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.
With the opening of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale comes a look at the first ever contribution by the Holy See, an exhibition that brings together architects to design chapels that, after the Biennale, can be relocated to sites around the globe.
Located in a wooded area on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore, 10 chapels by architects including Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Smiljan Radic, are joined by the Asplund Chapel by MAP Architects. This 11th structure serves as a prelude to the other chapels, while reflecting on Gunnar Asplund's 1920 design for the Woodland Chapel.
The Adelaide Contemporary is planned to transform the site of the former Royal Adelaide Hospital (oRAH), and will feature exhibition, research, and education spaces situated in a public sculpture park and community meeting place. The museum will also notably host the Gallery of Time, a first-of-its-kind space to exhibit Aboriginal art alongside art from Europe and Asia, inviting visitors to see Australian art in a global context. The six designs are now being displayed in an online gallery created by competition organizer Malcolm Reading Consultants, and in a public exhibition being held in Adelaide at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Hong Kong is a unique city. With its unlikely history as a British Colony, its position as a global hub city, and its spectacular geography, the dense, lively streets of Hong Kong feature a variety of urban phenomena that can't be found anywhere else in the world. In this series of video essays, New Office Works probes the urban character of Hong Kong with stunning depth, uncovering histories and explanations that bring new intrigue to an urban fabric that is, both literally and figuratively, already heavily layered.
The title of the series, Middle Man, references Hong Kong's status as a city that mediates between east and west, calling back to the "compradors" that helped the city to grow in the 19th century by translating for traders—middlemen in the most literal sense. Rooted in this history, the urban environment is not one built on grand schemes or overarching ideals, says New Office Works: "The combination of a growing population and limited land has cultivated an instant-fix mentality. There is neither time nor space for architectural ideologies, only pure pragmatism."
Since the concept of driverless cars first became a serious prospect, a lot of attention has been given to the possibility of their malfunction—if an autonomous vehicle damages property or even harms a human, who is at fault? And, given a worst-case scenario, how should a vehicle's software choose between whose lives it prioritizes, the passenger or the pedestrian? This last question even became the basis for the Moral Machine, an online platform created by the MIT Media Lab that essentially crowdsources public opinion on different variations of the classic trolley problem thought experiment.
However, all of these questions had been considered largely theoretical until last night when, as The New York Times reports, a woman was struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. As a major component of many predictions of futuristic "smart cities," the development and testing of autonomous vehicles hold huge implications for urbanism (ArchDaily has previously covered predictions of major change by car manufacturers and researchers) meaning that this fatal event could have a ripple effect on the development of cities.
At a press conference earlier today, curators of the 2018 Venice Biennale Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects revealed more information about this year's upcoming event, to be hosted from May 26th to November 25th. Building on the thematic concept the duo presented last June—“Freespace”—the event will feature a main exhibition in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini and the Arsenale featuring work by 71 participants, while two Special Sections will feature a total of 29 further participants. Elsewhere, 65 national pavilions will present contributions from around the world, including 7 first-time participants: Antigua & Barbuda, Saudi Arabia, Guatemala, Lebanon, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Holy See.
Kalix, a small town in Northern Sweden, has plans to replace its current bridge over the river in 2019. As part of the process, The Swedish Traffic Administration commissioned Erik Andersson Architects to design an initial study for a bridge that would not only replace the existing bridge's functions, but also add new elements to turn the new bridge into a gathering space and public amenity for the town.
American artist Janet Echelman's latest sculpture is currently on display at Madrid's Plaza Mayor. Titled "1.78 Madrid," the piece is the latest of Echelman's suspended thread sculptures, and the newest piece in her Earth Time Series begun in 2010. On display until February 19th, the piece was unveiled on Friday to mark Madrid's 400th anniversary.
Snøhetta has unveiled its design for "Svart," a hotel for sustainable tourism company Arctic Adventure of Norway. Located within the Arctic Circle, on the edge of Norway's Holandsfjorden fjord at the base of the Svartisen glacier, the building is designed to the "Powerhouse" building standard, a system developed by Snøhetta and a group of collaborators for creating energy-positive sustainable buildings.
UNStudio has won a competition to design a new, 3-kilometer long cable car in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. The cable car's route, which will connect the old city on the south of the river with three locations to the north, will feature a total of six towers which have been designed around an adaptable, asymmetrical structural system intended to mimic the cranes in the city's shipyards. The expected opening date for the cable car is in 2021, with the new transportation system being inaugurated as part of the celebrations of Gothenburg's 400th anniversary.
Around 1 in 7 women in UK architecture practices has experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the past year alone, according to the results of the annual Women in Architecture survey conducted by The Architects' Journal. The poll of nearly 1,500 architects also found that more than half of women have experienced some form of discrimination ranging from bullying to workplace rules that leave them disadvantaged in the same period. The AJ's survey, which in previous years has largely focused on issues such as pay disparity between men and women, focuses this year more broadly on gender discrimination and sexual harassment—a response to the global shift in awareness organized around movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp.
