Cities have always been a stage for transformations. The directions, the flows, the different ways of using the spaces, the desires, all change and give way to new places and needs. Such richness provides the city with an innovative and mutable character, but it also implies demand for more flexible architecture in terms of the functional program and structure. Especially during the past year, we have witnessed - at breakneck speed - great changes in the cities and urban spaces. The pandemic brought new paradigms that suddenly disrupted long-established norms. Houses became offices, offices became deserts, hotels turned into health facilities, and stadiums turned into hospitals. Meanwhile, architecture has had to reveal its flexibility to support purposes that could not be foreseen. This adaptability seems to have become the key to creating spaces that are coherent with our current lifestyle and the speed of modern times.

If you haven't seen Respect, I highly recommend it. The Liesl Tommy-directed biographical film based on the life of American singer Aretha Franklin visually takes us back to the 1960s through a successful set work. Here, Production Designer, Ina Mayhew had the job of creating a series of locations where color palettes undoubtedly evoke more than emotions: Her suburban home from her childhood in Detroit, the sassy jazz clubs of New York City, her luxurious Upper West Side apartment, and finally her ultramodern home in Los Angeles.

At Architects, not Architecture, we believe it’s safe to say that almost everyone who has studied architecture in the last 50 years has come across The Salk Institute designed by architect Louis Kahn. While it does not always reflect in their works, our speakers have shared their little stories on how this modernist gem built in1963 played a role in their life. And since we just started our second Virtual World Tour on October 13th, 2021 we thought we’d share a few stories from last events.

Videos

Models are useful to architects for all sorts of things, from the earliest parts of the design, all the way to marketing a building after it's built. But, what is it about models that makes them such an important and powerful tool? And, how do different architecture firms incorporate them into their own and unique design process? This video explores these questions by surveying three firms: Morphosis, MVRDV, and Herzog and de Meuron. Often firms have model shops and dedicated model teams who are responsible for everything from early design decisions to critical client presentations and even marketing the building. We hear from the folks who work in these model shops and breakdown how the three case study firms approach models in their own unique way.

The word “furniture” derives from the Old French, forneture, which means the act of supplying, from fournir. But it is only in the English language that this word is used to refer to elements of the house such as chairs, tables, shelves, etc. French and other Romance languages, as well as German, use variants of the word meubles, which derives from the Latin mobilia, meaning "things that move." While the English spelling impels a meaning of utility, languages that take the Latin root “mobilia” bring to the word a sense of freedom and possibility. But furniture does not always carry this versatility and flexibility in its creation, and generally, staticity and monofunctionality better characterize the furniture we know. The Gregory seating system is an example of how furniture can provide functionality, but also combine beauty and flexibility.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation - TCLF has awarded Julie Bargmann, founder of landscape architecture firm D.I.R.T. Studio, with the first ever Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a distinguished award bestowed on designers who are “exceptionally talented, creative, courageous, and visionary, with a significant body of built work that exemplifies the art of landscape architecture.”

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UNStudio has revealed the design for Project H1, a tech-assisted masterplan for a 10-minute neighbourhood in Seoul that would cater to the digital economy. The project transforms an industrial site and railyard into a dense mixed-use urban environment containing all the amenities of contemporary living within a 10-minute walk. This pedestrian-friendly, diverse neighbourhood is complemented by a digital infrastructure developed by UNSense, providing a framework for managing energy production and consumption, local food production, and the shared use of communal spaces.

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Argentina is positioned in the extreme south and southwest of South America and given its extension, it has a multiplicity of climates and differences in the incidence of sunlight. These conditions led many architecture professionals to think about pergolas to generate transitional spaces between the interior and exterior of the homes that allow meeting the needs of its inhabitants by creating shaded, meeting and resting spaces in the open air.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

On a recent day in Santa Monica, California, visitors sat in the shaded courtyard outside City Hall East waiting for appointments. One of them ate a slice of the orange she’d picked from the tree above her and contemplated the paintings, photographs, and assemblages on the other side of the glass. The exhibit, Lives that Bind, featured local artists’ expressions of erasure and underrepresentation in Santa Monica’s past. It’s part of an effort by the city government to use the new soon-to-be certified Living Building (designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners) as a catalyst for building a community that is environmentally, socially, and economically self-sustaining.

