Former ArchDaily's Managing Editor. BA in Architecture from Newcastle University, and interested in how overlooked elements of architectural culture —from the media to competitions to procurement processes can alter the designs we end up with.
Developed by Choi+Shine Architects, the BIT Light is a magnetic modular lighting system that offers endless configuration possibilities which can be arranged, deconstructed and rearranged in seconds. The system's main component is the "BIT", a linear lighting element comprised of an LED light source in a translucent polycarbonate tube that provides both protection and structural support. At each end of the BIT are conductor pads which join magnetically to the small nickel connecting elements, offering infinite possibilities for arrangement either as a flat wall-mounted lighting element, a suspended configuration, or even as a self-supporting three-dimensional lighting structure.
Last week, Frank Gehry inaugurated his first building in Australia, with the formal opening of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS). As his first in the country, the building therefore offers an opportunity for a whole new corner of the world to weigh in with their opinions on the polarizing style of the world's foremost love-him-or-hate-him architect.
The resulting media flurry has provided a number of entertaining responses, both positive and negative. After the break, we round up some of the most amusing.
In the cities of the Arctic Circle, dramatic change is afoot. The region faces challenges most obviously from environmental change, but economic and cultural challenges also lie ahead, thanks to factors such as the decline of the mining and fishing industries that supported many of the Arctic's settlements, and the rapid modernization among Northern indigenous communities. In an interesting article for Metropolis Magazine, Samuel Medina takes a long look at the architects and urbanists who are making a difference in a context where "Architecture can’t really survive" - from the SALT Festival which celebrates the culture of the Arctic communities, to the plan to move the entire city of Kiruna two miles to the East, the article is a fascinating look at the extreme architecture of this hostile region. Read the article in full here.
Just over two years have passed since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Thanks to an 89% vote by Sandy Hook's residents in favor of demolishing the old building the site now sits empty - awaiting the construction of Svigals + Partners' design for a replacement building which is not only tasked with being a high level teaching facility, but also with sensitively addressing the collective trauma which inevitably remains a part of the site's history.
With such a challenging history to the site, how is it possible to balance the emotional needs of a community with the functional needs of an educational institution? We spoke to Jay Brotman AIA, a partner at Svigals, to find out.
Wood Design and Building Magazine has announced the winners of its 2014 Wood Awards. Run in partnership with the Canadian Wood Council, this year the awards included for the first time an international awards category in addition to the North America awards. With 166 submissions, the 24 awarded projects were selected by a jury consisting of Larry McFarland (Principle, McFarland Marceau Architects), Brigitte Shim (Principle, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects) and Keith Boswell (Technical Partner, SOM).
"The Wood Design Awards showcases exceptional wood buildings that not only display the unique qualities of wood, but also serve to inspire other designers who may not initially think of wood as the material of choice," said Theresa Rogers, Editor of Wood Design & Building magazine. "The calibre of projects submitted displayed a mature sense of design that either paid homage to older building techniques or completely reinvented the conventional way of thinking about building envelope and design," added Etienne Lalonde, the Canadian Wood Council's Vice-President of Market Development.
As one of the most ubiquitous forms of construction, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the humble brick. However, this prosaic building method can also be one of the most versatile materials available to architects, thanks to the experimentation of countless architects who, for centuries, have worked to create new forms of expression with the simple material. In this round up, we celebrate architects who, with their architectural classics, have expanded the possibilities of brick craft: Antoni Gaudí's fantastical vaulting at Colònia Güell and Alvar Aalto's experimental brick patterning at his house in Muuratsalo; the powerful brick piers of Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo's Knights of Columbus Building and the Catalan vaults of Porro, Garatti and Gattardi's National Arts School of Cuba; and finally, what brick round up would be complete without the brick-whisperer himself - Louis Kahn and his all-brick fortress for the Indian Institute of Management.
In their fifth annual "Game Changers" survey, Metropolis Magazine sought to uncover the visionaries who have the potential to make waves in design and architecture. Profiling six of design's "foremost forward-looking talents," the list includes Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine, the filmmaking duo whose "Living Architectures" series takes a sideways glance at some of the world's most celebrated buildings; Amy Mielke and Caitlin Gucker-Kanter Taylor, whose work as Water Pore Partnershiptopped BIG and The Living for Holcim's North America Award; and finally Aggregate, a collaborative of architecture historians who are rethinking the way we do architecture theory. For the full list and profiles of all those featured on it, head on over to Metropolis Magazine.
Update: Last week, Hadid and the New York Review of Books agreed to a settlement agreement, with Hadid accepting the apology of the New York Review of Books and, in conjunction with the settlement, donating an undisclosed sum of money to a labor rights charity. You can read the full joint statement at the end of this article.
For those that follow the ins and outs of architectural criticism, it will have been hard to miss the news this week that Zaha Hadid is suing the New York Review of Books, claiming that the critical broadside launched by Martin Fuller against Hadid in his review of Rowan Moore's book Why We Build was not only defamatory but also unrepresentative of the content of the book. Hadid's lawyers demanded a retraction of the review, which they claimed had caused Hadid "severe emotional and physical distress."
Hadid's lawsuit did manage to elicit an apology from Filler, but probably not the one she was hoping for: Filler posted a retraction admitting that his review confused the number of deaths involved in all construction in Qatar in 2012-13 (almost 1,000) with the number of deaths on Hadid's own Al Wakrah stadium (exactly zero). However, much of Filler's comments criticizing Hadid's cold attitude to conditions for immigrant workers in Qatar remain unaddressed.
Throughout the week, a number of other critics took this opportunity to pile more criticism on Hadid, unanimously agreeing that the lawsuit was a bad idea. Read on after the break to see the six reasons they gave explaining why.
