Simon Allford has been elected for the highest position in UK architecture, as the next President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Taking over the two-year presidential starting 1 September 2021, Allford, founding director of AHMM, will succeed to Alan Jones.
Exhibit Columbus has announced the new 2020-21 theme, as well as the J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize recipients. As an exploration of architecture, art, design, and community, the programming is meant to activate the design legacy of Columbus, Indiana through free, public exhibitions. The symposium and exhibition cycle explores the future of the center of the United States and the regions connected by the Mississippi Watershed.
Density has long been an essential consideration for architects and urban planners, yet its importance has only increased as the world’s urban population skyrockets and cities become denser and denser. For much of the history of urban planning, this term has been plagued with negative associations: overcrowding, poverty, lack of safety, and so-called ‘slums.’ The garden city movement, initiated by Ebenezer Howard in 1898, sought to remedy these ills by advocating for greenbelts and anti-density planning. Le Corbusier’s Radiant City is one of the most well-known urban plans building from these ideals. Yet in the 1960’s, sociologist Jane Jacobs famously overturned these long influential urban planning concepts: she pointed out that density of buildings was not identical to overcrowding of people; suggested that some highly dense urban areas, like her neighborhood in Greenwich Village, were safer and more attractive than nearby garden city projects; and highlighted how America’s conception of ‘slums’ were often rooted in anti-immigrant and anti-Black ideologies. Density is not inherently bad, she suggested, but it has to be done well. Today, we continue to grapple with the question of how to design for our increasingly dense cities – how do we keep them open, but simultaneously private? Free, but controlled when necessary? In particular, how do we keep them safe – both from crime and, in the age of COVID-19, disease?
Interiors are taking center stage in 2020, as more people are spending more time at home. Architects and designers are increasingly aware of their responsibility in improving their clients’ well-being and even helping them in the prevention of diseases, as they search for the best solutions for their interior design projects.
ArchDaily’s featured monthly topic for March was dedicated to Interiors and the articles related to this topic accumulated over 1 million pageviews, surpassing by 240% the number of pageviews achieved in other months in the same semester.
This article is part of "Eastern Bloc Architecture: 50 Buildings that Defined an Era", a collaborative series by The Calvert Journal and ArchDaily highlighting iconic architecture that had shaped the Eastern world. Every week both publications will be releasing a listing rounding up five Eastern Bloc projects of certain typology. Read on for your weekly dose: Communist Culture and Socialist Sports.
The ICONIC AWARDS 2020: Innovative Architecture, organized by the German Design Council, honor the best architecture and design solutions internationally. This year’s winners have now been announced and can set themselves clearly apart from their competitors thanks to their title. The special awards, were presented to Kengo Kuma and Associates (“Architects of the Year”) and Alberto Caiola Studio (“Interior Designers of the Year”). The “Architects’ Client of the Year” honor went to Adidas AG.
If we define deconstructivism, it literally translates to the breaking down, or demolishing of a constructed structure, whether it being for structural reasons or just an act of rebellion. It is perhaps for this reason that many misunderstand the Deconstructivist movement.
Deconstructivism is, in fact, not a new architecture style, nor is it an avant-garde movement against architecture or society. It does not follow “rules” or acquire specific aesthetics, nor is it a rebellion against a social dilemma. It is the unleashing of infinite possibilities of playing around with forms and volumes.
CRA - Carlo Ratti Associati has unveiled a major extension for Brazilia, reinterpreting “Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist master plan for Biotic - a high-tech innovation district immersed in nature”. Developed in collaboration with Ernst&Young, the project that started in 2018 reimagines primarily the superblocks.
MAD Architects has just released its design for the Wormhole Library, a curved structure that serves as a multi-functional building, allowing visitors to read, enjoy the sea views and attend open-air performances. Located on the coast in Haikou, Hainan Province in China, the “wormhole” pavilion is now under construction and is expected to be completed in 2021.
MASS Design Group has published a COVID-19 design guide for Senior Housing. Made by the firm's Design Response team, it includes strategies and best practices for retrofitting and upgrading existing buildings. The guide aims to help senior housing developers and operators as they work to manage infection control while balancing social and cultural needs with emerging research on the coronavirus.
