Regional and Urban Design Committee

 View Only

Community HTML

pexels-photo-443383.jpeg

Quick Links

Who we are

The Regional and Urban Design Committee (RUDC) aims to improve the quality of the regional and urban environment by promoting excellence in design, planning, and public policy in the built environment. This will be achieved through its member and public education, in concert with allied community and professional groups. Join us!

2024 Symposium

The 2024 symposium will be held in Indianapolis, IN in November. Stay tuned for dates and location. Registration will open in July.

2023 RUDC Symposium

The RUDC Symposium, held in Washington, DC October 19-20, covered emerging trends, theories, and technologies that are shaping the future of regional and urban design. Watch the engaging highlight and speaker videos >.

The architecture of a physics experiment

  • 1.  The architecture of a physics experiment

    Posted 10-11-2016 04:05 PM

    The Nobel Prize in Physics that wasn't

    Once in a while one has to lift the gaze from the alleys and streets and set the eyes higher for a bigger view. Why not as big as the entire universe?

    The Tuesday announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics seemed like a good occasion to do takes this view, because it was widely expected to go to a team that used a very practical and beautifully architectural idea to prove Einstein's highly theoretical concept of gravitational waves. Exactly 100 years ago Einstein also cautioned that those waves could never be experimentally proven. Well, he was wrong, but so were those who were sure the proof what get the Nobel Prize.

    Ligo, precision architecture
    This is about the celebration of two pieces of architecture worth $505 million that had broken ground in 1994 and had to overcome a bunch of  scientific, financial and congressional hurdles until they were positioned as a perfect L each 2.5 miles (4km) long.

    And not only is this a very large piece of symmetrical architecture, it also comes in duplicate. For scientific reasons and also for nice geopolitical balance, the facilities are a set of identical twins working in unison as a single “observatory”: one in Hanford in southeastern Washington State and the other in rural Livingston, Louisiana, collaboratively operated between CalTech and MIT. Both facilities also display symmetry a classic element of architecture. 

    The architecture that so perfectly represents a set of x and y coordinates is known in scientific circles as LIGO, or Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.

    Read full article

    ------------------------------
    Nikolaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
    ------------------------------