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Celebrity Shoot-out
Representatives of four fairly well-known architectural practices pitch their projects for the limited competition for 425 Park Avenue. The original article is by Oliver Wainwright, writing for The...
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It’s Not Rocket Science #2: Ventilation
Many architects look to Nature for inspiration for how to make their buildings look more natural even though buildings are very unnatural objects. Instead of actually growing out of the ground or...
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It’s Not Rocket Science #3: Yakhchal
By 400BC, Persians had developed a system for making ice in winter and storing it throughout the summer and in a hot desert climate, in buildings they called yakhchal. Most of what you’ll find written...
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It’s Not Rocket Science #5: Night Sky Radiant Cooling
If ever you’ve noticed cloudless nights are colder than cloudy ones, then you’ve experienced Night Sky Radiant Cooling. The temperature of the surface of the earth is relatively constant so the...
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It’s Not Rocket Science #6: The Stack Effect
The Stack Effect is when are is moved into and out of buildings by means of a difference in the buoyancy of the air on the inside and on the outside – between air that is colder and air that is warmer,...
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It’s Not Rocket Science #7: Evapo-transpiration
Speaking of gardens in the sky, I once lived in an apartment building that had one on the 25th-floor. It was just a couple of floors missing from the building and wasn’t really integrated with any...
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More From Less: The Principle
Here’s some outdoor space. Judging by the colour of the brick, the teapot, and the underused barbeque in the corner, it looks like we’re in England. The peripheral plants are doing their...
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The Demise of the Green Roof
PHASE 1: Cost-effective building performance (more from less) This is an Icelandic turf house. They’ve been around for say, 1,000 years – about since the time of the Vikings, let’s say. The turf...
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Architectural Myths #6: Convenience
In the first few decades of the twentieth century, the general unhealthy conditions in much ‘worker’ housing were a major concern for certain architects wishing to make life better for those people....
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Architecture Without Architects
Architecture Without Architects is the title of a book by Bernard Rudofsky, published to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Modern Art from November 1964 to February 1965. I...
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