This week, British landscape architecture firm Gustafson Porter + Bowman was named the winner of a competition to redevelop the site around Paris' Eiffel Tower including the surrounding esplanade and the adjacent Trocadéro Gardens and Champ de Mars. As part of the contest, competing firms worked with software giant Autodesk to create immersive 3D designs for their proposals, which were revealed last year. "The use of an intelligent digital model, immersive 3D visualization tools, and collaborative methodologies have significantly accelerated decision making and reduced potential errors," said Autodesk VP of business and marketing Nicolas Mangon in a press release. Renovation of the site is expected to be completed ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics with construction slated to begin next year. [Autodesk]
On May 28, the French Senate voted to update a law requiring the reconstruction of Notre Dame cathedral to be as it stood before the April fire—ending any hopes for a design competition for a reimagined spire. The proposed regulation call for "the conservation and restoration works of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral [to] respect the authenticity and integrity of the monument attached to its outstanding universal value linked to its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List." [Sénat]
Foster + Partners is one of the latest signatories of the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, a campaign launched by the World Green Building Council (WGBC) that calls for participants to achieve carbon neutrality across their new construction portfolios by 2030, and across their entire portfolio by 2050. "We are proud to be the first architecture practice to sign up to the Net Zero Carbon Buildings Commitment, and welcome the Advancing Net Zero Status Report 2019 by the World Green Building Council as a collection of market leadership,” said head of sustainability Chris Trott in a WGBC press release. [WGBC]
Researchers from the University of Maryland and University of Colorado Boulder have developed an engineered wood product that doubles as a passive cooling system for structures. Made of wood that has been stripped of lignin and soaked in a super-hydrophobic compound, the resulting material is white in color, stronger than conventional steel, and resists heat from the sun. The researchers hypothesize that when applied to a building as siding or roofing, it could lead to a reduction in cooling costs of up to 20 percent. [University of Maryland]
A group of 17 British architecture firms—including Zaha Hadid Architects, David Chipperfield Architects, and AL_A—have collaborated to create Architects Declare, a campaign to raise awareness of climate change and the architecture industry's role in combating the negative impacts of the built environment. "For everyone working in the construction industry, meeting the needs of our society without breaching the Earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our [behavior]," the group wrote in a statement. "Together with our clients, we will need to commission and design buildings, cities and infrastructures as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system." [Architects Declare]
