The early 20th century saw the birth of Modernist architecture. It brought with it a central architectural movement that in turn birthed off-shoots of its own. A figure often seen as the defining face of this movement is Le Corbusier, whose 1923 treatise Toward an Architecturewas influential to his Modernist contemporaries – a manifesto including the phrase “a house is a machine for living in” where good architecture would have to be intrinsically linked to function and the demands of industry.
A new place for design - State of Address (SOFA) - is a world-first design community on the blockchain, shifting how design and architecture is made, owned and collected.
Founded by four Melbourne entrepreneurs - Chris Stribley, Domenic Cerantonio, AJ Batra and Anmol Sekhon - SOFA uses non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to turn products of architecture and design into tokenized and investable assets that are unique, scarce, and transferable. All of which provide a plethora of digital and physical utility and have the potential to be on-sold for longer term gain.
As OMA New York / Jason Long's Greenpoint Landing residential towers near completion, new renders have been released that showcase the amenities, interior spaces, and landscape of the project. Developed by Brookfield Properties and Park Tower Group, the Eagle + West Towers feature 745 units of mixed-income housing, 8,600 sq. ft. of retail space, along with recreational amenities such as a pool, lounge, gym, workshops, and test kitchen.
Farshid Moussavi (photograph: Anne Purkiss) and Mona Hatoum (credit: The Japan Art Association / The Sankei Shimbun / Mizuho Miyazaki). Image Courtesy of Architectural Review
Farshid Moussavi and Mona Hatoum have been named this year's recipients of the Jane Drew and Ada Louise Huxtable Prizes, two awards celebrating women's contribution to the architecture profession and the broader architectural culture. The 2022 Jane Drew Prize commends Farshid Moussavi for her achievements as architect, educator and writer, while artist Mona Hatoum, whose works take on an architectural scale, was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in recognition of her significant contribution to architecture.
Over the last couple of years, terraces have become an important part of urban life, acting as a refuge, a space for enjoyment and gathering, for contemplation or as an outdoor workspace. As a result of periods of confinement around the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, these outdoor spaces where people can exercise, connect with nature, study or work, have become particularly popular with those living in large cities.
Scandinavian interiors and products have had an affinity with design excellence for the better part of a century. Although the local landscape is one of doubtless natural beauty, it remains frustratingly covered in darkness for a large portion of the year.
Tsz Yan Ng is a Michigan-based firm principal, professor, researcher, and artist whose interdisciplinary and collaborative work seeks to challenge and improve upon modern fabrication and manufacturing practices. “We haven’t changed the way we build in so long,” Ng said. “We need to think of it more productively—not just economically—but as a collection of different voices. Architecture is a global ecosystem of people, where the sum is greater than the parts.”
What is success to you might be different to how the architecture industry views success.
One thing is certain: Everyone wants and deserves more. And to have more, you have to learn how.
I am not here to discuss philosophical concepts behind our drive as architects to be better or have more. I am here to promote a better life for architects. More recognition, more clients, more awards, more money.
Maybe you are happy where you are, maybe you struggle, but either way all of us could benefit from knowing what to do to improve the state of our careers.
Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Tate Modern’s Switch House was Tate Modern’s latest extension in 2016, radical in form and surface, yet intimately relative to the vast building to which it joins, which opened as London’s foremost modern art gallery in 2000. Shot recently by Bahaa Ghoussainy, the building that opened in 2016, is a model for museums in the 21st century.
Nordic Structures. Image Courtesy of Quebec Wood Export Bureau
Offsite construction is a fast-growing sector within the global building construction industry. With that growth, many challenges lie ahead for all parties involved, especially architects, who have traditionally remained at arm’s length to the means and methods of construction. Cost challenges have led many firms to want to learn more about optimizing for offsite delivery methods. To help speed up industry transformation, a cooperative and open-source initiative led by the Quebec Wood Export Bureau has been developing a suite of nonprofit and collaborative tools for architects. At www.offsitewood.org, they offer a free Revit plugin, detailed content packs, and a BIM-integrated early-phase embodied carbon estimator called Carbon Fixers.