Once again, Chinese company WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co has expanded the capabilities of 3D printing. After constructing ten houses in under twenty-four hours last year, now they are back with both the world's tallest 3D printed building - a five-story apartment block - and a 1,100 square meter mansion with internal and external decoration to boot.
On display in Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu province, the two buildings represent new frontiers for 3D printed construction, finally demonstrating its potential for creating more traditional building typologies and therefore its suitability for use by mainstream developers.
Videos
Collège Mixte Le Bon Berger. Image Courtesy of Architecture for Humanity
In the introduction to Architecture for Humanity’s 2006 book Design Like You Give a Damn, founder Cameron Sinclair recounts a story from the early days of the organization. Half-joking yet deadly serious, he describes the day when, while still running Architecture for Humanity from a single cell phone around his day job at Gensler, he was contacted by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who told him that Architecture for Humanity was on a list of organizations that might be able to help a potential refugee crisis in Afghanistan should the US retaliate in the wake of September 11.
“I hope it’s a long list,” says Sinclair. “No,” comes the answer.
“We’d like to think it was because we had already become a voice for humanitarian design - an unexpected touchstone in the movement for socially conscious architecture,” writes Sinclair of the incident. “The sad truth is that until 1999, when our fledgling organization got started along with a handful of others, there was no easily identifiable design resource for shelter after disaster.”
Videos
Courtesy of IAAC Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
Students at the Digital Matter Intelligent Constructions studio at Barcelona's Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia have created a composite facade material of clay and hydrogel, which is capable of cooling building interiors by up to 6 degrees centigrade. Entitled Hydroceramic, the material utilizes the ability of hydrogel to absorb up to 500 times its own weight in water to create a building system that "becomes a living thing as part of nature and not outside of it."
Read on after the break for more on how Hydroceramic works.
At their Windows 10 Event today in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft unveiled features for its forthcoming operating system that it feels could revolutionize computing, particularly for people who want to design, make or fix something in the real world: holographics. The company revealed both the Windows Holographic features that will be built into Windows 10 and HoloLens, an in-house designed headset that will be capable of placing holographic elements into the world around you - think of it as a combination of the flat augmented reality overlay in Google Glass, and the immersive yet virtual-only presentation of Oculus Rift.
The video trailer above shows the far-reaching implications for a variety of designers, both professional and amateur (including a nod to the architecture profession at the 50-second mark), with TechCrunch explaining how the technology "offers a way for architects to survey and present their designs alongside clients even when separated by great distances."
London practice Avery Associates Architects has unveiled their designs for No.1 Undershaft, a 270-metre tall office tower directly adjacent to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners' Cheesegrater in the City of London's central skyscraper cluster. The building is currently planned to be the tallest in this cluster and the second-tallest in London (after the Shard) - notwithstanding an as-yet-unrevealed plan for the site of the scrapped Pinnacle project which could potentially supersede it.
Update: on February 26th 2015, Architecture for Humanity released a statement officially announcing their bankruptcy proceedings. View the full statement at the end of this article.
As reported by SFGate, on January 1st Architecture for Humanity laid off all staff and closed its Head Office in San Francisco. Although there has been no official statement from the organization, the news has been widely circulated, with Architecture for Humanity founders Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr issuing a statement saying that they are "deeply saddened" by the news, and urging the organization's other chapters around the world "to continue their much needed work."
As uncovered by Curbed, construction workers at Rafael Viñoly's 1,396 foot (426 meter) tall 432 Park Avenue were served with a full stop work order last week by the New York City Department of Buildings, after an 8 foot (2.4 meter) long section of steel pipework was dropped from a construction hoist on the building's 81st floor.
The Pritzker Prize has announced that Richard Rogers will join the ranks as the latest member of its prestigious jury. Rogers, a Pritzker Laureate himself in 2007, is known for his innovative High-Tech style, establishing his name in the 1970s and 80s with buildings such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris and Lloyds of London. Since then, he has also become known for his advocacy in a range of urban issues, being commissioned by the UK Government to produce a report on British cities entitled "Towards an Urban Renaissance," and for his active role in politics as a member of the House of Lords.
Firewheel Town Center / David M Schwarz Architects. Image via news.nd.edu
Washington DC-based architect David M Schwarz has been selected as the recipient of the University of Notre Dame's 2015 Richard H. Driehaus Prize, which honors an architect whose work represents "the highest ideals of traditional and classical architecture in contemporary society." In a press release from the University of Notre Dame, Schwarz is credited for his "belief in humanism that emphasizes pedestrian-friendly and socially active architecture," and praised for his "historically informed designs create lively public environments that meet the needs of diverse audiences."
Most contemporary architects probably don't spend too long thinking about stained glass in their everyday practice - and for the "art glass" industry, that's becoming a big problem. In a fascinating article for the Wall Street Journal, Timothy W Martin carefully examines an industry that has been in decline for decades, ever since glass designer Kenneth von Roenn warned them in a 1970s conference speech that it was "time to jump ship" and diversify from their work in religious buildings.
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.jpg?1423060278 "Timber Dentistry (Mino Osaka, Japan) / Kohki Hiranuma Architect & Associates. Image © Satoshi Shigeta")
.jpg?1423060325 "Refuge on the Bay of Fundy (Red Bank Farm, Hants County, NS) / Dalhousie School of Architecture Free Lab Students, led by Talbot Sweetapple. Image © William Green")
.jpg?1423060289 "Wood Innovation Design Centre (Prince George, BC) / Michael Green Architecture. Image © Ema Peter")
.jpg?1423060222 "Vineyard Schmidt at the Lake of Constance (Hattnau 62, Germany) / Ludescher + Lutz | Architekten. Image © Elmar Ludescher")
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