De: Plataforma Arquitectura

“Ir más allá de la Arquitectura” – la exploración de nuevos dominios y terrenos – a sido el lema de Volume desde sus inicios el 2005. Es hora del siguiente paso: ¿como llevar a la práctica este “ir más alla”? ¿Como materializar ese discurso, cuando parece ir contra todas las lógicas económicas e industriales? Volume presente la práctica NO SOLICITADA – poderosos generadores de ideas, planes de negocio sólidos y metodologías de diseño idealistas. Estas son las herramientas esenciales que permiten a los arquitectos reclamar su autonomía profesional.

Con este párrafo se introduce a una de las mejores ediciones de la revista Volume, que aborda el tema de la arquitectora no solicitada o auto encargo. El editor en jefe de la revista Volume, Arjen Oosterman, abre con su artículo “Una profesión aparte”, donde reflexiona sobre los cambios en el rol del arquitecto, partiendo con la post guerra y el movimiento moderno, quienes cambiaron al arquitecto artista por las utopías de la industrialización. Si bien durante la primera parte del siglo pasado esto permitió a los arquitectos abordar complejos temas de la sociedad de ese entonces desde la arquitectura, se volvió incapaz de responder a cambios en el cliente (estado-privado), el mercado, la producción, la construcción e incluso en el retorno económico, estancándose. Si bien siempre se necesitará quien diseñe dentro de una cierta estética, el rol del arquitecto va más allá que eso. Según palabras de Oosterman, que los arquitectos […] re definan su rol, pasando de ejecutores de encargos extremadamente competentes a emprendedores y productores. Y cierra con la siguiente frase: Arquitectura No Solicitada: ¿quién se atreve?

Continúe leyendo en Plataforma Arquitectura

Vía Plataforma Arquitectura, Archis.org

+ Ole Bouman
+ Unsolicited Studio

De la página web Recetas Urbanas:

Santiago Cirugeda es un arquitecto atípico que desde el inicio de su carrera ha puesto en práctica sus ideas directamente sobre el terreno. A lo largo de los últimos diez años, ha desarrollado un método de trabajo basado en la observación y análisis de la ciudad, al objeto de afrontar las carencias urbanísticas que en ella detecta. Su arquitectura, inmediata y portátil, es un despliegue de ingenio y creatividad que busca proponer nuevos modelos ajustados a presupuestos limitados. Entendiendo la arquitectura como una disciplina que debe velar por la mejora de las condiciones sociales, plantea un modelo de ciudad autogestionada donde los ciudadanos puedan decidir sobre su entorno inmediato.
Este libro presenta catorce situaciones concretas en las que Santiago Cirugeda explica cómo ha sido capaz de tergiversar el statu quo de la ciudad mercantilizada para proponer una ciudad más habitable. En él se detallan las estrategias que le han permitido reinventar tanto la vivienda, como los museos, la universidad, los centros sociales o el espacio público.

Via Recetas Urbanas

Descarga la versión en pdf (2 capítulos)
Editorial Tenov

Por Rut N. Tellado Domenech / rtellado@elnuevodia.com

En Puerto Rico existen más de 2,700 especies de plantas, de las cuales 243 son exclusivas de la Isla.

Sin embargo, la deforestación y el cambio climático mantienen en peligro de extinción a casi 70 especies de árboles, hierbas, helechos, orquídeas, bejucos y arbustos.

“En Puerto Rico estamos perdiendo especies día a día y esto nos debe preocupa a todos”, afirmó el biólogo Rafael Joglar, editor del nuevo libro Biodiversidad de Puerto Rico: Agustín Stahl, flora, hongos.

Este volumen es parte de la Serie de Historia Natural que edita el biólogo Rafael Joglar bajo el título de Biodiversidad de Puerto Rico. Tiene interés tanto para el público general como para los estudiosos. Este tomo inicia con un capítulo dedicado a Austín Stahl y su obra pionera en la biología puertorriqueña, y cuanta además con un capítulo sobre la flora de Puerto Rico, otro dedicado específicamente a las orquídeas y otro a los hongos. Los ensayos centrales de cada capítulo han sido escritos por distinguidos especialistas: Juan A. Rivero (sobre A. Stahl), Eugenio Santiago Valentín (sobre la flora de Puerto Rico), James D. Ackerman (sobre las orquídeas), y Sharon A. Cantrelly y D. Jean Lodge (sobre los hongos).

