The future is wooden
July 21st, 2009 | by awinston |It seems that the days of concrete high-rises and brick houses may be numbered - especially in disaster prone urban environments – as experiments show that wood could be the most economical (and eco friendly) earthquake resistant building material.
Elsewhere on the world wide web, the New York Time’s Nicolai Ouroussoff appears to have fallen for Toyo Ito, Australian Nakheel employees in hot water and Axis Mundi propose a hideous replacement for Jean Nouvel’s MOMA tower.
Alternative for 53 West 53rd Street / Axis Mundi
Local practice with too much time on their hands proposes ugly alternative to a controversial Jean Nouvel tower in New York. See it at Arch Daily
Nakheel employees charged with fraud
“Two Australian professionals who worked for Dubai developer Nakheel have been formally charged with fraud, after being incarcerated for six months.” More at Architecture and Design
Earthquake-Proof Wood House Survives 7.5 Magnitude Quake
A team of researchers from five universities are currently working on ways to make wood earthquake-proof. If they succeed, the world may soon see cheap, sustainable wooden homes that can hold up even when earthquakes shake them to their cores. More at Inhabitat
Remembering Shulman
Three of Metropolis’s editors share their memories of the man and his work. More at Metropolis Magazine
Comment: LA’s Homeless Design – Michael Webb goes looking for a guardian of architecture in the City of Angels
The Architect’s Newspaper bemoans the decision to axe architectural curator Brooke Hodge, whose Skin and Bones exhibition was shown at Somerset House this year, from the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. More at the Architect’s Newspaper
Inside His Exteriors
Nicolai Ouroussoff loves Toyo Ito… More at the New York Times
Stadium Where Worlds Collide, Humanely
…and one article simply wasn’t enough to express it. Also at the New York Times
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2 Responses to “The future is wooden”
By Michael on Jul 22, 2009 | Reply
Can all you highly educated professionals please start putting references on the information you post? There are statements in this article about wood as a construction material for earthquakes and it says “experiments show” this to be true. I believe this to be true, but what experiments? Information like this is useless unless we can find their sources. It’s exhausting and irritating reading pages and pages of information which can only be considered baseless, without proper referencing. We might as well just read the funny pages.
By awinston on Jul 22, 2009 | Reply
The news round up is all about linking to other interesting stories on the web. If you click on the link to the Inhabitat story provided, you’ll see video footage of one of the experiments and a more detailed story.