Road Trip
The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System in the U.S. is more than a half-century old. Across the U.S., there are hundreds of bridges and culverts that are more than a century old—and dozens that were built during Andrew Jackson’s presidency-making restoration and resilience top-of-mind. The 2015 Conference on Ecology and Transportation (Sept. 20–24) in Raleigh, N.C., will address those and other issues related to “Strengthening Essential Transportation and Ecological Assets.” Learn more at icoet.net.
Next Wave
Registration closes on July 15 for the d3 Natural Systems competition—a platform, according to organizers, for “alternative, ecologically performative architectonic strategies.” Translation: Ecology, geology, and hydrology have been guides for designers for eons, but awareness of those systems historically comes in waves. The difference: It’s never been easier than it is today to understand how those systems work, alone or together. This mindset has been editorialized as “new pastoralism,” but there’s nothing new about paying attention to nature. Learn more at d3space.org.
Mise en place
Melbourne—billed as Australia’s “most livable city”—hosts the Making Cities Livable Conference (July 6–7), which will include the usual slate of topics: density, resilience, sustainable transportation, and universal design. Unusually, however, the conference will feature Emma Dean, the 2013 winner of MasterChef Australia, who will deliver a keynote address about responsible sourcing and sustainable agriculture. Is it a bizarre mashup? Not when you consider that the democratization of otherwise peripheral urban policy—or chef culture, for that matter—leads to greater acceptance. Learn more at healthycities.com.au.
4,000 Years in 10 Days
’Tis the season for schools of architecture to offer summer study tours in far-flung cities. Catholic University’s School of Architecture will host two trips this summer: The first to Porto, Evora, and Lisbon (site of the fourth Lisbon Architecture Triennale in 2016), and the second to Jerusalem, where students will see structures from Byzantium (and before) to Bauhaus apartments and public buildings. Learn more at architecture.cua.edu.
