Videos

Venturi Scott-Brown’s National Gallery Sainsbury Wing extension (1991) was born into a precarious no-man’s land between the warring camps of neo-Modernists and traditionalists who had been tussling over the direction of Britain’s cities for much of the prior decade. The site of the extension had come to be one of the most symbolic battlefields in British architecture since a campaign to halt its redevelopment with a Hi-Tech scheme by Ahrends Burton Koralek had led to that project’s refusal at planning in 1984.

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Turkish practice Melike Altinisik Architects have released new photos of Istanbul's futuristic 369 meter-tall Çamlıca TV and Radio Tower. The new telecommunications tower will replace several outdated structures currently in use and support an estimated 125 broadcasting transmitters. Designed for the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, the project is currently under construction, and the new photos showcase the tower's ongoing progress. The project is set to become the tallest tower in Istanbul.

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COOKFOX Architects and Oxford Properties have reimagined New York's St. John’s Terminal as a workplace of the future. The 1.3 million square foot proposal aims to connect the Hudson Square neighborhood to the waterfront at the end of The High Line. Combining outdoor space and greenery with 100,000 square-foot floor plates, the project reinterprets the industrial past of the former freight terminal. The project was created to shape how businesses innovate and create between Lower Manhattan and the waterfront.

MVRDV has released details of their proposed renovation of a 19th-century listed building on Slodowa Island in Wroclaw, Poland. The “Concordia Hub” will see the retention of the existing façade, with the addition of a contemporary rear extension to “create a focal point” for the general public and visitors.

The site’s former use as a German artillery base in 1945 means almost all of the island’s structures were destroyed in the closing months of World War II. The Concordia Hub scheme seeks to preserve one of the only surviving heritage structures on the island, while transitioning the building into the modern age.

It would be hard to associate zen philosophy with Mies van der Rohe, even harder to associate it with the German Pavilion in Barcelona. Nevertheless, the latest work by American artist Spencer Finch, Fifteen stones (Ryōan-ji), precisely establishes that connection with the iconic pavilion.

Spencer Finch was the latest artist invited to intervene the Fundació's pavilion. With the aim of "provok[ing] new looks and reflections through [his] intervention in the Pavilion, [he] enhanced it as a space for inspiration and experimentation for the most innovative artistic and architectural creation." Finch joined a prominent team of artists and architects, including SANAA, Jeff Wall, Ai Wei Wei, Enric Miralles, Andrés Jaque, and Anna & Eugeni Bach, among others.

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Patinated copper, also called oxidized, is a metal coat that "ages well" with excellent weathering resistance. Due to its capacity for transformation over time, when coming into contact with atmospheric conditions, the material does not require major maintenance, giving a unique aspect to the facades.

In addition to orange-colored plates, this material also gives off a blue / green appearance through a controlled chemical oxidation process. Its coloration is defined by the amount of crystals contained in the surface of the material. With the appearance of natural light, the panels display various shades and nuances of color.

Architecture and design practices Penda and Smartvoll have created a giant watermill for Austria's National Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai in Dubai. ‘The Source of Everything’ was selected as a finalist in an international competition and marks the first collaboration between Penda Austria and Smartvoll. The project features a supersized mill that circulates water through the pavilion and brings an experience to the desert of Dubai that Austria is famous for: Refreshment.

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Architecture firm Jasmax has been selected to design New Zealand's National Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai. New Zealand will participate in Expo 2020 from October 2020 to April 2021. Expo 2020 Dubai will bring together 180 nations and 25 million international visitors. Over six months, the event will inspire collaboration on global challenges and opportunities. New Zealand’s theme for Expo 2020 is 'Care for People and Place'. The pavilion will feature an exhibition experience, corporate hosting facilities, a restaurant and design store.

The New York firm WXY and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation have proposed vertical manufacturing buildings in a new Navy Yard masterplan. A series of renderings show plans for the next phase of development, including high-rise structures with 5.1 million square feet of urban industrial space. The $2.5 billion masterplan was first announced in January 2018, and as Curbed NY reports, the master plan and rezoning calls for new manufacturing buildings, increased public access, and more educational programming.

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Following the announcement by SpaceX founder Elon Musk that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would be the first paying customer to visit the Moon, the retail tycoon generated further excitement by declaring he would bring between six and eight artists to accompany him.

The “Dear Moon” project would see a painter, musician, film director, and others, accompany Maezawa in order to “dream dreams that have never been dreamed…to sing songs that have never been sung, to paint that which has never been seen before.”

After graduating from Tecnológico de Monterrey, a leading technical school in Mexico, Francisco Gonzalez Pulido worked on design-build projects for six years before leaving for the US where he earned his Master’s degree from Harvard’s GSD in 1999. The same year the architect started working with Helmut Jahn in Chicago where he stayed for 18 years – from intern to becoming the president of the company in 2012, at which point he renamed the firm into Jahn. By then he developed his own body of work there. Last year Gonzalez Pulido started FGP Atelier in his adopted home city.

