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• Architecture
• Interior Design
• Process
• Sustainability
• Technology

• Avinash Rajagopal

WHERE AI FITS IN:

Fundamental to its design, Canoa rejects the notion that AI will eliminate designers, and looks to build intelligence as a tool. With that aim in mind, the team created Canvas AI, a “co-pilot” for interior designers that leverages computer vision and machine learning to aid in the discovery of new and novel products. As more product data is added to the platform in the form of mood boards, layouts, and product schedules, billions of product-to-product connections are generated that help the model learn and provide contextual recommendations, replacing a workflow that is currently manual, error-prone, and time-consuming.

canoa.supply

MODU is trying to project hope through projects such as a nature conservatory in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that is a net-zero-energy building that allows for semi-exterior rooms for connections to nature, or a mixed-use office and retail development in Houston with self-cooling walls. “In terms of the environment, there’s the feeling of helplessness,” says Rotem. “It can feel crippling. We are also teachers, and I feel that desperation.” Rotem is on the faculty at Columbia University and is also an associate professor of practice at Ohio State University, where Hoang is head of architecture. “The book proposes optimism that as a community you can design microclimates, with mini projects, and you can affect your 15-minute commute, and it is meaningful.” 

One way that Hoang and Rotem are trying to convey this optimism is with their evocative drawings, which transmute data to evoke emotion. “When you have an emotional engagement, you have a reaction,” says Rotem. “That’s the problem with the mega issue of climate change. We’ve been warned for 50 years by scientists who are screaming at us, and we’re not able to understand the abstraction of 1.5 degrees.” Traditional architecture drawings depicting building structures or systems are limiting, adds Hoang. 

In one such data project, Horizontal City, MODU’s team surveyed 12 neighborhoods across the five boroughs. The architects were inspired by people’s instinctual movements throughout the city—that we cross to the sunny side of the street on a cold winter day or stay in the shadows of tall buildings on a hot one. “How do we draw the experience of the microclimates of the city?” asks Hoang. On Fridays the staff would scout their chosen neighborhoods and then reconvene in Chinatown for dim sum to compare notes. 

The resulting maps—of a chunk of blocks in Brooklyn Heights, the Financial District, or Eastchester Gardens in the Bronx, for example—are devoid of buildings’ exterior walls and instead depict the shadows they cast, as well as shade from trees, bus stops, outdoor dining sheds, and ephemeral happenings, such as protests. Parks and open streets were also included. After their analysis, the inequalities became clear: More affluent areas had more shade, creating more physical comfort and better air quality; lower-income neighborhoods can have surface temperatures as much as 30 degrees hotter than higher-income neighborhoods. “Shade should be accessible to everyone as a public right and it often is not,” says Hoang. 

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Another of MODU’s drawings appears to be a kind of aerial map in which tiny pixels aggregate in both dense and sparse patches. In fact the pixels represent shade cast by recycled plastic balls suspended on the fabric mesh roof of an aluminum pavilion outside the Design Museum Holon, near Tel Aviv. The “Cloud Seeding” pavilion transformed an uninhabitably hot public plaza into a site for public programming, rest, and relaxation. Mediterranean breezes kept the balls in perpetual motion, creating shade below; the open-air structure allowed daylight and air to enter freely. “What is important to us is that we are interdisciplinary but we also work within our discipline. Certainly we are always for planting more trees, but buildings need to do more. It’s buildings that contribute 40 percent of the carbon emissions in the world,” says Hoang. 

One way that buildings can mediate their impact on the environment is by addressing microclimates, say Rotem and Hoang. “Microclimates are important at the building scale. Can you actually extend the seasons in spring and fall, expand the use, create more tolerance for breeze, for passive movements?” asks Rotem. “It also goes to psychology. Can you change habits, but in a curated way?” For Mini Tower One in Brooklyn, the architects experimented with microclimates outdoors, at the domestic scale indoors, and in between spaces. 

An addition on the rear of a multifamily residential building allowed Hoang and Rotem to play with what they call “outdoor interiors.” The terraces and other transitional spaces could be fully enclosed in extreme heat or cold conditions but are meant to extend indoor-outdoor living through more of the year with radiant outdoor heating, drainage, and a roof fan, among other strategies. This interpretation of a passive house—an airtight envelope that, seemingly in contradiction, includes large openings—also creates a buffer zone where air is cooled or heated before entering the interior, using less energy. In Field Guide, Hoang and Rotem map the lots in Queens and Brooklyn that have additional buildable areas in rear yards with vertical opportunity: Imagine a city of Mini Towers. 

