Renzo Piano's new Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco is bursting with green technology and alive with plants.
"Inside the sober exterior of the California Academy of Sciences, an elevator plunges through four stories of rain forest into a glass-tunnel swamp alive with wriggling armored catfish and spotted peacock bass. It's the most fun you could have while being hectored to save the planet.
The academy opens its sparkling new building in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Sept. 27, replacing a complex severely damaged in a 1989 earthquake. It's a research institution, but to the public it is an occasionally unwieldy combination of the Kimball Natural History Museum, Steinhart Aquarium and Morrison Planetarium. Every penny of its hefty $488 million cost is on view, gorgeously packaged by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Its overarching messages are the essential role of evolution in the work of the natural sciences and the urgency of addressing global climate change. In Piano's design, the medium is the message."
FULL STORY: Swamp Things Slither in $488 Million California Science Museum
The Search for a New Green Building Standard
The need to slash emissions from buildings is increasingly urgent, and critics say LEED won't get us there.
Kerfluffle Over Green Building Rating Systems
The latest dust up over green building rating systems, especially their efficacy relative to each other, highlights the danger of mixing the ideals of environmentalism with the self-interest of running an environmentalist organization.
LEED Certification: Path to Better Buildings or Bigger Bottom Lines?
With supporting evidence from a USA TODAY analysis, Thomas Frank examines the LEED points system and finds that certification, and the tax breaks and other rewards that go with it, can be easily obtained without proven environmental impact.
Alabama: Trump Terminates Settlements for Black Communities Harmed By Raw Sewage
Trump deemed the landmark civil rights agreement “illegal DEI and environmental justice policy.”
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
The 120 Year Old Tiny Home Villages That Sheltered San Francisco’s Earthquake Refugees
More than a century ago, San Francisco mobilized to house thousands of residents displaced by the 1906 earthquake. Could their strategy offer a model for the present?
Sacramento Leads Nation With Bus-Mounted Bike Lane Enforcement Cameras
The city is the first to use its bus-mounted traffic enforcement system to cite drivers who park or drive in bike lanes.
Seattle Voters Approve Social Housing Referendum
Voters approved a corporate tax to fund the city’s housing authority despite an opposition campaign funded by Amazon and Microsoft.
The Five Most-Changed American Cities
A ranking of population change, home values, and jobs highlights the nation’s most dynamic and most stagnant regions.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Ada County Highway District
Clanton & Associates, Inc.
Jessamine County Fiscal Court
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service