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Architecture Guide App for Pittsburgh

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Wouldn’t it be nice, when visiting a new city, to just be able to pull out your phone and have the city’s history at your fingertips? Now, you can! At least in Pittsburgh thanks to over,under! #theresanappforthat

(via Architects Newspaper)

The Boston-based interdisciplinary architecture firm over,under has launched a mobile architecture guide app called Jaunt Pittsburgh. The app provides navigation to a curated list of historic and contemporary architecture throughout the city, and can be downloaded for free for from Apple’s App Store or Google play.

Users can search and find architecture in three ways. Projects can be sorted through 1) a grid of icons, 2) a sortable list of architects, location, date, or other characteristics, and 3) a navigable map. Along with helping users find buildings throughout the city, the app includes photographs and historical information. Each project also includes a list additional readings outside of the app.

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Courtesy of over,under

“It has unusual breadth—it showcases Pittsburgh buildings as well as industrial and infrastructural sites dating from the city’s founding to the present,” says Martin Aurand, Architecture Librarian and Archivist at Carnegie Mellon University, and collaborator on the app. “It includes rare archival images from the Carnegie Mellon University Architecture Archives, and is particularly strong in its inclusion of modern and contemporary projects.”

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over,under worked with students from Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture and from the Carnegie Mellon Qatar campus on the app. The interdisciplinary practice works on architecture, urban design, graphic identity, and publications. The firm produces everything from architectural films and mobile apps to building and urban design proposals.

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USF Architecture Grads Design Award-Winning Disaster Relief Shelter

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(via WUSF)

In 2009, University of South Florida School of Architecture and Community Design students Sean Verdecia and Jason Ross watched Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. What struck them was the lack of quick, proper shelter for the victims of an event like this.

Sean Verdecia, left, and Jason Ross worked with USF's technology transfer office to patent their design and develop a business plan., HANDOUT

Sean Verdecia, left, and Jason Ross worked with USF’s technology transfer office to patent their design and develop a business plan., HANDOUT

“It started with disasters,” Verdecia said. “We noticed that there’s a second disaster, where people are given these shelters that lack human dignity. We thought that maybe we could use our architecture skills to maybe come up with something new that could solve this issue.”

Even after graduating, the pair continued working on the problem and came up with an answer: AbleNook. “AbleNook is a modular disaster relief dwelling that you can put together without tools in under two hours,” Verdecia said. The duo was encouraged by professor Mark Weston to take their idea to USF’sTechnology Transfer Office, which helped them form a start-up company.

What also came in handy was a crowd-funded Kickstarter campaign they held in 2012 to build a second prototype for field testing. “We started getting these $5,000 donations pouring in and that was like, the light bulb when off and were like, ‘Oh my gosh, people really love this idea, we need to keep working on this,’” Verdecia said. “At its heart, it’s a humanitarian project and people respond to that.”  What makes AbleNook unique is that it does a lot of things other shelters can’t do.

“Maybe they can’t be deployed on an uneven terrain, or you need a whole crew to take it out to the field to assemble it, or it’s not insulated, or it’s not secure, or it doesn’t provide human dignity,” Verdecia said, adding, “when we developed this design, we wanted it to be able to check all those boxes.”

The smallest version of AbleNook has an interior space of 64 square feet, is 20 feet long and about 13 feet high, with ceilings that are 10 feet high. “It’s made out of aircraft grade aluminum and structurally insulated panels that you can just click together without any tools,” Verdecia said. If there was a need for a number of shelters to be sent to a disaster site, they can be sent out en masse on the back of a truck and delivered to a scene. “These would be shipped out from our facility, flat packed, almost like an IKEA product and then when it arrives, it’s more like a Lego product that you put together yourself,” Verdecia said.

The AbleNook has thermal insulation and a number of frosted glass windows and natural ventilation techniques to keep the interior warm or cool, depending on the climate. The expandable design means additional units can be set up side by side or on top of one another. It’s also attractive enough with an arched roof and a porch that AbleNook can be used as a portable office, classroom, or even as a prefabricated home.

“We see this kind of like a Mercedes, that you have two versions of the Mercedes,” Verdecia said. “You have the utility version and then you have the luxury version, so you can take the same base platform and you can have it as a delivery vehicle or you can have it as this luxury SUV.”

Read more.

(via WUSF)

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To learn more about AbleNook, check out their website!  www.ablenook.com

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If you want to know more about the USF Architecture Program, check out their profile page on StudyArchitecture.com!

 

USC Professor Develops Architecture-Inspired Video Game, Block'hood

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(via USC News)

Architects are no strangers to technology. Even so, Jose Sanchez is a little less than traditional when it comes to his design tools.

Sanchez, an assistant professor at the USC School of Architecture, has earned acclaim for his architecture-inspired video game Block’hood.

Released for Windows and Mac in April, the indie title just won “best gameplay” at the 2016 Games for Change Festival. The annual event recognizes innovative games that explore health, education and social issues.

“It is really humbling to receive this award among incredible contenders like That Dragon, Cancer and Life Is Strange, Sanchez said. “The jury recognized how the mechanics of the game are fundamentally defining its ecological narrative. It means a lot for someone like me coming from architecture to be recognized outside my field, validating all the effort in attempting interdisciplinary research.”

Cost and effects

The game lets players stack pieces and construct communities of their own design. Each piece has its own particular costs and effects: apartments, solar panels and shops all play different roles in the health of your building. Ecology is a key concern, with players being forced to think about greywater use and the effect of growth on the local ecology in a bid to maintain successful communities.