London's Serpentine Gallery has announced Mexican architect Frida Escobedo as the designer for the 2018 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in Hyde Park. Escobedo, known for her work in activating public spaces, will be the youngest architect to have participated in the Serpentine Pavilion program since it began in 2000. Her design features an enclosed courtyard created by two rectangular volumes positioned at an angle. With its interplay of light and water, the design is intended to evoke the sensation of Mexican domestic architecture, while using British materials and containing references to its London context.
Fans of absurd architecture, over-the-top action, and wrestling-stars-turned-beloved-actors are in for a treat this summer thanks to the recently-announced film Skyscraper. The movie’s central character is “The Pearl,” an imagined 1,067-meter-tall skyscraper in Hong Kong—although apparently some guy named “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson” also plays a pretty big role with his character Will Sawyer, a former FBI Hostage Rescue operative who lost a leg in the line of duty and now reviews building security for a living.
The plot, as revealed in the trailer and a single-paragraph synopsis on the official website, sees Will Sawyer criticizing the security of the “vertical city” billed as the tallest, most advanced, and safest building in the world. His concerns are immediately shown to be well-founded, as a group of (what are presumably) terrorists set fire to the 96th floor of the building, trapping Sawyer’s family and somehow framing Sawyer for the whole thing. As a result, Sawyer must save his family while running from the law, with the trailer showing a climactic leap from an adjacent crane (we can only assume that Dwayne Johnson doesn’t fit into a ventilation duct). The film has come in for some good-natured ribbing already, with internet jokesters questioning how a 260-pound amputee makes a 15-meter jump off the end of a crane. But of course, closer inspection reveals that these concerns are just the start of the entertaining wackiness of this movie.
In Zaha Hadid Architects' description of their Library and Learning Centre at the University of Economics Vienna, they describe the exterior of the building as "characterized by two elements of contrasting colors separated by a glass joint: shell and shadow." For that reason, the building was a perfect subject for architect and photographer Edwin Seda, who says he is fascinated by the effect light has on buildings. "Design is created to work with natural light but is never really in control of this aspect," says Seda. "This set of images therefore explores light as a medium for architectural transformation, a sort of fourth dimension, that only materializes once the building is complete and the seasons begin to change."
Seda's photoset captures the Library and Learning Centre throughout the course of a day: from the daytime when the building's light and dark elements are clearly distinguished; to sunset when one side of the building is closer to orange than the white or black planned by the architects; then to the evening, when the building's internal lights bring an entirely different dynamic to the building's composition. Read on to see the full set of images.
Today, Michel Rojkind is widely known as one of Mexico's most successful, and at times flamboyant, architects of the 21st century. But in spite of his success, his path to architecture was never straightforward; before founding Rojkind Arquitectos, he spent over a decade as a drummer in pop-rock band Aleks Syntek y La Gente Normal, an experience which he actually credits with sparking his interest in architecture. An article released this week by Surface Magazine offers an extensive profile of Rojkind, from his childhood, through his days as a drummer, to the difficulties he experienced on his architectural work--including the disastrous opening of Mexico City's Cineteca Nacional in 2014. Read some excerpts from Surface Magazine's article after the break.
Are we going to follow a model of unsustainable building and construction similar to what I witnessed in China—or can we develop a uniquely African model of sustainable, and equitable development? I'm optimistic we can.
In this recent TED Talk, Christian Benimana talks about his journey as an architect—growing up in Rwanda, studying in China, and finally returning to Africa to see the beginnings of a building boom very similar to what he witnessed in Shanghai. Given this background, he then explains why he and MASS Design Group founded the African Design Center, a school and innovation center that intends to be a catalyst for positive urban development on the continent.
Metro and subway maps can tell us a lot about cities. For example, by comparing metro maps from different cities, you might be able to understand those cities' relative size or level of development. Or, by comparing a metro map to an earlier version from the same city, you can learn about the pace of development being experienced in that city. What these "maps" rarely tell you with any reliability, though, is the actual geography of the city itself.
In a fascinating series of posts over at /r/dataisbeautiful earlier this year, Reddit users created GIFs comparing the official metro maps of cities around the world with the real geography those maps correspond to. The results show the incredible changes that cities are subjected to in the name of visual clarity: in cities such as London, Tokyo, and Berlin, transit maps expand the urban core, masking the density at these regions' centers; in other cities such as Washington DC, shortened lines hide the extent of the city's suburbs; while in some cities, entire neighborhoods are moved to the other side of the city to make the map layout more attractive (we're looking at you, Prague). Read on to see 11 of the best creations by Reddit users.
The 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial is drawing to a close next week after almost 4 months of exhibitions, discussions, tours, film screenings, and other events. The second edition of the event, which opened on September 16th and is based upon the theme of "Make New History," will round out with two final events before the exhibition finally closes on Sunday, January 7th. Read on for more about the remaining events.
Is your knowledge of the world's most notable architects the best of the best? Can it stand the test of cryptic emoji-based clues? In lieu of their usual daily building identification quiz, online architecture quiz What Building?has created a fun knowledge test, converting the names of 20 famous architects into strings of emoji. Covering architects both past and present, the quiz is a great test of both architecture knowledge and lateral thinking. How many can you get?
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