Architects Look to the Past for Cooling Solutions

Iran – Yazd – Fahadan – Badgir (Windcatcher). Photo by Alireza Javaheri, (CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

The future of cooling is the past: Many areas which were already hot climates are looking to local designs to cool them down. Colonialism and the importation of European design brought structures to many countries that weren’t suited for the climate, but now many designers are using tried and true methods to control temperatures. (Liam Hess | Atmos)

Supersized delivery robots: A company called Robomart is increasing the size of its autonomous delivery vehicle to carry up to 500 pounds of goods for delivery around Los Angeles. The company wants to launch its own app where customers can browse and order food and have it delivered by a vehicle that is restricted to just 25 miles per hour. (Andrew Hawkins | The Verge)

Rainbow crosswalks: Florida DOT has stripped the colors from rainbow crosswalks in front of Orlando’s Pulse Night Club twice. Pulse was the scene of a nightclub shooting in 2016 where 49 people were killed by a gunman. The state said it was purely procedural but USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy has made clear his distaste for colorful crosswalks despite their being very little evidence that they make streets less safe. The site is now being guarded by local police. (Possible Paywall) (Natalia Jaramillo | Orlando Sentinel)

Mobile robot factories: After seeing the devastation of the Los Angeles fires at the start of the year, Sasha Jokic wanted to help. His company Cosmic uses robots to prefabricate homes that are then assembled on site. But different to other prefabrication companies, the robot factory is also on site in the neighborhood to deliver the parts. Now structural paneling can be completed ten times faster and 80 times cheaper than traditional building processes. (Kennedy Zak | Los Angeles Business Journal)

Bigger than you think: The African Union is calling for the use of the Mercator map projection to end in order to show the continent’s true size. Africa’s actual size compared to more northern countries has long been misrepresented as smaller due to the way the projection displays them. Members are suggesting using the Equal Earth map developed in 2017 by cartographer Tom Patterson which displays countries at their actual size compared to others. (Ayana Archie | NPR)

Quote of the Week

Nowadays, I see young people walking through the park, taking pictures of themselves with the buildings and the trees. And there’s this community that has grown out of that, which is really interesting and nice to see. It’s our country, so we feel like we have to try and put in the effort as citizens to make it better.

–Joseph Schwarkopf discussing in Vogue Magazine the growing pride of the city of Quito Ecuador.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined once again by professor Karel Martens. We learn about how transportation engineering is good at measuring only one problem and ignoring others and a new tool to determine the success of transportation systems.

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