Head of School of Built Environment at UNSW Sydney and Prof of Architecture. Writer, researcher & teacher, tall buildings, housing, embodied carbon, cities
Oct 24, 2024 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
A remarkable social housing project by Harquitectes in Palma
A dilapidated school stood on the site. Materials from the school were collected and used with concrete to create pre-cast blocks that form the load bearing walls
The materials are strikingly beautiful
Concrete with recycled materials embedded within. Timber floors
Jun 23, 2024 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
All this talk of nuclear power reminds me of this wonderful table of cost overruns by project type
Nuclear power mean cost overrun is 120%
Solar and wind is 1% and 13% respectively
One of the reasons for this is solar and wind are made of repeated infrastructure - ie thousands of solar panels, so there’s efficiency in repetition
Nuclear reactors tend to be complex and unique, hence cost overruns
Iranian architect Farshad Mehdizadeh is designing some of the most interesting mid-housing anywhere in the world right now
A thread 🧵
Tabriz residential apartments
This is remarkably under construction. Tehran Eye Vertical Street
(Not really housing, but you get an idea of the architectural ambition!)
Jan 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
My current favourite detail
Steel frame clad in timber fire protection at Shigeru Ban’s GC Osaka Building, built in 2000
You read that correct
How was this possible?
Japanese code didn’t allow a timber frame, so it had to be steel
But codes did allow performance based fire protection (rather than a prescriptive code). This allowed Ban to choose timber as fire protection to minimise costs & create an inviting interior