sustainability

Two small Texas towns recovering from Hurricane Harvey are getting help from Texas A&M urban planning graduate students.

Students will team with leading design professionals Feb. 15, 2019, at Aggie Workshop, a series of lectures and an afternoon design charrette hosted by the Texas A&M student chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

The launch in Austin of a new incubator for business ventures that feature sustainable practices was headlined by Ahmed Ali, Texas A&M assistant professor of architecture.

Two urban planning professors are looking to improve communities’ resilience to flooding by investigating the relationships between flood infrastructure systems, the communication networks between planning agencies and the natural hazard plans they create.

Hurricane Harvey’s widespread damage forced cities throughout the U.S. to take a more critical look at their infrastructure and hazard mitigation plans, said Galen Newman, Texas A&M associate professor of urban planning.

As memories linger of a fatal 1995 Chicago heat wave, urban planners have new knowledge from researchers that included Sierra Woodruff, assistant professor of urban planning, to help them use “green” roofs to counteract the effects of future heat waves

The wide variety of research and creative work by faculty and doctoral students will be showcased at “Natural, Built, Virtual,” the college’s 20th annual research symposium, October 29, 2018, at Preston Geren Auditorium.

As flooding costs worldwide threaten to top $60 billion annually, Sierra Woodruff, Texas A&M assistant professor of urban planning, is studying whether natural hazard plans created by municipalities actually improve flood resilience.

Future initiatives to ensure the preservation of plant and animal habitats in a suburban Houston public recreation area will be aided by land use maps and master plans created last spring by Texas A&M graduate landscape architecture students.

In the future, structures will be created onsite by 3-D printers, and the construction and manufacturing industries will have much more in common, according to a multidisciplinary Texas A&M faculty team envisioning how technology will change building.

To prepare for a future in which structures are built with material from large-scale, 3-D printers, College of Architecture faculty are developing and testing environmentally responsible printing methods in a two-year study funded by a $500,000 X-Grant.

Seemingly rational choices, made in the wake of natural disasters, can produce unsound results due to “uncanny wisdom,” a term, coined by a Texas A&M urban planning professor, describing actions that eventually exacerbate problems they were meant to solve.

As La Grange, Texas recovers from post Hurricane Harvey flooding, residents and elected officials are considering Texas A&M student proposals that address the town’s infrastructure, housing and transportation needs.

The future of architecture lies in design that converts, flexes and adapts to changing needs, according to Texas A&M College of Architecture faculty Negar Kalantar and Alireza Borhani, who explore transformability as a design tool in iMOTION, open through July 29, 2018.

A Texas A&M student's design proposal for a coastal Texas city’s commercial and residential development, including natural and engineered solutions to prevent flooding, was featured on WLA, an international website showcasing student and professional work.