The architects embedded their thinking about microclimates in the facade at Promenade, a spec office building in Houston. Along with recessed walls and vertical fins, MODU conceived of corrugated concrete tilt-up walls, testing small slabs in a kitchen oven. The resulting textured surface disperses heat more quickly, creating cooler places where the architects could include pocket gardens and benches, even though Houston reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit last summer. 

Some of these strategies were further developed during Rotem and Hoang’s time as Rome Prize recipients in 2017; others were refined through conversations they had in 2018— during two record-breaking heat waves—with some of Japan’s most celebrated architects, such as Go Hasegawa and Fumihiko Maki, supported by a U.S.-Japan Creative Artists fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Field Guide is loosely structured by these geographical borders. But the point, say the architects, is that “you can start to migrate solutions from one place to another.” 

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• Research

• Climate Adaptation
• Lauren Raskin
• MODU
• Outdoor and Public Space
• Seth Caplan

But Ghost Rivers isn’t just a monument to the past: It’s also a provocation for the future. As aging sewer systems fail, cities are exploring how green infrastructure can become a more sustainable alternative. This includes decades-long projects to bring buried streams back into the open. The concept is known as daylighting, and Ghost Rivers does this metaphorically. It surfaces Sumwalt Run in the public’s mind and imagination and, crucially, brings it into the present-day context of climate change. “That really is the first step toward thinking about what the landscape looks like in 100 years and what the next evolution of these waterways is,” Willen says. “It’s only a recent phenomenon where we humans see ourselves as separate from nature.” 

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• History
• Landscape Architecture
• Sustainability

• Art and Craft
• Diana Budds
• Water

MICROGRIDS

Microgrids are a game changer, offering homeowners the autonomy to produce and store renewable energy, liberating them from conventional grids and fossil fuels. Rooftop solar panels aren’t the only way to generate clean energy that powers entire lifestyles while reducing carbon footprints—some parts of the United States now offer community solar projects, and in a few years we might even see windows that can turn sunshine into electricity. This self-sufficiency could redefine how we perceive energy consumption in our homes, fostering resilience and sustainability.

BIOTECH

Biotech, another frontier in design, promises transformative materials with unparalleled sustainability benefits. Picture walls constructed from mycelium, a fast-growing fungus with exceptional carbon absorption and insulation properties. Furniture crafted from bioplastics derived from agricultural waste offers durability without environmental harm. These innovations have the potential to dramatically diminish the environmental impact of interior design materials.

SMART HOME TECHNOLOGIES

Smart Home Technolohies, such as those offered by industry leaders like Lutron and Savant, mark the dawn of intelligent spaces—and this intelligence can be used for purposes beyond convenience. Smart homes can optimize lighting, climate control, audio, and shades, enhancing energy efficiency and even offering backup during grid failures. Designers can seamlessly incorporate these fixtures within their platforms, creating a harmonious fusion of sustainability and cutting-edge technology.

However, while these technologies hold immense promise, they do come with challenges. Microgrid installations, for instance, require significant up-front investment (although tax incentives and subsidies can help with that in some locations). Biomaterials are still evolving, and questions regarding their long-term durability and safety haven’t been resolved. Smart home technologies raise valid data privacy and security concerns, necessitating robust safeguards for user trust.

As designers committed to sustainability, it’s our duty to embrace these innovations while acknowledging their complexities. Engaging in collaborative research, partnering with scientists, engineers, and manufacturers, and advocating for supportive policies are crucial steps. By doing so, we can pave the way for homes that not only captivate aesthetically but also contribute to a healthier planet for generations ahead.

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Laurence Carr is the founder and CEO of Laurence Carr Inc., a regenerative, multifaceted interior design firm, and the founder of Studio Laurence, a sustainable luxury home goods brand that specializes in zero-waste product design.

