The Green Footstep tool allows you to learn how much your commercial or residential building will contribute to global warming. It’s the brainchild of Architecture 2030 founder Edward Mazria and the Rocky Mountain Institute.
During her first trip to Copenhagen, Denmark, Oprah is invited inside the Holscher family's home. Watch as she tours the organized kitchen, bright living space and small kids' bedroom. Why Danish people prefer to live simply in small spaces.
ok, so...i found out that MIT has a thing called OpenCourseWare which are free online course materials in all types of subjects including areas of Architecture, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Material Science and Engineering, etc. It includes the following classes:
This course is offered for graduate students who are interested in the interdisciplinary study of bio-inspired structures. The intent is to introduce students to newly inspired modern advanced structures and their applications. It aims to link traditional advanced composites to bio-inspired structures and to discuss their generic properties. A link between materials design, strength and structural behavior at different levels (material, element, structural and system levels) is made. For each level, various concepts will be introduced. The importance of structural, dynamic, thermodynamic and kinetic theories related to such processing is highlighted. The pedagogy is based on active learning and a balance of guest lectures and hands-on activities.
Photo of the MIT Media Lab waterjet cutter at work. (Courtesy of Prof. Neil Gershenfeld and Prof. Issac Chuang.)
Course Description
This course provides a hands-on introduction to the resources for designing and fabricating smart systems, including CAD/CAM/CAE; NC machining, 3-D printing, injection molding, laser cutting; PCB layout and fabrication; sensors and actuators; analog instrumentation; embedded digital processing; wired and wireless communications. This course also puts emphasis on learning how to use the tools as well as understand how they work.
The 2004 Odunde Festival on South Street in Philadelphia, PA illustrates one way that communities tie their identities to urban spaces. (Image courtesy of Annis Whitlow.)
This course explores how social theories of urban life can be related to the city's architecture and spaces. It is grounded in classic or foundational writings about the city addressing such topics as the public realm and public space, impersonality, crowds and density, surveillance and civility, imprinting time on space, spatial justice, and the segregation of difference. The aim of the course is to generate new ideas about the city by connecting the social and the physical, using Boston as a visual laboratory. Students are required to present a term paper mediating what is read with what has been observed.