Today the studio, counts a dozen of architects and is overseeing the design of a couple of high-rises in China, a baseball stadium in Mexico City, and university buildings in Monterrey, among other projects. The following interview was conducted at FGP Atelier in Chicago, during which the architect was explicit about transmitting his view: “Architecture is too rigid, too formal. It is time to break free…I want to build lighter. I want to build smarter.”

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Caruso St John has won an international competition for a new headquarters for German publishing giant Gruner + Jahr in Hamburg. The winning scheme, chosen over RIBA Gold Medal winners O’Donnell + Tuomey, and Berlin-based ROBERTNUEN Architekten, features “striking green-enameled ceramic struts and three partially covered interior courtyards.”

The 60,000-square-meter scheme will be located in the Lohsepark area of the city, where it will form part of the HafenCity ensemble of office, commercial, and residential buildings.

Kazuyo Sejima, co-founder of the architecture firm SANAA, shared details of their upcoming project the New National Gallery – Ludwig Museum in Budapest at the Hay Festival Segovia in Spain. The 2010 Pritzker Prize winner linked the underlying premise of this project to three iconic museums: the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (2004), the New Art Museum in New York (2007), and the Louvre Lens in France (2012).

In this conversation, Laszló Baán, General Director of the National Gallery, Budapest and Ministerial Commissioner of the Liget Budapest Project, explained the details of the 100-hectare (247-acre) masterplan at the heart of Hungary's capital city. The Liget Budapest Project will feature ten museums, including Sou Fujimoto's House of Hungarian Music, the expansion of the Budapest Zoo, and SANAA's New National Gallery for Budapest — a museum that will host 19th, 20th century, and contemporary artworks.

Architecture firms Selgascano and FRPO have been announced as a finalist in the competition to design Spain's National Pavilion for EXPO 2020 in Dubai. Their proposal includes an inflatable canopy of nine yellow ETFE cylinders set within a steel framework. Reinterpreting the Spanish plaza, the design creates a new take on the public square. The pavilion was made to be ultralight as a more sustainable structure that could be easily removed and transported. Formed as a 'breathing pavilion', the design allows two inflatables to move up and down to respond to views, light and breeze.

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MAD Architects have officially begun construction on the Quzhou Sports Campus in China. Led by the Ma Yansong, the team designed the campus as a futuristic landscape with mountains and a lake conceived as a sunken garden. The design connects to the historic city as a surreal, ethereal and tranquil landscape. The 700,000 sqm sports campus combines the functions of a sports park with natural and organic forms to embrace thousands of years of history and culture in Zhejiang.

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The shortlist for the 2018 Architectural Photography Awards have been revealed, bringing together 20 atmospheric images of the built environment. Categories this year ranged from a “portfolio of an individual building to a single abstract: with a professional camera or on a mobile phone.”

The 2018 edition saw a record number of entries, with photographs from 47 countries, including the UK (28%), USA (20%), Germany (6%), and China (5%). The 20 photographs were selected from four categories: exteriors, interiors, sense of place, and buildings in use.

It's not easy to find theory in the implementation of architectural models: a practical model that allows you to analyze and showcase the organization of material elements according to a particular process. They also allow you to detect and modify the key elements of a project while also addressing the project's executive procedures. 

Together with architectonic construction details, the development of the constructive facets is pushed to the background up until the ultimate steps of the design process, but this is also when we identify what is appropriate for a certain stage in the process in order to facilitate a seamless execution.

In the search to bring ourselves closer to the presentation and utility of architectural models, we invite you to take a look at a series of examples:

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Over the past few months, Quintana Roo's coast has been overtaken by an invasion of seaweed that has put the locals to work cleaning up the beaches as the weeds wash ashore. The work is an exhausting day-to-day ordeal and while the cause of the invasion is still unknown, many point to the changes in climate impacting the Atlantic Ocean. 

Currently, over 60 tons of seaweed has been gathered from the coast and locals are already putting the plants to good use as raw materials for biodigestors, cosmetics, plastics, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals. However, another use for seaweed has recently come to the public's attention. 

Walk into a room bathed in cozy, inviting light and you’ll feel instantly at ease. Walk into the same room buzzing with harsh fluorescents, and your teeth may start to grind.

Why?

In 2014, a Journal of Consumer Psychology study found that the more intense the lighting, the more affected and intense the participants’ emotions were — both positive and negative.

The study included six experiments that examined the link between emotion and ambient brightness. Feelings of warmth increased when participants were exposed to bright light with hints of reddish hues. A sensation of angst increased when bluer light dominated.

And the brighter the light, the more intense the participants’ emotions became. Both the intensity and the color of the light affected people’s moods. 

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Founded by Juan Benavides in 2014, FILMATICA is an architectural film studio dedicated to making videos with a curatorial focus. The selection of projects is carried out in order to empathize with the formal interests of the studio, responding to aesthetic spatial conditions surrounded by powerful landscapes. With this in mind, FILMATICA makes a series of narratives that highlight architecture, time, movement, and our journey through the world. Below, a compilation of videos of contemporary architectural works narrated through the lens of Juan Benavides and the FILMATICA team.