Topics

Learning from Indigenous Technologies

Societies have learned to live in harmony with their geographical and their natural surroundings and developed technologies to build their houses and cities with local resources and in accordance to their beliefs and with their possibilities, through thousands of years.

To learn from these indigenous technologies and to recontextualize them today could be the wisest method to achieve a better performance of our buildings in harmony with nature and in respect for the cultures.

Ecological Upgrading: Renaturising of Waterways

Rivers and streams are Biotopes for animals, and recreational areas for people and they influence the climate. In many areas and countries, riverbeds have been straightened, barriers have been built on them, and have been covered for the sake of getting a better performance for usage and more profitability. Renaturizing these areas through ecological measures is a step towards getting a better climate, and better living environments for people and animals.

Urban Greening

All over the world, the cities are growing and more people are leaving the countryside to live in the cities, causing more traffic and more pollution. Greening the cities is a solution for cleaning the air, saving energy, bringing back biodiversity and wildlife into the cities, and improving the quality of living altogether.

This can be achieved by reducing the asphalted areas of remote roads and parking lots and promoting bicycles and shared vehicles and adding greenery in public areas as much as possible, and greening the facades and rooftops of the buildings, installing sun collectors, reusing the wastewater and…

Urban Greening

All over the world, the cities are growing and more people are leaving the countryside to live in the cities, causing more traffic and more pollution. Greening the cities is a solution for cleaning the air, saving energy, bringing back biodiversity and wildlife into the cities, and improving the quality of living altogether.

This can be achieved by reducing the asphalted areas of remote roads and parking lots and promoting bicycles and shared vehicles and adding greenery in public areas as much as possible, and greening the facades and rooftops of the buildings, installing sun collectors, reusing the wastewater and…

The Role and the Importance of Neighborhoods for the Quality of Life in the Cities

All over the world, the cities are growing and more people are leaving the countryside to live in the cities, Today we might define a neighborhood rather by its material aspects than the immaterial ones such as the relationships between the neighbors, the playing ceremonies of the children, or the rituals of meeting at the local bakery or the fountain. Our neighborhoods and what we relate to are rather defined by their material aspects, the shape of the buildings, the signs the green areas, or landmarks.

Keeping Mixed-use, Diversity, and Affordability in Regeneration of Urban Areas

By bringing new impulses into an area to ignite Revitalization planners should instruct policies to guarantee the continuity of its social and functional diversity and also preventing the total gentrification of the area.

Even in completely new neighborhoods, there should be strategies to ensure the success and survival of the planned multifunctional use for inhabitants with different backgrounds, education, age, ethnicity and level of income.