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• Bio-based Materials
• Home Technologies
• Laurence Carr
• regenerative design
• Solar

02 KALEIDOSCOPE by Payette 

Kaleidoscope assesses the embodied carbon emissions of different types of facade assemblies from various perspectives. Architects can evaluate their facade concepts based on environmental impact categories, life span, and biogenic carbon, and receive carbon emissions data per square foot, offering a straightforward metric for facade areas. Kaleidoscope is designed to complement, not substitute, whole-building life cycle assessments (LCA) in early design stages. It serves as a reference for the approximate magnitude of early LCA decisions, allowing designers to quickly compare the embodied carbon impacts of different standard building systems and design options. 

payette.com/kaleidoscope 

03 LARK  by ZGF and the University of Washington Applied Research Consortium (ARC) 

Lark is open-source software designed to assist designers in simulating nonvisual light, which significantly influences the human circadian system. Light exposure, even at wavelengths we cannot see, has a profound impact on sleep-wake cycles, alertness, productivity, and overall health and well-being. Every light source and its interaction with indoor materials can either support or disrupt this rhythm, so being able to quantify and visualize these interactions can help designers enhance well-being. Lark v3.0 allows customization of spectral power distributions for the sky, sun, electric lights, glazing, and finishing materials. 

zgf.com 

04 VARID by Foster + Partners and the University of London 

VARID (Virtual and Augmented Reality for Inclusive Design) is a design toolset employing VR/AR technologies to enhance design teams’ awareness of users with visual impairments. Through dynamic real-time image processing, VARID replicates various vision loss symptoms, including blurring, warping, or peripheral vision loss. This game-engine plug-in, compatible with a variety of VR/AR headsets, is data-driven and can generate personalized simulations based on specific clinical test results. 

fosterandpartners.com 

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• Workplace

• Calculators
• Digital Twins
• Foster + Partners
• payette
• Software
• Technology
• Thornton Tomasetti
• ZGF Architects

Environmental scientists and ecologists have been using machine learning much longer than landscape architects. But landscape designers can complement this work by contributing AI visualization tools to illustrate projects for broad public audiences and policy forms, says Phil Fernberg, director of digital innovation at OJB. “We are expertise siloed,” he says. “We need to partner with these folks and build something together that would have never otherwise been built.” 

“Unlike other tools that are really complex to operate, like BIM software, AI is not hard for the layperson to operate,” says landscape architecture professor Aidan Ackerman. “There is no skill development needed.” Absent this baseline layer of technical skill, and eventually the strata of skills above it, design could become a purely curatorial process, selecting options presented by AI, de-skilling the workforce. Pictured: Midjourney renderings by Jeff Cutler. 

And while AI might be able to understand the relationship between a photovoltaic panel and a power grid, unpacking how a tree (responsible for shade, habitats, the nutrient cycle, phytoremediation, evapotranspiration, and more) works within a landscape is beyond its grasp. 

As one of the smallest, most misunderstood design professions, stuck in the middle of the Venn diagram between much larger and more visible fields, landscape architecture is often isolated (or shielded) from disruptive technological change. 

Landscape architects sit in the midst of ecology, gardening, architecture, botany, planning, and environmental science. They’re a woolly and heterogeneous bunch that might be hyper-focused on planting patterns in neighborhood parks, the biodiversity of thousands of acres, or the stormwater capacity of concrete infrastructure. This diffusion makes them difficult for any single technological change to consume. As such, there have been very few digital tools created specifically for landscape architects. 

Instead, landscape architects have been making their own tools and adapting existing ones to their needs. Anya Domlesky is the director of research at SWA Group and runs the XL Lab, where SWA landscape designer Shimin Cao and University of Southern California lecturer Xun Liu trained algorithms on Google Street View images of Houston, so that it can analyze and score streetscapes for walkability, bikeability, tree cover, greenscapes, and more. The eventual goal is for AI to generate streetscape designs. With SWA associate Liqiu Xu, XL Lab is also using ChatGPT to devise planting pairings, generate site analysis and precedent studies, and create profiles for potential visitors to a real park site. Jeff Cutler, founder of Vancouver landscape architecture firm space2place design, has been using Autodesk Forma, which uses AI to define microclimates on project sites. 