Sanchez was inspired by games like SimCity and Minecraft, open sandboxes that let players create their own designs. He was interested in exploring how gameplay could extend the kinds of debates architects have about urban planning to a wider group of people: What leads communities to weaken or decay? How do you take care of waste? How do you balance needs like electricity, jobs or food with population growth?

Asking these kinds of questions are “grand challenges” for architecture, Sanchez said. But he also wanted this game to appeal to more than just architects. He designed it to be playable for people ages 10 and up, with the hope that it could provoke these ideas in the minds of future creators.

“I think the architects of tomorrow will grow up playing Minecraft or games like this, where the ideas of systems are more pressing,” Sanchez said. “The game can simulate and model notions of gentrification, social change and segregation. These are problems that architects have to deal with at all times — and it’s doing it in a creative way.”

Architecture and society

As a model for how architecture can affect society, Block’hood is fairly unique. Computational design has long been a part of the field; Sanchez said he was drawn to that side of the discipline from early on. He pursued a master’s degree that allowed him to simulate biological systems, using procedural generation to create complex, organic forms that would change shape under different conditions.

At the same time that he was studying architecture, Sanchez was learning programming. He used specialized software to explore the concepts that attracted his interest. But most of this software was designed for people with technical backgrounds — something he felt set a high barrier for entry to artists, tinkerers or others who would also enjoy exploring those concepts.

“If you use software designed for more people and people who aren’t highly technical, that software needs to teach you how to play,” Sanchez said. Create software that teaches people how to use it, and voila: Your program starts to look like a game.

It took a lot of experimentation to develop Block’hood. Along the way, Sanchez received help from Gentaro Makinoda, a graduate student at the USC School of Architecture, as well as Bryan Zhang and Alan Hung, graduates of USC Games. Sanchez collaborates frequently with the USC Games program more widely, where he gives lectures.

“I think Block’hood is a wonderful example of how many faculty at USC are involved in innovation in games,” said Tracy Fullerton, USC Games director. “It’s so great to have an architecture professor doing such deep work in games here.”

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Want to learn more about the USC Architecture Program? Check out their profile on StudyArchitecture.com!

Michigan Professor Catie Newell's Illuminating Installation 'Overnight'

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(via New York Times)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A photo exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art offers views of parts of Detroit neighborhoods before they’re fully illuminated by new street lights.

Titled “Overnight,” the exhibition by Detroit-based architect Catie Newell opens Saturday at the Ann Arbor museum and runs through Nov. 6. The assistant professor at the university’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning is fascinated with light and darkness.

“I’ve always been interested in darkness and the night,” she said in a statement. “Colors look different. Things have a different hierarchy, based on what’s lit and what’s not.”

The Public Lighting Authority was set up several years ago in Detroit to deal broken lights across the city. Tens of thousands of new LED lights have been installed and about 65,000 are expected to be up by the end of 2016. They’re twice as bright and use less electricity than older lights.

Fewer than half of the city’s 88,000 streetlights were believed to be working before the efforts began. Burned out bulbs, deteriorated infrastructure and the theft of copper wiring by people seeking to profit from sales of the metal for scrap left swaths of the city in the dark.

The exhibition at the Irving Stenn Jr. Family Gallery includes copper, aluminum and LEDs — a reference to the city’s streetlights. And as Detroit’s new streetlights come are installed, Newell said she looks for spots of light surrounded by darkness to document.

(via New York Times)

More on Michiganradio.org!

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Check out University of Michigan’s Taubman College on StudyArchitecture.com!

Tulane Architecture Students Give Local Bookstore New Life

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(via News from Tulane)

Tulane Architecture Students Give Local Bookstore New Life

When Vera Warren Williams enters her freshly renovated Community Book Center at 2523 Bayou Road in New Orleans, she can scarcely believe it is the same space that she has struggled to maintain since opening the Seventh Ward location in 2003.

With its expanded children’s area, performance spaces, a gallery for artwork, contemporary shelving and African-inspired furnishings, she envisions the center as a hub for school and day care center field trips.

“Our focus has always been on children and young people but the new makeover will allow us to reach even more young people and address literacy at an even younger age,” Williams said.

Williams is grateful to the Albert Jr. and Tina Small City Center, the community design center that is part of the Tulane University School of Architecture. As part of their final design-build project, 14 students did the bulk of the work, from client and community interviews, to design, fabrication and installation.

The process began last year when City Center, which provides high-quality design assistance for nonprofit groups that are traditionally underserved by the design profession, put out its annual request for proposals. Williams’ proposal was one of over 20 project proposals submitted.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement about this project,” said Emilie Taylor, design build manager and professor of practice. “Our goal was to create a space that reflects the center’s identity as an African American-centered educational home, while becoming more accessible for new families and visitors coming to this rapidly changing neighborhood.”

Williams said she feels fortunate to have been chosen as one of City Center’s projects.

“Until now it had been an uphill battle trying to make the space appealing and comfortable while staying on top of changes in the book industry. But today I feel we have a new focus, a redirection. For us, this makeover is a blessing.”

Community Book Center will hold a reopening celebration on Wednesday (April 27), from 4 to 6 p.m.

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Check out Tulane’s School of Architecture Profile Page on StudyArchitecture.com!

(via News from Tulane)