Safety and design are not mutually exclusive - especially when you choose EGGER products with certified antibacterial surface property. The wood-based materials manufacturer makes it easy for architects and fabricators in their projects with high hygiene requirements: the antibacterial property is included in products with the proven EGGER decor and material combination.
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New Generations is a European platform that analyses the most innovative emerging practices at the European level, providing a new space for the exchange of knowledge and confrontation, theory, and production. Since 2013, New Generations has involved more than 300 practices in a diverse program of cultural activities, such as festivals, exhibitions, open calls, video-interviews, workshops, and experimental formats.
Whether built, written or drawn, the work of American architect, theorist and educator Peter Eisenman (born 11th August 1932) is characterized by Deconstructivism, with an interest in signs, symbols and the processes of making meaning always at the foreground.
Foster + Partners has revealed visuals for its Pitt Street OSD and metro station design in Sydney, Australia. Stretching out underground across an entire city block, the over station development in the center of the city puts in place a 39-story office building and “creates a vibrant mixed-use hub offering flexible space with an elevated lobby and retail plaza in the heart of Sydney’s retail, dining, and entertainment precinct”.
Despite a bad reputation in children's stories, straw buildings can be sustainable, comfortable, and, above all, solid and resistant. Several studies and experiments have been carried out with this agricultural waste substance, qualifying it as an potential material for the construction of walls, with good thermal, acoustic, and even structural characteristics. In addition, it is a renewable resource and easily constructed. Below, we'll talk about the characteristics of this material and how much more it would take than the breath of a big bad wolf to bring down a house made of straw.
Hungarian architect Tamás Nagy, Head of the department of architecture at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, has passed away at 69 years old. Born in Csorna in 1951, he worked as an architect in Budapest and New York before establishing his own architectural office. In this tribute, architect Steven Holl remembers the work and life of Tamás.
Malibu Crest, a 2019 remodeling of a 1949 International Style home, was a vital undertaking by the architecture firm Studio Bracket that aimed to expand the structure’s square footage and panoramic views of Malibu while retaining over 50% of the home’s original walls. The project was ultimately successful, not only in its refurbishment of the interior rooms and reconfiguration of the space, but in its enlargement of the windows to truly capture views of the surrounding lagoon and mountains. This expansion of the view was done in part through an open corner window scheme and floor-to-ceiling glass, manufactured by Western Window Systems. The uninterrupted glass walls afforded by this open corner technology is one of the most effective ways that architects can open an interior space to the stunning vistas of a natural environment. Yet an even more striking configuration increasingly being employed by residential architects is that of the open corner sliding glass door – a system that can even more completely open an interior space to the unobstructed outdoors. Below, we discuss this technology in more detail, alongside several examples of projects using the open corner glass door.
As the COVID-19 global pandemic has unfolded over the last several months, stories of people cooped up in crowded cities and concerned about their future have anecdotally popped up across the internet. When the virus first arrived, it was common for people to escape to their beach-side homes, or to return to their parent’s house for more space and a sprawling yard.
Outdoor dining has proven to be something of a lifeline for restaurants not only in New York but around the country, as indoor dining remains far out of reach at this point in the novel coronavirus crisis. Faced with restrictive mandates, however, architects, planners, and restaurateurs across the U.S. have been forced to come up with creative ways to keep patrons uninfected while assembling aesthetically pleasing outdoor dining areas.
ArchDaily has created a list of best articles, news and projects that address everything you need to know about concrete.
Architectural Education is still largely living in the mid-20th century, where the studio model is both wonderful, limited and alive and well. Students are offered two stark pedagogies: either getting a fine arts education or applying a glorified trade school regimen towards being a technocrat. Artificial Intelligence (AI) might just eliminate architecture as a career for those who are not versed in the things that only humans can do: synthesize, channel, invent, craft. Beyond imitation. By its new nature, architecture could be becoming inhuman.
The series of articles developed by Nikos A. Salingaros, David Brain, Andrés M. Duany, Michael W. Mehaffy and Ernesto Philibert-Petit researches the peculiarities of social housing in Latin America. This time the authors explain a construction strategy through iterative design and the emergence of form.
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.jpg?1597099445 "Parc de la Villette / Bernard Tschumi Architects. Image © Peeradontax | Shutterstock")
