Architecture - Pacific Standard

Why Is China Stealing Cities, Towns, and Buildings?

May 16, 2013 • By Ryan O'Hanlon • Leave a Comment

Hallstatt, Austria, is in China. So is the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, Christ the Redeemer, and a soon-to-be-completed Manhattan. There are others, too, and it's all part of this weird (at least to us Westerners, or this one Westerner who is writing this) proliferation of what are being called "copy towns." They're villages and buildings and cities in China that are being constructed as replicas of non-Chinese places from around the world—and people are living in them. Hallstatt, China, has an artificial lake, and they imported doves to make it more Hallstatt-like. Much of the awareness ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: Architecture, Austria, China, Copy Towns, Halstatt, Phil Thompson, Sebastian Acker

Corridors of the Mind

November 5, 2012 • By Emily Badger • Leave a Comment

ARCHITECTS HAVE BEEN talking for years about “biophilic” design, “evidence based” design, design informed by the work of psychologists. But last May, at the profession’s annual convention, John Zeisel and fellow panelists were trying to explain neuroscience to a packed ballroom. The late-afternoon session pushed well past the end of the day; questions just kept coming. It was a scene, Zeisel marveled—all this interest in neuroscience—that would not have taken place just a few years earlier. Zeisel is a sociologist and architect who has researched the design of facilities ... Read More

More like this: Culture, November-December 2012
Tags: Architecture, Psychology

Is LEED the Gold Standard in Green?

June 13, 2011 • By Ben Ikenson • Leave a Comment

It is telling that the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., wants the design of a biblical theme park that will showcase a 500-foot-long replica of Noah’s Ark to qualify for certification by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, an industry standard for sustainable buildings. Mike Zovath, senior vice president of Answers in Genesis, the “apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending) ministry” that built the museum, is a climate change skeptic who told The Washington Post that he liked the idea of energy efficiency: “There is a pretty significant return on ... Read More

More like this: Environment
Tags: Architecture, Building, design, Energy Efficiency, Green Energy, LEED

Architect Frank Gehry Builds on Virtues of Play

April 30, 2011 • By Robert Benson • Leave a Comment

It’s an occupational hazard of architecture that students will burst from school into the profession filled with vim to stamp their own creative visions on the physical world only to find themselves 10 years later in a cubicle specifying screw sizes for doorjambs. And if someone does invite them to propose an imaginative design, the client’s objections to aesthetics, to costs, to pragmatism, can lead the architect to water it down until the essence is gone. Discouraging. About 47 percent of architects are unhappy in their profession, some of that due to this kind of letdown. But imagine ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
Tags: Architecture, Art, Building, Creativity, Psychology

ARCHIVE Says Home Is Where the Health Is

April 26, 2011 • By Jordan Lite • Leave a Comment

Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, Peter Williams took for granted the holes in the wood floors of his house — and the rats that crawled through them. But when his father contracted a bacterial infection that left him paralyzed, Williams, a budding architect, began to recognize the connection between shoddy housing and ill health. "The disease was directly attributed to the fact that the house was poorly constructed," says Williams, 35. "I saw firsthand how housing was both responsible for his illness and also incapable of meeting his care needs, given that he was quite immobile." If the ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Health, May-June 2011, Profile
Tags: Architecture, Bacteria, Disease, Housing, Public Health, Urban Planning, Well-Being

Building Cities With Sustainability in Mind

April 12, 2011 • By David Richardson • Leave a Comment

A leading ecologist says if we want to build sustainable cities, we need to start with our money on our minds, and our minds in the gutter. William Patrick Lucey, an aquatic ecologist and special adviser to the British Columbia government on water policy, says little has changed in the way we have built cities in the 2,000 years since the Roman empire. Aside from some notable improvements in sanitation, and perhaps civility, our infrastructure still follows the Roman model; centralized water works, all-weather roadways with engineered drainage, and municipal sewers to whisk away our ... Read More

More like this: Environment
Tags: Architecture, Biodiversity, Community, Development, Ecology, Redevelopment, Sustainability, Urban Planning

Elegant Solutions in Eco Dream Home

January 8, 2010 • By Ben Preston • Leave a Comment

Located on a thin slice of land between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, California's Montecito is home to a few movie star mansions. However, most of the homes in the area are a modest mixture of closely spaced coastal homes and more remote — and as it turned out, flammable — mountain homes, some not much more than improved-upon cabins. That used to be the case for Ken Radtkey and his wife, Susan Van Atta, who for 10 years lived in an un-insulated 800-square-foot cottage on a wooded mountain lot. Just before last year's Tea Fire burned a 2,000-acre swath of Montecito and ... Read More

More like this: Environment, Science & Environment
Tags: Architecture, Eco-Friendly Homes, Environment

Immersion In Nature Makes Us Nicer

August 17, 2009 • By Tom Jacobs • 3 Comments

Maintaining a connection to nature, either through the presence of indoor plants or artwork depicting the natural environment, has been shown to decrease stress levels and stimulate healing. Newly published research suggests it may also make us better people. A series of studies suggests immersion in nature "brings individuals closer to others, whereas human-made environments orient goals toward more selfish or self-interested ends," according to a paper posted on the Web site of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. This appears to be the first research to examine the impact of ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, Findings, Science & Environment
Tags: Architecture, Nature, Psychology, Urban Planning

How to B Good

October 20, 2008 • By Deanna Wylie Mayer • Leave a Comment

On a blustery October morning, I meet Jay Coen Gilbert at the Gryphon, a small café in Wayne, Pa., a town about 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia. He arrives in his traditional workday garb — shorts, Chuck Taylors and a T-shirt — and we sit at a table near the back. Over the whir of a relentless coffee grinder, Gilbert tells a story about his father, Sidney Philip Gilbert, an architect looking to land a contract to redesign some offices for a nondescript engineering firm in a suburban office park in Somewhereville, New Jersey. It was a tale of the 1980s, at the height of the Ronald ... Read More