Videos

Dissociating architecture from furniture is almost impossible. As Le Corbusier parking contemporary cars in his project photos suggests, the objects that decorate a domestic space demonstrate the wealth and lifestyle of the user who lives in it. From the moment that humanity ceased to be nomadic, there has existed records of rudimentary furniture. In an excavated site dating from 3,100 to 2,500 BCE, a variety of stone furniture was discovered, from cabinets and beds to stone shelves and seats. Since these early examples, furniture has always been used to express ideas: be it the exclusive and luxurious furniture of Ancient Egypt, meant to demonstrate the power and wealth of the empire, to the functional and simplified designs of the Bauhaus, meant to reconstruct rationality in the world, studying the evolution of furniture design is instrumental to understanding architectural styles.

Nowadays, the advancement of technology and the internet has made changes develop faster and faster, making them even more difficult to assimilate and follow. Furniture follows this trend, be it in the way of designing, manufacturing, or even selling products. Below, we outline some ways in which technology has impacted this field:

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With the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping through the world's urban centers, governments worldwide are urging citizens to hunker down at home in a bid to quell the virus' spread. For apartment dwellers under quarantine, balconies have become the new platforms for entertainment and social interaction, making now an opportune moment in rethinking how we design and build these outdoor urban spaces.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) has just announced the groundbreaking of Platform 16, an office campus in Downtown San Jose, California. Comprising three-buildings, the 1,200,000-square-foot project is an innovative complex that favors indoor and outdoor connections.

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CHYBIK + KRISTOF Architects have unveiled their 3rd prize concept in the competition to design the new Senezh Management Lab campus in Russia. Located in a lakeside town on the outskirts of Moscow, the competition invited teams to propose a site-specific and forward-thinking masterplan for the 82-hectare educational campus. The design was made to rethink Constructivist educational theory and anchor learning in the natural environment.

Videos

Architects, not Architecture decided to open their archive to help us cope with the current situation of not being able to go out as usual and create a source of inspiration and entertainment through sharing one of the unique talks from their previous 35 events, which have never been published before – including those of architects like Daniel Libeskind, Tatiana Bilbao, Sadie Morgan, Peter Cook, Richard Rogers and Massimiliano Fuksas.

Every week, Archdaily will be sharing one of the Architects, not Architecture. talks which they are currently publishing online in the form of daily full-length video uploads as part of their “new event”: Home Edition 2020 (www.architectsnotarchitecture.com).

Americas Society NY in collaboration with Center for Architecture (AIANY) launches a new architecture initiative: IN SITU_Conversations on Architecture and Beyond curated by Agustin Schang and Laura Gonzalez Fierro.

This new series of weekly Instagram posts invites architects and thinkers to contribute their spatial ideas and thoughts around the inside, the outside, and the in-between space(s). In a moment when a large amount of the world population is locked down, forced to negotiate between isolation, interiority, and connectivity in unprecedented ways–we urge to rethink: How are we navigating this crisis spatially? How are we shaping this new everyday experience across the Americas and the world at large? Where is the architecture discipline today, how is it transforming, and how is it going to help shape a better world for the future?

Cities used to be hailed for cultural diversity, with thriving and resonating dynamism. But today, scenes of desperation reigns, as stores are closed, streets rendered lifelessly and -from our homes, we no longer enjoy urban economic vibrancy. As numerous businesses are facing bankruptcy, others realise that -with technology, working 100km or 5km away makes no difference. The coronavirus brought our urban economy to a standstill. The functioning of cities is being re-questioned.  How we react to this crisis will shape the city for decades to come.

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Throughout human history, the movement of populations–in search of food, shelter, or better economic opportunities–has been the norm rather than the exception. Today, however, the world is witnessing unprecedented levels of displacement. The United Nations reports that 68.5 million people are currently displaced from their homes; this includes nearly 25.4 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of eighteen. With conflicts raging on in countries like Syria and Myanmar, and climate change set to lead to increased sea levels and crop failures, the crisis is increasingly being recognised as one of the foundational challenges of the twenty-first century.

While emergency housing has dominated the discourse surrounding displacement in the architecture industry, it is critical for architects and planners to study and respond to the socio-cultural ramifications of population movements. How do we build cities that are adaptive to the holistic needs of fluid populations? How do we ensure that our communities absorb refugees and migrants into their local social fabric?

This World Refugee Day, let’s take a look at 5 shining examples of social infrastructure from around the world–schools, hospitals, and community spaces–that are specifically directed at serving displaced populations.

Paris, just like Milan, is planning on keeping its streets car-free after the coronavirus lockdown. Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced plans to maintain the anti-pollution and anti-congestion measures introduced during the confinement period, as the city reopens.

Paul Clemence has just released his latest photographs of the Studio Gang-designed 11 Hoyt tower in Downtown Brooklyn, New York. Almost completed, the residential development is characterized by an eye-catching crafted precast concrete and glass façade.

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Architecture and design practice Terroir has unveiled a new proposal for the North West Museum and Art Gallery in Burnie, Tasmania. Designed to house both the city's Regional Art Gallery and Museum, the project will be sited along the Bass Highway.As Burnie City Council states, the NWMAG will showcase the region’s natural environment, its history and heritage, as well as the communities shaping the city's future.

