02.Sep.2010 Stack Moves into the Box Office!
Stack is pleased to announce that we have moved into our new space at the Box Office!
Interior detail of Stack's new HQ
Looking at the front door from the skybridge
Weekly Fuel – Labor Day Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design Build Assistant
Hurricane Earl, as seen from space (NYT)
The name might sound like a boxer from the ’50s, but Hurricane Earl is churning its way up the Atlantic seaboard. Winds are gusting up to 165 mph in the Category 4 storm, which reminds us why architects and builders take the long view when doing their work. The effects of the Hurricane of 1938 –which inspired the modern tracking and naming system–can still be seen across New England, if you know where to look.
Casa Areia, Portugal
The Portuguese architecture firm Aires Mateus has built an incredible beachside retreat. While the sand floors might not be wholly practical, the buildings respond superbly to their site and purpose.
From the “Classes I Wish I’d Taken” Department: Undergrads Crash NASA Satellite Into the Ocean. Students at the University of Colorado got to decommission a satellite for credit. I say that any class that lets you interact directly with outer space is pretty cool.
Modern Birdhouses in London
And finally, some cosmopolitan birds get modern digs in London. The title of the project is “Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven,” after the common name for the tree species (which, incidentally, is increasingly being seen as invasive)
03.Aug.2010 Weekly Fuel – Efficiency Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design Build Assistant
The twisting concrete form connects the buildings elegantly
From Studio Bellecour, a green office building in Toulouse, France
Things being destroyed, very slowly. The sound effects are a bit much, but still, awesome.
Flickr user theclosedloop, via the Industrial Designers’ Society of America, reminds us that “there is no away”
Google Earth gets even more real
Google has added real-time weather monitoring to Google Earth. Representing environmental data is a complex design challenge–it often requires splitting up information between different views — but Google appears to be taking the comprehensive approach. This will be fun to follow in the next few years as it gets even more sophisticated. (Treehugger)
HVAC "Magic Box" for super-efficient spaces
At the Box Office, Stack installed efficient heat pumps and energy recovery ventilators, allowing for a tight envelope with excellent indoor air quality. These are two separate units. Equipment developed for the Passivhaus standard combines these two functions into one “Magic Box” that performs heating, cooling, and conditioned ventilation, all in one unit, saving energy and space.
20.Jul.2010 Weekly Fuel – Gyre Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design Build Assistant
Circulus at the disused Seeley G. Mudd Library at Pomona College
Art student Sam Starr built a small velodrome in a disused library at Pomona College. The project riffs off the idea of circulation — of bicycles, of books, of bloodflow in exercise — and simultaneously touches on the relationship between old and new media. Regardless, its a beautiful structure.
A boat!
Workers restoring the World Trade Center site found an 18th century ship buried in the muck. BLDG Blog explores what it means to find ships and wharves suspended beneath the foundations of our cities.
Plastiki lands in Australia
A few months ago, a group of sailors departed from San Francisco on a trip to cross the Pacific Ocean, with a stop at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to raise awareness about plastic and waste. Their vessel? A catamaran made entirely of recycled soda bottles. Last week, they arrived in Australia. A staggering feat of seamanship, resourcefulness, and commitment to the environment.
While good news from the Gulf appeared on the horizon this week with the successful capping of the Deepwater Horizon well, the above simulation underscores how serious the situation still is. The simulation follows the release of 8 million particles into the currents of the Gulf and Eastern Atlantic.
12.Jul.2010 Providence Journal features C2C and Stack
Environmental reporter Peter Lord has written an article on Containers to Clinics, which has recently sent a Stack-built clinic to Haiti. Lord provides an update from C2C, on the ground in Port-au-Prince.
Lord understands what Stack is all about, when he writes that we
focus on sustainable and innovative construction projects that lower costs by removing the inefficiencies that often arise between design work and construction.
Containers to Clinics was a gratifying project to apply that methodology, and we’ll continue to follow its progress closely!
30.Jun.2010 Weekly Fuel – Spatial Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design Build Assistant
Skydivers over Florida with the space shuttle in the background.
Spatially and artistically, the above photo of skydivers watching the space shuttle launch is extraordinary.
Realized in three dimensions.
Stack design intern (and Box Office welder) Geoff Hawley threw together a mockup of our “cube” logo out of recycled steel.
There’s more below the fold…
21.Jun.2010 Green Roof Installation
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design-Build Assistant
Stack recently installed green roofing on a project in Providence. As a certified green roof installer in MA and RI, we are always thrilled when our clients can realize the decreased heating and cooling loads, decreased stormwater runoff, and improved air and water quality that vegetated roofs provide.
11.Jun.2010 C2C Ships to Haiti!
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design Build Assistant
The staff of Containers to Clinics, the organization that engaged Stack to build a clinic out of two 20′ shipping containers, sent us these photos from Red Hook, Brooklyn, of the clinic getting loaded onto a cargo ship bound for Port-au-Prince.
The ISO containers fit in happily alongside their more utilitarian neighbors on the ship, a key part of Stack’s adaptibility-driven design.
The cranes that load the containers are controlled by highly precise GPS; the operator only varies the speed.
The ship pulling away from the dock
03.Jun.2010 Weekly Fuel – Bottomless Pit Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design Build Assistant
From Guatemala, news that a terrifyingly enormous sinkhole swallowed an entire factory, which was fortunately closed. The thing is reportedly 60 feet across and 300 feet deep — about as deep as the Statue of Liberty is tall.
The sinkholes — which occur regularly in Central America and Florida, among other places, are a result of the underlying Karst topography. Water (often from leaking infrastructure) dissolves the limestone bedrock, creating a cavity. Additional saturation — in this case provided by the destructive Tropical Storm Agatha — can cause the soil structure to collapse into the void. (Infrastructurist)
This guy got pretty lucky. And possibly didn’t even notice.
Some building scientists have done a study on the effectiveness of sticky rice as a mortar ingredient in traditional Chinese buildings. A pretty cool example of simple but secretly sophisticated technology, especially in earthquake-prone China. (Inhabitat)
And finally, because I can’t seem to leave this story alone, a visualization of what the BP oil spill would do to your region: If It Was My Home. Makes the magnitude of it a bit more real, notwithstanding their neglect of the subjunctive.
29.May.2010 Weekly Fuel – Architectural Prank Edition
by Jay Cox-Chapman, Design-Build Assistant
BLDG Blog points out this architectural prank/sculpture from artists Julien Berthier and Simon Boudvin: a fake door installed against a wall in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. It’s almost touching that the door is faithfully cleaned of graffiti by the city.
Stack continues to follow the Deepwater Horizon disaster closely. It’s events like this that redouble our commitment to green and high-performance buildings. The Infrastructurist lays out the technical causes of the disaster, while CBS news has a harrowing (and damning) survivor account.
Speaking of the Gulf, this stunning 1944 map, prepared by the US Army Corps of Engineers, shows the wildly variable course of the river over millennia. John McPhee meditated on the futility of controlling these changes in his 1990 book The Control of Nature.
Fast Company provides a slideshow of the “Year’s Sexiest Houses,” as judged by the AIA.