Éste será presentado hoy, a las 6:30 p.m., en el anfiteatro A-211 de la Facultad de Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras. La actividad contará con la participación de la escritora Mayra Montero.

Según Joglar, la obra “surge en un momento importante en el mundo, cuando se enfrentan problemas ambientales como el cambio climático y el calentamiento global”. El libro tomó nueve años de trabajo y recopila los escritos de 38 investigadores de ocho universidades de la Isla y de Estados Unidos. “Es la primera vez que en un volumen se discuten varios de estos temas a profundidad y que se reúne un grupo tan grande de científicos para tratar el tema” de la diversidad biológica de la Isla, resaltó.

Destacó que fue “escrito por científicos, pero no para científicos, sino para el pueblo”. Se recurrió a un lenguaje sencillo y a más de 300 imágenes a color para atraer a lectores de todas las edades. “Desde la portada hasta la última página se habla de la biodiversidad” y las amenazas que enfrenta, indicó el biólogo. “En la misma portada está la flor del matabuey, especie de planta que está en peligro de extinción”.

Este tomo dedica el primero de sus cuatro capítulos al médico Agustín Stahl, quien es considerado el primer científico local en documentar la diversidad de la flora boricua. Otros dos capítulos son sobre las plantas y las orquídeas.

El reino vegetal no es el único que ocupa las 303 páginas del libro, pues el último capítulo trata de los hongos, que forman su propio reino. Se estima que en la Isla hay 12,000 especies de hongos, de las que casi un 20% son nuevas.

Biodiversidad de Puerto Rico es el segundo volumen de la serie de Historia Natural. El primero trató de los vertebrados y los ecosistemas.

Joglar adelantó que en estos momentos se encuentra trabajando en el tercer tomo de la serie, que tocará el tema de los animales invertebrados.

El libro que se presentará hoy contó en su elaboración con el apoyo de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, el Fideicomiso de Conservación y el Proyecto Coquí, organización conservacionista liderada por Joglar. Estará a la venta, por $79.95, en librerías y a través del Fideicomiso y el Proyecto Coquí. Se ofrecerá un descuento a las personas que acudan a la actividad de esta noche, informó el biólogo.

Vía El Nuevo Día

From MoCo Loco:

We often get books by mail at MoCo Loco, but today we got one via email, the “First Paperless Architecture Book EVER: Piel”. Piel.Skin is the culmination of two years of architectural research into dynamic facades, ventilated, high-tech or traditional composites with new features. “This book shows that currently new skins not only act as an isolating element, besides interact with the environment, optimizing energy exchange with the outside. From Germany to Australia or Korea to Colombia, there are many examples that readers can visit with this publication.”. Most of the architecture is public or commercial but there are three notable residential projects including Blank Studio’s Xeros Residence in Phoenix (above). Aimed at architecture students, the book is a virtual tour for google-earth travelers; “By means of clicking on the coordinates of each project begins a journey where you can jump directly to each site and visualize the project within its environment.”. All of the texts are in English and Spanish.

+ skinarchitecture.com

Via MoCo Loco

“In late summer 2007, reports of ice melting were coming at a frenetic pace. Experts were ‘stunned’ when an area of Arctic sea ice almost twice the size of Britain disappeared in a single week,” writes Lester R. Brown in his new book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company).

“Nearby, the Greenland ice sheet was melting so fast that huge chunks of ice weighing several billion tons were breaking off and sliding into the sea, triggering minor earthquakes,” notes Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.

These recent developments are alarming scientists. If we cannot stop this melting of the Greenland ice sheet, sea level will eventually rise 23 feet, inundating many of the world’s coastal cities and the rice-growing river deltas of Asia. It will force several hundred million people from their homes, generating an unimaginable flood of rising-sea refugees.

“We need not go beyond ice melting to see that civilization is in trouble. Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. It is time for Plan B,” Brown says in Plan B 3.0, which was produced with major funding from the Farview, Lannan, Summit, and Wallace Genetic foundations, the U.N. Population Fund, Fred and Alice Stanback, and Andrew Stevenson.

“Plan B 3.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are fast undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems,” says Brown. “Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.”