It is a student's right to be educated in a safe, healthy, and even aesthetically appealing environment, especially young students for whom these factors are even more important. For example, it has been shown that when the ergonomics of chairs are inadequate, they can greatly affect levels of concentration and the development of skills such as calligraphy. At the same time, the effectiveness of traditional teaching methods is increasingly being questioned and the quality of alternative methodologies increasingly being considered. In other articles, we discussed in more detail the design of Montessori schools and the atmosphere of Waldorf interiors.

Today, we will cover the importance of choosing furniture and address some aspects to consider when organizing them in classroom design for the schools of the future.

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Born on the 5th of May 1944 in what was at the time the French Protectorate of Morocco, French architect Christian de Portzamparc had doubts about continuing with architecture while studying in the 1960s, questioning modernist ideals and the discipline's lack of freedom compared to art. Instead, he spent a decade attempting to understand the role of architecture, before returning triumphantly with a new model of iterative urban design that emphasized open neighborhoods based around landmark "poles of attraction" and a varied series of high-profile commissions that combine a sense of purpose and place.

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The digitization of production and technological resources linked to the development of increasingly sophisticated tools has a direct impact on the contemporary practice of architecture and urbanism. Thinking about cities and buildings based on the digital assumption provides great possibilities for innovation in terms of design, optimization of resources and processes, improvement in performance and monitoring the maintenance of work, among other aspects. Many tools are already available, ranging from artificial intelligence to 3D printing, through various devices that change the paradigms of the profession and demand a new attitude when designing.

Dear architects,

When we started this project 15 years ago, we knew that the expansion of cities would become the biggest challenge for humanity, and that architects, with better access to knowledge, had the ability to radically improve the quality of life of billions of people. That is why we envisioned ArchDaily as a global source of inspiration, knowledge, and tools to help architects face this challenge. Our carefully curated, unbiased, categorized database of projects, materials and knowledge, paired with a stream of globally diverse content, now serves more than 650,000 people every day.

As our industry is on the verge of a rapid digital transformation, it is our responsibility to understand how technology will integrate inspiration, product sourcing, project delivery, construction and even the management of the life cycle of buildings, enabling architects to do more and better, in an efficient and sustainable way, to face the big challenges ahead. 

That is why we are happy to share the news that we are joining Architonic, the largest database of curated products, to expand both our value propositions for the architecture and interior design world.

In a predominately urban world that constantly has to deal with complex problems such as waste generation, water scarcity, natural disasters, air pollution, and even the spread of disease, it is impossible to ignore the impact of human activity on the environment. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and it is urgent that we find ways to slow down the process, at the very least. Toward this end, our production, consumption, and construction habits will have to change, or climate change and environmental degradation will continue to diminish the quality and duration of our lives and that of future generations.

Although they seem intangible and distant, these various energy inefficiencies and waste issues are much closer than we can imagine, present in the buildings we use on a daily basis. As architects, this problem is further amplified as we deal daily with design decisions and material specifications. In other words, our decisions really do have a global impact. How can we use design to create a healthier future for our world?

P&T Architects and Engineers have designed a free zone development, “dedicated to the growing e-commerce market in the Middle East”. Entitled Dubai CommerCity, the award-winning project puts in place three main clusters spread over 530,000 square meters: business, logistics, and social.

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Carmelina&Aurelio Architecture Studio based in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas in Mexico, released a book with architectural illustrations to color. The book in PDF format is available on their website for free and consists of eight letter-size pages. Read on for the featured projects as well as examples of color palettes for further inspiration.

Videos

Slovak Architect Vladimír Dedeček passed away on April 29, 2020 at the age of 91. Over the course of his career, he created a portfolio of over 100 projects, ranging from private homes to large modernist complexes. Known for his monumental and controversial buildings, Dedeček influenced both regional and international architecture alike.

Can a collective agency, or mind, be traced across the urban condition? And how should we map its effects on the physical matter of our cities? A specific representation of a specific type of ‘home’ is employed as an exercise in defining the impact of a “logic of thinking that is both embodied and distributed, singular and collective.” Hélène Frichot’s proposal for “Noourbanographies” was written as a response to the call for papers of the “Eyes of the City,” well before our domestic interiors became the new public. Looking at the distance between hegemonic collectives and ecologies of subjectivities as space for action, the essay opens up to an articulate range of issues that involve matters of care, diagrammatic thinking and spaces of control.

For the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," (21 December 2019-8 March 2020) ArchDaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies might impact architecture and urban life. The contribution below is part of a series of scientific essays selected through the “Eyes of the City” call for papers, launched in preparation of the exhibitions: international scholars were asked to send their reflection in reaction to the statement by the curators Carlo Ratti Associati, Politecnico di Torino and SCUT, which you can read here.

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This spring semester 2020, architect Wonne Ickx from PRODUCTORA was invited to teach a studio at RICE University in Houston, Texas as the Cullinan Visiting professor. The studio was called 'Pyramid Schemes' and combined an interest in the early XXth Century housing projects by Henri Sauvage, with a project site in Mexico City and an analysis of the related local conditions. The studio started out with quite some travelling forth and back between Houston and Mexico City, including a week-long study trip of the RICE students to Mexico's capital.