In this powerful new visual from Spirit of Space, we are introduced to Ricardo Bofill’s headquarters ‘The Factory’ or La Fábrica, Taller de Arquitectura. Once a disused and decaying cement factory from the turn of the century, with 30 silos, machine room, and galleries, it is now a significant transformative project, satisfying the Architect's longing for space via adaptive reuse.
A haven in the urban sprawl, engulfed by a floury of palm, olive, and eucalyptus trees. Spirit of Space visits the former hive of activity, now a tranquil mid-city refuge, an immense contrast to the industrial grime that used to reside here. Through moving pictures and multi-sensory experiences it explores the Brutalist form; a concrete shell… a skeleton intertwined with nature itself.
Fazlur Rahman Khan was a pioneer in the structural engineering of tall buildings. After buildings exceed sixty stories height, gravity loads account for a smaller proportion of structural weight than wind loads. Khan developed the tubed truss tower design to stiffen the building at taller heights without adding significant weight. The tube design had the added consequence of pushing the structure out to the exterior of the building to become part of its architectural expression. However, the acceptance of visible steel trusses was a slow process that parallels the acceptance of engineering infrastructure like bridges as aesthetic productions. This video traces a lineage of this process from Eiffel — who’s pylon designs look much like the Hancock Tower — to today.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights competition-winning projects submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From large scale urban developments to interventions in the landscape, from housing projects to educational spaces and commercial buildings, this article showcases a variety of design approaches, programs and scales. The proposals featured are the results of local and international competitions, either creative concepts or projects currently in progress.
The competition-winning entries include a range of different projects, designed by both new practices and established firms. are a few of this week's highlights. A "city within a city" urban development in Ukraine, an EV station design in Canada that reinterprets the traditional typology of highway rest areas, a sustainable housing block in Finland and a clubhouse in the landscape of New Zealand are some of this week's highlights.
Indiana University inaugurated a new shared facility for the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, which materializes a recently rediscovered design by Mies van der Rohe. The 1952 project intended for a fraternity house on the same IU Bloomington campus was entrusted to New York-based firm Thomas Phifer and Partners to be adapted to contemporary building codes and its current academic function while preserving the intended architectural aesthetic. The two-storey, 930 square meter building has officially opened to students and faculty.
Capturing an image has become spontaneous and immediate. While mobile photography maintains quality, it loses the ritual of taking a picture, i.e. thinking about an image while walking through a new city or the framing possibilities for a building from your point of view. In short, each image is the result of focus, aperture, exposure and the characteristics of the space. Travelling with a 35mm camera sets your limits, some say it is the closest lens to the human eye, others say it is too narrow to capture a building from the outside, but no doubt it all depends on your judgement and the capabilities of the equipment at your disposal.
Marta Minujín, Parthenon of Books, Dokumenta 14, Kassel, Germany, 2017. Image by Anne-Catrin Schultz.. Image Courtesy of Real and Fake in Architecture–Close to the Original, Far from Authenticity?
The term “fake” has been in the media frequently in the early 21st century, referring to headlines and fictional statements that are perceived as real and are influencing public opinion and action. Replacing the historically more common term “propaganda,” fake news aims at misinformation and strives to “damage an agency, entity, or person, and/or gain financially or politically, often using sensationalist, dishonest, or outright fabricated headlines.” Tracing fake news and differentiating “real” information from personal opinions and identifying intentional (or unintentional) deceit can be complicated. It is similarly complex to trace the duality of fake and real in the built world. To explore the larger context of fake statements in architecture and environmental design, a look at the definition of fake and related terms might be necessary.