Continuing rapid population growth is weakening governments in scores of countries. The annual addition of 70 million people to world population is concentrated in countries where water tables are falling and wells are going dry, forests are shrinking, soils are eroding, and grasslands are turning into desert. As this backlog of unresolved problems grows, stresses mount and weaker governments begin to break down.

The defining characteristic of a failing state is the inability of a government to provide security for its people. Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and Pakistan are among the better known examples. Each year the number of failing states increases. “Failing states,” notes Brown, “are an early sign of a failing civilization.”

“Even as the accumulating backlog of unresolved problems is leading to a breakdown of governments in weaker states, new stresses are emerging. Among these are rising oil prices as the world approaches peak oil, rising food prices as an ever larger share of the U.S. grain harvest is converted into fuel for cars, and the spreading fallout from climate change.”

“At the heart of the climate-stabilizing initiative cited above is a detailed plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020 in order to hold the future temperature rise to a minimum. This initiative has three major components—raising energy efficiency, developing renewable sources of energy, and expanding the earth’s tree cover. Reaching these goals,” says Brown, “will mean the world can phase out all coal-fired power plants.”

In setting the carbon reduction goals for Plan B, we did not ask “What do politicians think is politically feasible?” but rather “What do we think is needed to prevent irreversible climate change?” This is not Plan A: business-as-usual. This is Plan B: an all-out response at wartime speed proportionate to the magnitude of the threats facing civilization.

“We are in a race between tipping points in natural and political systems,” says Brown. “Which will come first? Can we mobilize the political will to phase out coal-fired power plants before the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible? Can we halt deforestation in the Amazon basin before it so weakens the forest that it becomes vulnerable to fire and is destroyed? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the Himalayan glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia?”

Although efforts have been made in recent decades to raise the efficiency of energy use, the potential is still largely untapped. For example, one easy and profitable way to cut carbon emissions worldwide is simply to replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs that use only a fourth as much electricity. Turning to more efficient lighting can reduce world electricity use by 12 percent—enough to close 705 of the world’s 2,370 coal-fired power plants.

In the United States, buildings—commercial and residential—account for close to 40 percent of carbon emissions. Retrofitting an existing building typically can cut energy use by 20–50 percent. The next step, shifting to carbon-free electricity to heat, cool, and light the building completes the transformation to a zero-carbon emissions building.

We can also reduce carbon emissions by moving down the food chain. The energy used to provide the typical American diet and that used for personal transportation are roughly equal. A plant-based diet requires about one fourth as much energy as a diet rich in red meat. The reduction in carbon emissions in shifting from a red meat–rich diet to a plant-based diet is about the same as that in shifting from a Chevrolet Suburban SUV to a Toyota Prius hybrid car.

In the Plan B energy economy, wind is the centerpiece. It is abundant, low cost, and widely distributed; it scales easily and can be developed quickly. The goal is to develop at wartime speed 3 million megawatts of wind-generating capacity by 2020, enough to meet 40 percent of the world’s electricity needs. This would require 1.5 million wind turbines of 2 megawatts each. These turbines could be produced on assembly lines by reopening closed automobile plants, much as bombers were assembled in auto plants during World War II.

In the development of renewable energy resources, Brown notes, we are seeing the emergence of some big-time thinking—thinking that recognizes the urgency of moving away from fossil fuels. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas, where the state government is coordinating an effort to build 23,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity (the equivalent of 23 coal-fired power plants). This will supply enough electricity to satisfy the residential needs of over 11 million Texans—half the state’s population. Oil wells go dry and coal seams run out, but the earth’s wind resources cannot be depleted.

Solar technologies also provide exciting opportunities for getting us off the carbon treadmill. Sales of solar-electric panels are doubling every two years. Rooftop solar water heaters are spreading fast in Europe and China. In China, some 40 million homes now get their hot water from rooftop solar heaters. The plan is to nearly triple this to 110 million homes by 2020, supplying hot water to 380 million Chinese.

Large-scale solar thermal power plants are under construction or planned in California, Florida, Spain, and Algeria. Algeria, a leading world oil exporter, is planning to develop 6,000 megawatts of solar-thermal electric-generating capacity, which it will feed into the European grid via an undersea cable. The electricity generated from this single project is enough to supply the residential needs of a country the size of Switzerland.