Singapore has emerged as a global design center. As a city-state and island country in Southeast Asia, the Lion City is home to a new class of high-rise buildings, gardens and iconic landmarks. While the design world is familiar with structures like the Safdie's Jewel Changi Airport or OMA's Interlace, Singapore has also built a range of new public and civic buildings alongside extensive land reclamation projects.

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The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced its longlist of best new homes in the United Kingdom for the year 2021. The jury, which includes Architect and Chair Amin Taha, Co-founder of Ash Sakula Architects Cany Ash, and RIBA House of the Year 2019 winner Kieran McGonigle, have selected 20 newly-built houses or extensions that feature imaginative and innovative residential typologies that cater to the environment and their users.

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The winning proposal for redesigning Thessaloniki’s ConfEx fairground features a series of pavilions with large overhanging roofs that float within a park, creating the infrastructure for international events while providing locals with a robust public space. Designed by Sauerbruch Hutton, together with Gustafson Porter + Bowman as landscape architects and Elena Stavropoulou, the project builds on the existing network of landmarks creating a new hybrid landscape that caters to the Northern Greek city’s goal of becoming the region’s primary business and tourist attraction.

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After receiving Paulo Mendes da Rocha's complete collection in 2020, Casa da Arquitectura - Portuguese Center for Architecture, based in the city of Matosinhos, has just received Lucio Costa's estate. The donation was made by the family of the Brazilian architect and urban planner and includes about eleven thousand documents produced between 1910 and 1998.

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Mexican firm Tatiana Bilbao Estudio has unveiled Botániqo, its new project in collaboration with the Ecuadorian firm Uribe Schwarzkopf in Quito, Ecuador. With over 12,000 km2, the project will cede 4,000 km2 to create a new transportation hub expected to service over 60,000 people per day, in addition to the creation of green space around the residential units.

In Metropolis this week, author Annie Howard explores Chicago's Architecture Biennial, which opened to the public on September 17th, showcasing a series of 15 site-specific interventions. Arguing that "a tour of the Damen Silos and a celebration of the Wall of Respect show a biennial struggling to achieve longer-term engagement with the city it calls home", the editor questions how much work is needed in order to make the city fully usable to its residents.

Renovating a space for a gastronomic purpose can be one of the most interesting challenges for an architect, due to the freedom of design that tends to characterize these projects. It allows us to play with cladding materials, lighting, and furnishings to create unique spaces that are both attractive and functional for both the restaurant team and the diners.

We dived into our project library to select 5 restaurants that took advantage of their renovations and complexities to create distinctive spaces, presented by ICEX e Interiors from Spain.

A "symbolic interpretation of the flow of movement", Calatrava’s design for the UAE Pavilion at the 2020 Expo Dubai is a 15,000 square meters immersive and multisensory experience. Images recently shot by Stephane Aboudaram highlight a structure of 28 automated cantilevered wings, that open and rotate at a range of 110 and 125 degrees. Moreover, these photos also show a central skylight, that mimics the logo of this year’s expo.

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Solar technology has enormous potential, but it has been underutilized. To get an idea of just how underutilized it is, consider that every 24 hours the amount of sunlight that hits the Earth could provide energy for the entire planet for 24 years. Of course, it is necessary to collect it properly, through photovoltaic systems. With the climate crisis increasingly present in our daily lives, causing growing concerns about obtaining energy from renewable sources and reducing carbon emissions, using the sun's possibilities to generate clean energy seems to be a path of no return. But there are still some difficulties that reduce its use, such as obtaining economical solar products, aesthetics, availability of these products, regulations, and even installation issues.

Building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPVs, offer the design and construction industry solutions to typical challenges that hinder adoption of solar energy. Below, we list the main challenges of incorporating solar energy into projects and how they can be overcome.

Homebuilding company Lennar and construction technologies company ICON are collaborating with BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group to build the largest community of 3D-printed homes to date. The 100-home neighborhood in Austin is expected to break ground in 2022 and will combine ICON’s innovative robotics, software, and advanced materials with BIG's designs.