Given the complexity and dynamic nature of living matter, Zihao Zhang, landscape architecture professor at City College of New York, advocates for using AI to develop landscape design not as a discrete product but as a process, a “subscription basis” for “continuous engagement with the land,” he says. He’s interested in using AI to “co-produce” outcomes, he explains, and he feels that handing agency over to AI will allow it to solve problems in ways humans never considered. This is, of course, diametrically opposed to how AI is being applied in landscape architecture today. The adoption of image generation platforms like Midjourney and DALL-E threatens a “proliferation of the picturesque” that reinforces a vision of landscape architecture as a predominantly aesthetic practice, Zhang says. 

And while these meta-collage images, with their surreal technical facility and stilted recapitulation of popular culture, are nowhere close to explaining themselves as something that could be built or installed, academics say we may be only a few years from being able to plug in material, dimensional, and programmatic constraints in AI and get something back we can actually make. Any delay beyond that will be the likely incursion of landscape architecture’s awkward marriage to digital tools. Likewise, what’s keeping us from Design Skynet is similarly rooted in the biotic world. To create buildable plans, AI will need plan and section drawings to train on, which, as often-proprietary information, exist in hard-copy paper plans, locked up in file cabinets. They’ll have to be hauled out, scanned, and uploaded. “That’s not low-hanging fruit,” says Domlesky. 

As the director of digital innovation at OJB, Phil Fernberg is using whole-language text models to develop planting plans, and using parametric design engines to organize them in space. From there, the goal is to connect this design to the material supply chain and vendors. When this process is applied to residential projects, Fernberg foresees a broad consumer push in what is already the largest single segment of the landscape design industry. “How do we connect a bunch of readily available data sets to advance design and help it reach more people than it ever could?” he says. “Because there’s way more people that own homes and landscapes than there are landscape architects to help them, or that they can afford.” 

Automated landscape design sounds like an unimpeachable deal for small clients. For labor, there’s the eternal question of who collects the surplus that results from these new efficiencies. Is cheaper design, even if it’s available to a wider audience, a good thing? 

The show hoped to bypass the gloom and doom that often accompanies visions of Earth’s future. Dr. Johnson said in a recent panel discussion at Pioneer Works: “If we can’t imagine possible climate futures, we can’t create them. This is design’s time to shine.” The following exhibitions, initiatives, and books do just that.

Transform! Designing the Future of Energy  

A current Vitra Design Museum exhibition curated by Jochen Eisenbrand, Transform! Designing the Future of Energy explores how design can assist us in our transition to renewable energy sources while reducing our energy consumption. The show highlights innovative products, graphic and speculative design, as well as architectural prototypes, scale models, and films made especially for the exhibition, from Bell Labs’ first photovoltaic cell to advances in turbine technology. 

Spanning four thematic galleries, the themes of the show include the individual’s role within the political tapestry of energy, the devices that shape our interactions with power, and design solutions for sustainable buildings and transportation. One gallery, titled “Future Energyscapes,” presents visionary designs from Carlo Ratti’s Hot Heart concept for Helsinki to Honglin Li and XTU Architects’ X Land proposal for turning offshore oil platforms into holiday resorts or ocean plastic waste incineration plants. Overall, the exhibition aims to challenge perceptions of what a just energy transition might look like, inviting visitors to ponder solar artist Marjan van Aubel’s query, “Why can’t energy be beautiful too?“ 

Climate Inheritance

Research practice DESIGN EARTH’s recent book Climate Inheritance (Actar, 2023) opens with a quote from Superstudio: “To salvage in order to destroy; to destroy in order to save yourself—in times of apocalypse, extremes meet, and opposites equalize.” Alongside a photomontage of a flooded Florence Duomo, DESIGN EARTH founders Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy familiarize the reader with Superstudio’s 1972 “Salvages of Italian Historic Centers,” in which the Italian radical design collective proposed a “strategic sabotage” of six iconic Italian cities, mining disaster and destruction to access other architectural possibilities. It is within this context that Ghosn and Jazairy’s book analyzes various climate risks—from rising sea levels to community displacement—by visualizing how each would affect World Heritage Sites. 

Climate Inheritance is filled with evocative collages that illustrate how “paper architecture can draw out the speculative opportunities of heritage as an architectural figure of recursive thinking.” The volume also features thought-provoking essays by scholars David Gissen, Lucia Allais, Colin Sterling, and Rodney Harrison. By considering heritage sites as narratives of collective memory, Ghosn proposes, “A World Heritage site could, for the time of a story, stand for the world, which itself stands for all that is being destroyed by the changes in the climate.”