“Cash, coal, cars and trees” – this was the official mantra at the recent UN Climate Conference, the COP26, in Glasgow. Between November 1 and 13, more than 35,000 delegates from all over the world gathered in the Scottish city to come up with the Glasgow Climate Pact. After much discussion and even some tears, the parties have come to an agreement. What does this mean for urban planners and architects? President of the UN Climate Change Conference 2021, Alok Sharma. Photo: UNclimatechange CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The annual COP conferences are a diplomatic mega-event. At this year’s COP26 in Glasgow ..read more

Munich’s Architecture Museum asks “Who’s Next?” in homelessness exhibition that runs until 6thFebruary 2022. The exhibition discusses ways of perceiving homelessness as well as potential solutions from architecture and other disciplines. First temporary sanctioned tent encampment for the homeless, Fulton St. (with the City Hall in the back- ground), San Francisco 2020 © Christopher Michel The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened homelessness all over the world. Even before the virus struck, people experiencing homelessness were amongst the most vulnerable members of society. “Who’s Next?”, the lates ..read more

Landscape architect Julie Bargmann is the winner of the 2021 “Oberlander Prize” – the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of landscape architecture. The Prize, an initiative of TCLF – The Cultural Landscape Foundation – includes a $100,000 award and two years of public engagement activities focused on the laureate and landscape architecture. Not only Julie Bargmann’s focus on contaminated, neglected, and forgotten urban and post-industrial sites is that what made her stand out, but also her design approach that ca ..read more

In the course of the European Floods 2021, more than 230 people lost their lives across Europe. Measured in terms of the at least 191 fatalities, the European Floods 2021 is the most severe natural disaster in Germany since the storm surge in 1962. How the European Floods 2021 came about, what role climate change plays in it and what it means for urban planning – read about it here. In July 2021, the low-pressure area Bernd led to severe flooding in Western and Central Europe. In Germany, the federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate were particularly affected. Bel ..read more

Once again, the consequences of climate change are becoming apparent. On land, Australia has always been hot. Last summer, fires made the headlines. Now it is the corals that are suffering from the heat. The famous Great Barrier Reef is shrinking massively as the results of a new study show. The staghorn corals of this massive reef wall are completely dead. The decline of the tropical coral reef began as early as the 1970s. Copyright: Richard Ross / Secore international / www.ICRS2020.de Overfishing is one of the major local stressors threatening coral reefs. In particular, it is the remov ..read more

In the boom district at London’s King’s Cross station, the architects of Moxon have built a new pedestrian bridge over Regent’s Canal: the Esperance Bridge. The elegant steel structure mediates between tradition and modernity. In doing so, it picks up on a leitmotif of the development project on the former railway site. Photo: John Sturrock Esperance Bridge – in the centre of iconic architecture The area around London’s King’s Cross station was one of the city’s backyards for many decades, characterised by drug dealing and prostitution. Anyone visiting the area today will find none of that. In ..read more

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has published a new BCG city ranking “Cities of Choice”. London is at the top of the list. Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile however, bring up the rear in the ranking. With Hamburg and Berlin, two German cities are represented too – in the middle of the ranking. Read all about the ranking results and which metropolises BCG currently considers the world’s most liveable cities here. The ranking recently published by the Boston Consulting Group compared 45 major international cities in terms of their quality of life. BCG compiled a multitude of statistics comb ..read more

With “Jernbanebyen”, a new large green inner-city district is being built on an old railway site in Copenhagen. 5,000 to 10,000 people are to live in the super-green and car-free district in the future. COBE architects are providing the master plan. Read all about the project here. The new Jernbanebyen district is to be built on the site of the disused freight station in Copenhagen. (Visualisation: COBE architects) Copenhagen is also suffering from growing pains. In the last ten years, the Danish capital has gained 100,000 inhabitants. This is growth of 19 per cent. Forecasts predict a new inf ..read more

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On May 1st 2021, the Empire State Building celebrated its 90th birthday. Over the last nine decades, the architectural icon of New York City was originally intended to serve as a mooring mast for zeppelins from Europe and has experienced elevator falls from over 70 storeys and an aeroplane collision. Here we have summarised five exciting facts about the Empire State Building for you. With 102 floors and a roof height of 381 metres, the Empire State Building was inaugurated as the tallest building in the world and held this title for 40 years. Now the world's most famous skyscraper ce ..read more