COMPETITION / Are U Seeing Nature?
Masters student Mark took third place in a recent competition for designing a pavilion in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. (more…)
THESIS: Reconstruction Site: Re-designing the disposable Expo
Reconstruction Site Re-designing the disposable Expo Scott Proudfoot Building, supported by the practice of architecture, is churning resources into waste at an alarming rate. Our method of construction has its inevitable conclusion in a pile of rubble. Lamentably, the natural resources we build with are finite, and our exploitation of these has nearly reached its peak. As humanity strives for a renewable energy future, architecture must engage in the renewable use of materials. In the long term future,...
THESIS: Rammed Earth: Adaptations to Urban Toronto
Abstract by Cassandra Cautius Rammed earth is an ancient and imperishable material-process. Traditionally associated with rural construction and underdeveloped settings, the material has begun to enter the modern vernacular. While its use is not yet wide spread in the contemporary built environment, its benefits and positive applications to that setting are numerous. Rammed earth as a building material possesses ripe aesthetic qualities and hard geometric forms which frame the basis of the material’s compatibility with the contemporary urban vernacular. As a...
Constructing Our Environments: A Material Comparison
Photos from KLH UK (top right) and Ecobuild (bottom right). ABSTRACT by Henry Murdock Our built environment is constantly adapting to changing factors: technology, the state of the economy, material resource availability, and, in turn, environmental conditions. The latter has gained notable importance in popular discourse, and especially in the architecture and construction professions. However, as much as we see terms such as “sustainability” and “green” in our everyday lives, government and industry are slow to take action investing in our future environment....
Alumni Chat: Paul Dowsett, Sustainable.TO
I rode my bike through Toronto, past the architecture ghetto, over the Don Valley to the east side of the city to office of Sustainable.TO. It was founded less than five years ago by Paul Dowsett, a Waterloo Architecture alumni, and is housed in an old bank on Queen Street East. I entered the office to find him and his team immersed in a design charrette, discussing their proposal for redevelopment of the Far Rockaways....