” in the built environment should be understood beyond human, object or machinic intelligence alone. Through a variety of contributions from experts in different fields the current IAAC Bits Journal Issue explores novel collective intelligence design processes in which designers, users, the built environment, and digital codes all play a fundamental role in a unique resonance that takes place among them. With Contributions of Areti Markopoulou, Manuel Gausa, Jordi Vivaldi, Benjamin Bratton, John Frazer, Molly Wright Steenson, Stanislas Chaillou, Sarah Williams, Theodora Vardouli, Neil Leach, Angelos Chronis, Jose Sanchez, Mathilde Marengo, Aldo Sollazzo, Aleksandra Sojka, Matias del Campo, Chiara Farinea, Rodrigo Delso, Sandra Maninger, Javier Argota, Cobus Bothma and others. EBOOK VERSION

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