Hoping to expand Japan's culture of hospitality to a new medium, 16 designers, including Tadao Ando, Hon. FAIA, Kengo Kuma, Hon. FAIA, and Toyo Ito, Hon. FAIA, have joined to redesign 17 public restrooms as part of the Tokyo Toilet project. To date, Shigeru Ban, Hon. FAIA, Nao Tamura, Fumihiko Maki, Hon. FAIA, and Masamichi Katayama have completed five toilets Tokyo's Shibuya neighborhood, revealing a series of wheelchair-accessible structures with amenities such as children-scale toilets or changing tables. Ban's restroom design, located in Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park, features colorful windows that allow passersby to easily check for occupancy and cleanliness while illuminating the park "like a beautiful lantern," according to the project's website. Once the restroom door locks, however, the glass turns opaque, giving the occupant full privacy. The five completed toilets are cleaned and maintained by The Nippon Foundation, Shibuya City Government, and Shibuya Tourism Association. The remaining 11 toilets are slated for completion over the coming months. [The Tokyo Toilet]
Researchers from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., have analyzed the potential impact of widespread embrace of electric vehicles in the United States. The study examined six different scenarios: a 25% or 75% adoption of internal combustion engine vehicles, each analyzed in three different EV‐charging energy generation scenarios. With 25% adoption and energy sourced from today's electrical grid, C02 emissions would drop by approximately 242 million tons, avoid 437 deaths due to PM2.5, and avoid 98 deaths due to a damaged ozone layer. An estimated $16.8 billion in damages would also be avoided. A 75% adoption of EVs would see even greater benefits, including an annual savings of around $70 billion. "When charging‐electricity from aggressive EV adoption is combustion‐only, adverse health outcomes increase substantially, highlighting the importance of low‐to‐zero emission power generation for greater realization of health co‐benefits," the study states. "Our results provide a more nuanced understanding of the transportation sector's climate change mitigation‐health impact relationship." [GeoHealth]
A new study from Washington University in St. Louis is tapping into the energy storage potential of a common building material: red bricks. In their Nature Communications paper,the study explains how researchers transformed the fired units into "stationary supercapacitors" by coating the bricks with the conductive PEDOT polymer, which reacts with the iron oxide naturally found in the brick's red pigment and makes use of the brick's open microstructure. Once treated with this scalable and low-cost process, users could stack and easily recharge the smart bricks, deploying them for a variety of projects. “PEDOT-coated bricks are ideal building blocks that can provide power to emergency lighting,” said study author and assistant professor of chemistry Julio D'Arcy, in a WUSTL press release. “We envision that this could be a reality when you connect our bricks with solar cells ... . [Fifty] bricks would enable powering emergency lighting for five hours." [Washington University in St. Louis]
Architects design structures to protect their inhabitants, but an unforeseen disaster can turn building materials into dangerous weapons. Following the tragic explosion in Beirut that left 150 dead and 5,000 injured, ARCHITECT columnist Blaine Brownell, FAIA, wondered how structures could protect more lives in future calamities. "The best means of protection is to increase what is called the 'standoff distance,' or the distance to the source of the blast," he wrote. "In surprise cases like the Beirut detonation, however, the location of the source cannot be predicted. We must therefore focus on the second most effective protection: choosing building materials that can resist explosive force." [ARCHITECT]
In its latest monograph, Design with Life: Biotech Architecture and Resilient Cities (Actar, 2020), New York–based Terreform ONE imagines a future where architecture and design serve all living creatures. Whether it's buildings that double as habitats for bees and butterflies, or skyscrapers covered in vines, the firm consistently pushes the boundary between new technologies and the natural world, generating a vision that makes ARCHITECT columnist Aaron Betsky "smile and hope." In his book review, he continues, "The beehives and butterfly habitats, the incubators not for new tech businesses but for plants and animals, and the artificial biotopes all take concrete steps to move architecture beyond creating defensive structures for human beings as they lay waste to the landscapes outside their cocoons, and into the realm of designing for a better planet." [ARCHITECT]
