There have been 26 Conferences on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations. The most recent conference, COP 26, was held in 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. With 200 countries in attendance, all eyes were set on achieving the goal of limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In this first 2022 issue of SKINS, we pause to look back on 2021 through our most-read stories of the year, which we’ve recycled here in case you missed them. The very first thing we see is the inaugural Vitruvian Honors & Awards (VH&A) program conducted virtually. It was a spectacular event!
Like many businesses and institutions, we at FTI have been wrestling with challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), what it means to us, how to realize these important aspirations in the Institute.
I recently started studying Sustainable Environmental Systems at Pratt Institute. One of my classes focused on climate change and its social effects across the world. I started to connect the dots backward and question the impact of our work in facades and fenestration on our local communities.
I remember taking a career test when I was in middle school. The outcome? I had a supposed interest in becoming a forest ranger. This seemed odd to me--in that I lived in a large metropolitan city and had never been in a forest.
Prior to the summer of 2020 many people and organizations in the architecture/design industry spent time calling attention to the lack of diversity. While we are aware it affects many industries, I can only write and speak with accuracy to what happens in the industry I work in.
This newsletter is different from what you usually expect from SKINS. We are talking about human connection, communication, language, and broadening our understanding of how we move through the world and evolve with the new information we receive. How do these aspects relate to the AECO Industry?
How can we be more equitable and inclusive and provide greater opportunities and create an ethos of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace? I offer a few thoughts for consideration.
In architecture, the façade is often the defining aspect of a building’s appearance, establishing the building’s public persona. From an engineering perspective, the façade is an assembly of building components with a critical impact on a range of performative metrics.
What environmental impact does one object have on the world? This is the question at the core of life cycle assessments (LCA); the embodied carbon lens. ...the current architectural practice rarely provides enough time to explore this type of examination.
Precast Concrete Enclosures is an elective course taught by Assistant Professor Pablo Moyano Fernandez at Washington University in St. Louis. The primary goal of the course is to enable students to envision and materialize full-scale building envelopes using precast concrete.
There is a growing awareness and interest in understanding the carbon footprint of material manufacturing, opening doors to new opportunities in facade design and manufacturing innovation. There are steps and decisions we can make today to help fight climate change.
The focus of this issue of SKINS is on embodied carbon -- the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole lifecycle of a building or infrastructure.
We at Zaha Hadid Architects Computation and Design group (ZHACODE) explore the relevance of this resource-effective, experience-rich design and construction paradigm to both large institutional projects with complex geometry and mass-customisation, repeated unit projects with assembly complexities.
When we say composites, the reference is Fiber-Reinforced-Polymer composites, FRP. The most common glues or the polymer matrix of FRP is polyester or epoxy-based resins with variations that boggle the mind.
This issue of SKINS will attempt to introduce you to composite materials in an accurate, useful and fairly in-depth way. But it’s only an introduction; it’s a start but by no means a rigorous exploration of the full potential of this remarkable material technology.
...the design and construction industries are notoriously resistant to change, putting them on a collision course with the many cities, states, and provinces that are moving ahead of national standards in keeping with declared intentions to dramatically cut their carbon emissions this decade.
This article explores the need for measurement and verification of building envelope and mechanical systems.
Ever-increasing performance requirements in the latest version of the energy codes are compelling project teams to consider the thermal performance of the building envelope more rigorously than ever before.
Thermal bridging through building facades have been overlooked or over-simplified by designers and building energy codes and standards in the past, which has led to higher space heating and cooling loads, occupant discomfort, and higher risk of condensation.