DESIGNABILITY
Torino, what a vibrant city!
Piazza San Carlo, Sketch by Milad Zabeti
Green Roofs Reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect
My very interesting future research; Mitigating Urban Heat Island via Green Roofs!
A new green roof project organized by Columbia University and New York power company Con Edison adds to a growing body of research that demonstrate green roofs reduce the urban heat island effect. Using Con Edison’s training center in Long Island City, Queens, the researchers found that a layer of roof-friendly soils and plants reduce the rate of heat absorption by 84 percent in the summer, bringing down building cooling energy costs as a result.
The urban heat island effect refers to localized urban warming caused by lots of paved, dark-surfaced rooftops, streets, and parking lots. Given much of any city is covered in these low-albedo surfaces, cities can experience temperatures significantly higher than nearby green areas. Just in New York City, say Columbia researchers, perhaps “two-thirds of New York’s localized warming over the last century” is due to surfaces like conventional black rooftops, which absorb and then re-radiate light from the sun as heat.
Reducing the urban heat…
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Psychogeography, A Profound Perception of Urban Environment!
Guy Debord, Guide Pychogéographique de Paris
Primary definitions and the story behind this concept!
Situationist International:
“Was an international organization of social revolutionaries, the exclusive membership of which was made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists, active from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution in 1972.”
Guy Debord:
“Was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International (SI). He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.”
Psychogeography:
“is an approach to geography that emphasizes playfulness and “drifting” around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist International. Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”[1] Another definition is “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities… just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.”
Dérive (Drift):
“In psychogeography, a dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travellers, with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience. Situationist theorist Guy Debord defines the dérive as “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.” He also notes that “the term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of dériving.”
Détournement (Rerouting):
“is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International,and later adapted by the Situationist International (SI), that was defined in the SI’s inaugural 1958 journal as “[t]he integration of present or past artistic productions into a superior construction of a milieu. In this sense there can be no situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of those means. In a more elementary sense, détournement within the old cultural spheres is a method of propaganda, a method which reveals the wearing out and loss of importance of those spheres.” It has been defined elsewhere as “turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself”—as when slogans and logos are turned against their advertisers or the political status quo.Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was reprised by the punk movement in the late 1970s and inspired the culture jamming movement in the late 1980s. Its opposite is recuperation, in which radical ideas are twisted, commodified, and absorbed in a more socially acceptable context.”
Reference: Wikipedia
Take a look at these blogs too!
1- Mapping Weird Stuff!
2- An exercise for Psychogeography!
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Tags: architecture, design, psychogeography, urban design
Behind the Scene of a Competition!
/DEFIGN/ in collaboration with MOAZOM!
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Tags: architecture, competition, pavilion
15 Lessons for a Sustainable Neighborhood Design!
More than 40 years ago, Hans Hollein collaged the image of a warship into the natural landscape, suggesting a radical discontinuity between nature and technology. Today his vision can be seen as an anticipation of the present environmental impasse, or alternatively, as a starting point to rethink the relationship between nature and culture under the new domain of contemporary ecological theories.
Landscape infrastructures, Stan Allen
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Tags: architecture, environment, landscape, nature, Urbanism
What Tschumi Has for Architecture!
Tschumi says:
– Architecture is not sculpture, what happens in it is architecture; the movement of bodies!
– The “Context” is as important as the “Content”!
– [There is a] mosque made with mud, every year after the rain inhabitants have to redo some parts of it, [this is where] architecture becomes a social act!
– The movement of the body in space is like a knife cutting the butter!
– Frank Lloyd Wright uses the typology of a garage as a museum!
– Transprogramming in architecture, [where] a “church” becomes a “pizzeria” or a “track” goes through a “library”!
– “Envelope” [is where there is] no distinction between “roof” and “facade”!
– Discourse of “envelopes” may have been started by [Buckminster Fuller’s Pavilion of Canada]!
-Notion of materiality! [Where a common concept made with various materials]! [so] “materialization” of a concept becomes fantastically important!
– CONCEPT/CONTEXT/CONTENT!
– “Context is funny for architects!”, new Acropolis Museum is nothing but context!
– Cultural context, historical context, political context, local context, archeological context, are nothing but “constraints”!
I can summarize Tschumi in these following words:
MOVEMENT/ENVELOPE/CONTEXT/CONCEPT/CONTENT/MATERIALIZATION/ and finally the RED color!
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Tags: architecture, Bernard Tschumi, Red is not a Color!
معماری آگاه/Conscious Architecture
مشاهده 1: نگارخانه ای برای زیستن
“نگارخانه ای برای زیستن؛ سیری در معماری خانه گروپیوس” در شماره ۱۰۳ مجله معمار باعنوان ویژه ی زبان شاعرانه و معنای معمارانه منتشر شده است.  میلاد ضابطی
A Gallery of Living
Let’s stop the spread of #Notopia!
Aldo van Eyck and the City as Play­ground
Drawing Published on The Architectural Review Folio!