Exterior doors provide a sense of security and define first impressions, which is beautifully demonstrated in the pivot door presented above (designed and crafted in Europe by Air-Lux). On the other hand, inside of a house, interior doors are capable of generating privacy, buffering noise, separating rooms and enhancing a room’s architecture. Therefore, in order to fulfill these needs – and considering that they are used multiple times a day – interior doors must be durable and timeless without sacrificing beauty and style. Among all the options that meet these criteria, pivot doors stand out because of their elegant movement, aesthetics and versatility. With a sleek contemporary design that exceeds the regular function of a traditional door, these swinging doors rotate on a vertical axis with nearly invisible hardware, taking on any type of décor, use and measurement with endless creative possibilities.
Pictured (from left) are: Joseph Henry, Meneesha Kaur Kellay, Sumitra Upham, Jayden Ali and Sevra Davis (Director of Architecture Design Fashion at the British Council). Image Courtesy of British Council
Since 2017, UN-Habitat, together with Shigeru Ban Architects, Philippe Monteil and the NGO Voluntary Architects' Network, developed several shelter typologies for a pilot neighborhood in Kalobeyei Settlement in Kenya. The Turkana Houses are meant to house South Sudanese and other refugees living in Northern Kenya who could not return to their original villages due to endless civil wars and conflicts. Unlike typical refugee shelters, these structures were meant to provide a home for long periods of displacement and the four typologies developed are informed by the extensive experience of Shigeru Ban Architects with disaster relief projects and the local building techniques of local people.
In apartments and small houses, the rest and entertainment spaces tend to share the same environment, making the living room fully oriented towards the television. But what to do when television is removed from space? Here are ideas on how to organize the living room without having the television as the main object of the room.
Modern interior living environments’ fine-tuned lightscapes feature a delicate mix of ambient, task, and accent lighting to perfectly balance performance and pleasure. But one area of a home’s visibility that’s still so easily overlooked is the exterior.
In urban design, suburbs can be a contentious topic. That is in part because the term lends itself to nebulous and ever-changing definitions. In its simplest form, the suburbs are residential communities within commuting distance, located a fair bit away from the heart of metropolitan areas. The American context sees suburbs viewed with some hostility, with racist ‘redlining’ practices a dark legacy to particular suburbs in the country. In a more superficial sense, American suburbs have often been criticised for their uniformity in appearance – portrayed as soulless dwellings absent of a sense of community.
The importance of the use of advanced technologies, such as the likes of virtual reality in the scene of architecture, is becoming increasingly necessary. No matter how beautiful a rendered image may be, it will always lack the capacity to fully convey the scope and feel of a project as a whole, further perpetuating the necessity to incorporate the use of these technologies at a professional practice level.
Architects who choose not to adopt the use of virtual reality technologies into their design process fall victim to being at a significant disadvantage, and the problem no longer even lies within accessibility, as VR is very much a possibility for architects of all backgrounds in the present age.
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina are joined by Photographer Iwan Baan to discuss his career, how he became a most sought-after architectural photographer, working with Rem Koolhaas, his process, his style of architectural photography, documenting structures during construction and after completion, vernacular architecture, and more.
Minimalism has shaped architecture for over a century. Embracing new materials and rejecting ornament, the modernist movement grounded minimalist architecture through rational use and function. Throughout the 20th century, architects returned to minimalism as they worked with glass, steel and reinforced concrete. Over time, minimalist and modernist designs became more closely tied to cost, construction and aesthetic.
While circular economy is often discussed in relation to the architectural object through the lens of material recycling, design for disassembly, and material passports, the framework is most fully enacted at the neighbourhood and city scale. Whether it is visions of circular communities that hint at some level of self-sufficiency or policies set in motion by cities, urban-scale projects exemplify the guiding principles of the circular economy, providing a glimpse into what a fully-fledged version of it might look like. The following explores the strategies used in circular urban environments, from architecture and construction materials to energy production, waste management and food production, as well as the processes and operations that govern these designs, providing insights into the conditions that inform circularity.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, in partnership with Atlanta’s Goode Van Slyke Architecture (GVSA), have unveiled Centennial Yards' first ground-up tower. Titled One Centennial Yards, the project will feature 28 stories and over 500,000 square feet of office space, 19,000 square feet of amenities, and 21,980 square feet of outdoor spaces, all aligned with the innovative, health, and wellness goals of the Foster + Partners designed master plan.
Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT) announced the appointment of architect Tosin Oshinowo as the curator of its second edition, which will open in 2023. From its inaugural edition of 2018, the triennial established itself as an international platform highlighting the architecture of West and South Asia, as well as the African continent. Oshinowo’s appointment is prompted by the architect’s socially responsive approaches to architecture and her deep knowledge of the African architectural and urban context. Her work reflects SAT’S mission to pursue a multidisciplinary design approach “that fosters an understanding of the broader role of architecture, including its relation to social and environmental issues.”
