Feb 9, 2011

Future Shock: Escape the Urban Jungle

Published Feb. 08: designbuild-network.com

"The UN forecasts that growing urban populations will place unprecedented strain on the infrastructure of our cities. Mitchell Joachim and Jürgen Mayer talk to Rod James about the relationship between cities and their inhabitants and the need for a radical reimagining of the urban landscape."

"Forceful views such as this make Joachim, co-founder of urban design group Terreform ONE, not only one of the most influential thinkers in his field but also a journalist's dream. An associate professor at NYU and senior fellow of the TED organization, Joachim has done more than anyone to highlight the need for a radical rethink of the way architects and urban planners approach their trade. This desire for change is motivated by a demographic force that is becoming too strong to ignore."

Feb 1, 2011

Terreform in The Huffington Post

by Damiano Beltrami, The Huffington Post:
Architect and urban designer Mitchell Joachim hates the idea of a lower-pollution New York a hundred years from now. He envisions a city that actually eliminates pollution.  "I want a city that cleans up the impact of the last hundred and fifty years of industrial waste. It has to have a positive impact," said Joachim, pacing up and down his studio in the Metropolitan Exchange building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.  At a time when most progressive urban designers try to make cities greener, this co-founder of the nonprofit design group Terreform ONE and his team are on a crusade to radically change the notion of how cities like New York will function in a hundred years. Only completely flipping ideas about housing, transportation, and recreation spaces can city planners project a revolutionary urban habitat, according to Joachim and his crew.