Design, Science and Technology

Snøhetta has unveiled plans to build the first official market building in Portland, Oregon, for over 70 years. The architecture and design studio – which has offices in New York and Oslo – will lead the design team for the community-funded James Beard Public Market, a new year-round food market for the American city.

It will be Portland's first permanent market since 1942, when the Portland Public Market closed down. Portland has a celebrated restaurant and street food scene, which is supported by a number of farmers'  markets, local breweries, and farms run by families and collectives in the surrounding area..

'Plyscrapers,' created out of material similar to Ikea's wooden furniture, may be the future of high-rise buildings.

In 2023, Swedish architecture firm C.F. Møller will transform the Stockholm skyline—and perhaps the very notion of skyscrapers. Last December, the designers won a competition organized by HSB Stockholm to honor the local real estate titan’s upcoming centenary with an ostentatious new high-rise. Møller submitted three designs, but the public latched onto one in particular: a thirty-four story tower made almost entirely out of wood, save for a spindly concrete core and a few steel poles on the ground floor. If constructed, the tower will be the largest mostly-wooden structure in the world. But rather than a one-off, it could be the clarion call needed to rouse the public around a new architectural trend.

By 2050, the world’s population is projected to approach nine billion. With more people will come more developed land—a lot more.

Urbanization, agriculture, energy, and mining put 20 percent of the world’s remaining forests, grasslands, and other natural ecosystems at risk of conversion by 2050.

With that kind of expansion, there are sure to be harms—namely clean water, clean air, and biodiversity. 

To mitigate some of those risks, scientists and geographers at the Nature Conservancy have taken a crucial step by mapping the potential impact that human growth will have on natural lands.

It’s the most comprehensive look to date at how major forms of development will take over fragile ecosystems, if left unchecked...

NBBJ proposes a set of "shadowless" towers for London's rapidly changing skyline.

Architects from the global firm NBBJ have designed what they call a “No Shadow Tower” for a site along the Thames River in London. The hypothetical scheme, developed in response to a call for ideas from the architecture think tank New London Architecture (NLA), offers one way to lessen the impact of tall buildings on the urban fabric surrounding them.

NBBJ’s proposed scheme has a similar goal to Jean Nouvel’s recently completed One Central Park complex in Sydney, which depends on a giant heliostat to illuminate a garden that would otherwise often be in shade. But NBBJ uses the geometry of the buildings themselves to mitigate their shadows. The two London towers subtly twist and flair, with floor plates that are slightly larger on the upper floors. Developed with parametric design, the configuration is intended to reflect sunlight from the south face of the taller tower into the plaza below. This arrangement would create what Coop describes as dynamic pools of light...

Moshe Safdie is famous for his iconic Montreal housing complex Habitat ’67, and he is still creating innovative large-scale urban projects around the world. The latest project his firm, Safdie Architects, has debuted is the design for development at Singapore's Changi Airport. The scheme aims to create a public gathering space with gardens, retail stores, hotel, restaurants, and entertainment that will lure travelers, airport employees, and local residents.

The glass dome will encompass a space of 134,000 square meters and houses a 130-foot-high waterfall. The dome's curved shape, recalling the tradition of glass conservatories, provides inherent structural strength to the glass and steel structure. Tree-like structural columns in a ring support the dome while a suspended roof covers the adjacent atrium space.

The space also showcases natural elements: walking trails travel through an indoor topography of trees, palms, and ferns called "Forest Valley". The different elements — dining, accommodations, and retail — are spread throughout the structure so as to give each of them impressive views of the natural features.