Parque Manancial de Águas Pluviais / Turenscape. Imagem cortesia de Turenscape
According to the architect and researcher Patrícia Akinaga, ecological urbanism emerged at the end of the 20th century as a strategy to create a paradigm shift with regard to the design of cities. With this, urban projects should be designed from the potential and limitations of existing natural resources. Unlike other previous movements, in ecological urbanism architecture is not the structuring element of the city — the landscape itself is. In other words, green areas should not only exist to beautify spaces, but as true engineering artifacts with the potential to dampen, retain and treat rainwater, for example. With ecological urbanism, urban design becomes defined by the natural elements intrinsic to its fabric.
In case you missed it, our world continues, after two years, to suffer cultural spasms in response to unseen, unrelenting, and deadly infective agents that continue to wash over entire populations, spreading fear, illness, and death.
The U.S. is also suffering a quieter—but equally invasive—architectural plague, metastasizing into every part of the country. This architectural contagion has largely escaped criticism, but not since the raised ranch has an architectural “type” so fully transformed communities. In the 1950s, thousands upon thousands of dumbed-down Prairie Home allusions swept across fallow suburban farm fields like a wildfire. More than style, the half-buried lower level and split floors (one half-stair run apart) were a new way to explore how buildings could house people, especially in rapidly suburbanizing America.
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) has been dubbed the concrete of the future. As a highly resilient form of engineered wood made by gluing layers of solid-sawn lumber together, CLT is reshaping how we understand architecture and design today. As a material with a high degree of flexibility, CLT has to undergo great deformations to break and collapse, unlike concrete. In turn, it's a material chosen for its warmth and natural properties.
Heritage Buildings of Beirut, Lebanon. Image Courtesy of World Monuments Fund
The World Monuments Fund has released its 2022 World Monuments Watch list, a selection of 25 sites from across the globe that hold great cultural and heritage significance but are being faced with economic, political or natural threats. This year's selection highlights themes of global issues such as climate change, imbalanced tourism, underrepresentation, and recovery from crisis, urging for prompt preservation plans.
Construction technology company ICON unveiled its newest 3D-printed project, “House Zero”, designed by Texas-based firm Lake|Flato Architects. The project is the first in ICON’s “Exploration Series,” which seeks to highlight the architectural possibilities enabled by additive construction and develop new design languages with the purpose of “shifting the paradigm of homebuilding”. The material honesty of the house combines the expression of robotic construction processes with the natural wood textures creating a timeless design.
Machu Picchu, also known as "The Lost City of the Incas", located high in the Peruvian Andes (2430 m.a.s.l.) in Cuzco, is one of the most famous archaeological complexes and one of the 7 wonders of the modern world. It is here, under the dense foliage of the surrounding jungle, that a network of hidden river channels has been discovered.
In recent years, much attention has been given to timber constructions. Being a sustainable and renewable material, which captures a huge amount of carbon during its growth, the innovations related to this material have allowed for increasingly higher constructions. However, when we talk about wood we approach an immense variety of species, with different strengths, nuances, potentials, limitations and recommended uses. While there are extremely hard and heavy woods, with strengths comparable to concrete, there are other soft and soft woods that are suitable for other purposes.
As is obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in demographics, cities are becoming denser—much denser. Rural life continues its steady emptying-out as urban life accelerates its explosive filling-in. The tilt has been apparent at least since the middle of the last century when the French geographer Jean Gottmann invented the word “megalopolis” to describe the continuous urbanization from Boston to Washington, D.C., then containing one-fifth of the United States’ population. But nowhere has the shift from countryside to city been more dramatic than in present-day Asia.
Kiev, Ukraine / Statue of Berehynia on the top of Independence Monument on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Image via Shutterstock
On the 24th of February 2022, Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Set to become Europe’s largest refugee crisis and armed conflict in this century, so far, this war has mobilized people across the world in order to exert pressure on authorities and put a stop to the armed hostilities. Individuals, as well as institutions in the architectural field, have taken part in these acts of solidarity, issuing statements, condemning actions, and even halting their work in Russia. From the UIA to MVRDV to Russian Institutions such as Strelka, the architecture world is denouncing the acts of violence and supporting an immediate cease of fire.
Although the term may seem recent, the concept of biophilia has been used for decades in architecture and design. The guiding principle is quite simple: connect people inside with nature to promote their well-being and quality of life. With all the ongoing design trends that have consolidated as a result, the demand has focused on organic materials that emulate outdoor environments. Among all the options, wood is one of the most popular materials to bring nature indoors, not only because of its functionality, but also due to its multiple physiological and psychological benefits.
Setting the stage for Rotterdam Architecture Month this upcoming June, MVRDV have designed a temporary rooftop platform on the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The 600-square-meter event space titled The Podium will be elevated 29 meters and covered with a striking pink color, making it visible to all pedestrians on ground level. The installation will open to the public on June 1st, coinciding with the inauguration of the Rotterdam Architecture Month Festival, and will continue to be used for events until August 17th.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the shortlisted projects for the 2022 RIBA London architecture awards. The list of 68 buildings includes projects ranging from individual houses to schools and office towers in the city centre, showcasing the best architectural interventions in London over the past two years. All designs will be assessed by a regional jury, and the winning projects will be announced later this spring. Subsequently, Regional Award winners will be considered for the RIBA National Award.
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