Recently, the Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times about the causes of unaffordable housing in New York City. He blamed the crisis on a few things, including a powerful financial “monoculture” in the city, NIMBYs, and the city itself blocking new construction. That last element, however—that the city blocks new construction—is an increasingly popular myth that needs examination.
The clothes used by nomadic peoples in the desert (Bedouins, Berbers, Tuareg, among others) are usually dark, long and made of heavy fabric. Contrary to common sense, which would recommend light, pale and short clothes for a hot climate; heavy and loose clothing favors air convection, creating a constant flow of air along the body, providing thermal comfort in arid climates. For buildings, the analogy works. When approaching energy efficiency and project performance, we will inevitably talk about its envelope, among other aspects of the project. A successful solution in one location, will not always be efficient in another.
During the last 2 years we have created a series of articles on wellness and sustainability focused on the construction industry. But how do projects, according to their demands and context, apply the solutions to make them, in fact, efficient and perform well?
Skating and ice rinks combine temperature, atmosphere and structure together. Between sports and leisure, these spaces are designed around experience and time as some of the most interactive public spaces. As an architecture of recreation and play, skating centers also host a variety of sports. Today, the architecture of skating encompasses a range of programs and formal approaches that define some of the most iconic and social activities.
A corridor that is too narrow, a poorly located switch or a simple unevenness can go completely unnoticed to many, but they can also be insurmountable barriers for someone with a disability. We all have a family member or acquaintance with mobility difficulties and, possibly, we might also experience them at some point in our lives. Architecture has the power to create truly inclusive spaces so that people with disabilities can have the autonomy to perform all necessary daily tasks, without needing the help of others. Integrated into architecture, technology can play an important role in this context, making the spaces in which we live even more accessible to everyone.
Architecture collective AKT and Hermann Czech will be collaborating on the concept and design of the Austrian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. Titled "Beteiligung / Participation", the pavilion will be temporarily converted into a social experiment that explores themes such as public vs. private, accessible vs. inaccessible, and communal vs. individual through architectural interventions. The 18th International Architecture Exhibition will be held from May 20th until November 26th, 2023.
Seven decades after designing Lever House, SOM returns to the iconic modernist building to resume its restoration, continuing its long-lasting stewardship of the project. SOM previously revisited the building in 2001, restoring its façade using high-performance materials while preserving the original architectural image. This time, the intervention concerns the ground floor and the third level terrace, as well as the mechanical systems, to significantly improve the building’s energy performance. When complete in 2023, the renovation will become an important example of extending the life of the midcentury built environment.
Big cities and the troubled routine of urban life increasingly reveal the need for moments of relaxation aimed at physical and mental health. This concern has become more evident after the long quarantine periods of the Covid-19 pandemic, when disconnecting from routine became even more difficult. Thus, in recent years, more and more people have been looking for activities and places that provide this rest.
.jpg?1645882224 "design for Houston Ismaili Centre . Image Courtesy of Farshid Moussavi Architects")
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.jpg?1646040749 "SOM Explores Future Timber Construction Methods at the 2021 Chicago Biennial. Image © Kendall McCaugherty © Hall+Merrick Photographers")
.jpg?1646040755 "SOM Explores Future Timber Construction Methods at the 2021 Chicago Biennial. Image © Kendall McCaugherty © Hall+Merrick Photographers")
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.jpg?1645540015 "La Fábrica, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Image Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill")
.jpg?1645655249 "Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill")
_%C2%A9_Richard_Powers.jpg?1645655222 "La Fábrica, Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. Image © Richard Powers")
.jpg?1645655255 "Courtesy of Ricardo Bofill")
.jpg?1645781972 "Green field Factory of Karupannya Rangpur Ltd., by Nakshabid Architects. Image © Junaid Hasan Pranto")
.jpg?1645781751 "Red Deer College Polytechnic Student Residence, by Reimagine Architects Ltd. . Image © Cooper & O'Hara")
.jpg?1645782629 "Huaira, by Diana Salvador - Javier Mera. Image © jagstudio")