Investment in geothermal energy for both heating and power generation is also growing fast, notes Brown. Iceland now heats nearly 90 percent of its homes with geothermal energy, virtually eliminating the use of coal for home heating. The Philippines gets 25 percent of its electricity from geothermal power plants. The United States has 61 geothermal projects under way in the geothermally rich western states.

The combination of gas-electric hybrid cars and advanced-design wind turbines has set the stage for the evolution of an entirely new automotive fuel economy. If the battery storage of the typical hybrid car is doubled and a plug-in capacity is added so that batteries can be recharged at night, then we could do our short-distance driving—commuting to work, grocery shopping, and so on—almost entirely with cheap, wind-generated electricity.

This would permit us to run our cars largely on renewable electricity—and at the gasoline-equivalent cost of less than $1 per gallon. Several major automakers are coming to market with plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

With business as usual (Plan A), the environmental trends that are undermining our future will continue. More and more states will fail until civilization itself begins to unravel. “Time is our scarcest resource. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize,” says Brown. “These deadlines are set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.”

The key to restructuring the world energy economy is to get the market to tell the environmental truth by incorporating into prices the indirect costs of burning fossil fuels, such as climate disruption and air pollution. To do this, we propose adopting a carbon tax that will reflect these indirect costs and offsetting it by lowering income taxes. We propose a worldwide carbon tax to be phased in at $20 per ton each year between 2008 and 2020, stabilizing at $240 per ton. This initiative, which would be offset at every step with a reduction in income taxes, would simultaneously discourage fossil fuel use and encourage investment in renewable sources of energy.

“Saving civilization is not a spectator sport,” says Brown. “We have reached a point in the deteriorating relationship between us and the earth’s natural systems where we all have to become political activists. Every day counts. We all have a stake in civilization’s survival.”

“We can all make lifestyle changes, but unless we restructure the economy and do it quickly we will almost certainly fail. We need to persuade our elected representatives and national leaders to support the environmental tax restructuring and other changes outlined in Plan B. Beyond this, each of us can pick an issue that is important to us at the local level, such as phasing out coal-fired power plants, shifting to more-efficient light bulbs, or developing a comprehensive local recycling program, and get to work on it.”

We all need to educate ourselves on environmental issues. For its part, the Earth Policy Institute is making Plan B 3.0 available for downloading free of charge from its Web site.

“It is decision time,” says Brown. “Like earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble, we have to make a choice. We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that mobilizes to save civilization. Our generation will make the decision, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come.”

Contact for additional information:
Lester R. Brown, Author & President (202) 496.9290 x 11
Janet Larsen, Director of Research (202) 496.9290 x 14
Media Contact: Reah Janise Kauffman (202) 496.9290 x 12

Via Earth Policy Institute, available through Amazon

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Table of Contents (available in pdf)

Complete Data Sets (available in Microsoft Excel)

Plan B 3.0 Team (People who have purchased 5 or more copies.)

Upcoming Lectures

Transcripts and Audio

International Publishers

Podcast Q&A with Lester Brown by Bryan Walsh of Time magazine. January 7, 2008.

Podcast Interview with Lester Brown by Ira Flatow of Science Friday. January 11, 2008.

Nuevo libro editado por Emilio Chuvieco, Catedrático de Análisis Geográfico Regional de la Universidad de Alcalá.

About this book:

Global Change is increasingly considered a critical topic in environmental research. Remote sensing methods provide a relevant tool to monitor global variables, since they offer a systematic coverage of the Earth Surface, at different spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions. The data provided by Earth Observation Satellites are being operationally used for monitoring atmospheric conditions, ice sheets and glaciar movements, crop dynamism and land use changes, deforestation and desertification processes, as well as water conditions. The book includes an analysis of the leading missions in global Earth observation, and then reviews the main fields in which remote sensing methods are providing vital data for global change studies.

Audience:

Academic libraries, practitioners, professionals, scientists, researchers, lecturers, tutors, graduates, undergraduates

Written for:

This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of remote sensing, geographical information, meteorology, geology and environmental sciences. Also scientists and graduate up to post-graduate level students in environmental science will find valuable information in this book.

Via Directions Media Newsletter, Springer. Available through Amazon.