New article for Bauwelt

"Profusion of Invention: eVolo Skyscraper Competitions" Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D. and Melanie Fessel Bauwelt, May 9th, 2008. www.bauwelt.de

Fab Tree Hab in Arquitectura y Diseño

Marta Gil, "Architecture in a Tree,"
Arquitectura y Diseño, pp. 169-74. No. 88, April 2008.
www.rba.es

Terreform Expands

Our new second studio location opens in Brooklyn, New York.
We have significantly expanded our staff and work spaces at the Metropolitan Exchange (MEx).
MEx is an architecture, urban planning, and research cooperative located in downtown Brooklyn. The space is made up of design professionals, developers, and scholars who come together to collaborate on architecture and planning projects, pursue development opportunities, and sponsor lectures, film screenings and exhibitions.
TERREFORM
THE METROPOLITAN EXCHANGE
33 FLATBUSH AVENUE 6F
BROOKLYN, NY 11217
www.metropolitanexchange.org

Future North: Noah Clones

Ecotarium bound biospherians dwell in the ex-Arctic landscape of tomorrow near the poles.

Photos & model by Dan O'Connor

Terreform at BOOST (Building Open Opportunity Structures)

BOOST to host Mitchell Joachim of Terreform, on sustainable architecture. June 7th 2008 117 South Warren Street, Trenton, NJ. Green, Smart, and Sustainable Stakeholder Education and Training 2008-09 (GSS-SET) are the natural outgrowth of our past efforts for community benefits by way of engaging redevelopment and economic growth-producing activities. GSS-SET will contribute to fighting global warming and pollution by stimulating the green building and clean energy economy and positioning local community leaders to help their constituencies capture a good portion of green collar jobs, develop or expand green businesses, and conduct advocacy and policy work to the benefit of populations with barriers to employment. For more information about Building Open Opportunity Structures Together (BOOST), GSS-SET 2008-09, and the June 7 launch, please call our voice/fax center at (206) 202-2883 or email gss-set@gss-set.com.

Ecotariums at the North Pole

The Future North Ecotarium project is based on the premise that within the next hundred years our climate will be irreversible altered. Massive migrations of urban populations will move north to escape severe flooding and increased temperatures. Area inside the Artic regions will warm up significantly, making their occupation newly desirable. Real-Estate values will shift to privilege northern climates that formerly had almost no human inhabitants. To underscore the intensity of such a global shift, we have moved entire cities. The reality of hundreds of millions of people relocating their respective centers of culture, business, and life is almost incomprehensible. We anticipate this polemical representation will impact our perception of tomorrow.

The movie installation will premier at:
MASS MoCA Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape
and 01SJ: A global festival of art on the edge
by
Jane D. Marsching and Dr. Mitchell Joachim/ Terreform
curators: Denise Markonish at MASS MoCA and Steve Dietz at SJMA

Taking Back the Streets, Sunday NY Times

"Taking Back the Streets,"
by Jeff Byles, New York Times,
p. CY11, Sun. April 6, 2008.





Gentle Congestion:
Instead of designing cities for cars, why not design cars for a kinder city?
That’s what researchers at the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have cooked up: smarter, gentler modes of urban transportation. “If you think of your average car, it doesn’t have the same smarts as a horse,” said Mitchell Joachim, a former Media Lab researcher. A horse, he points out, is unlikely to run off the road, naturally avoids head-on collisions, and at least comes when you whistle. With the horse in mind, Dr. Joachim, now executive director of a New York design collaborative called Terreform, has helped conceive of a lightweight electric car that would sense the presence of other vehicles and slow down in potentially dangerous areas.
On-board navigation systems would drive people where they wanted to go. Parking meters, linked to each other and to the vehicles, could signal an open space. These smart cars would even sense that pothole you just ran over, and report it to maintenance crews. Because the vehicles could be made of soy-based plastic shells that could bump into each other without damage, they could move in flocks. Designers call it “gentle congestion.” Quick braking systems protect pedestrians, so there is no need for sidewalks, lanes or signals.

World Science Festival: May 30th - NYC

Mitchell Joachim
is speaking at the
World Science Festival:
http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/
on the Future Cities Panel:
Majora Carter
Dickson Despommier
Peter Head
Blaine Brownell
Friday, May 30, 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM,
NYU - Kimmel Center for University Life
Future Cities: Sustainable Solutions, Radical Designs — We stand at a crossroads. Cities must change radically to achieve long-term sustainability. Energy, food and water sources, transportation systems and basic infrastructure, must all adapt to emerging pressures from climate change, dwindling resources and growing urban populations.
How will we meet this immense challenge? In a program that is part celebration of human ingenuity and part stark reminder of the problems we face, influential architects, urban planners, scientists and technologists lay out radical blueprints and innovative solutions as they imagine housing, feeding, transporting and sustaining city dwellers of the not too distant future.
other speakers include:
Alan Alda, Cynthia Breazeal, Brian Greene, Peter Galison, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Leaky, Oliver Sacks, David Sinclair, Saul Griffith, and MORE