ArchDaily 2018 The best architecture of the year

5 Best Articles of 2018

This year we published thousands of fascinating informative posts. These are the stand-outs.

• “We Learn From the Ordinary as Well as From the Extraordinary”: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

  Robert Venturi, one of America’s strongest architectural voices and elders of postmodernism (an attribution he was never entirely comfortable with), died this September at age 93. He and Denise Scott Brown, his partner in both life and design, transformed the way we think about, talk about, and design the built environment, taking a pop music sensibility to an arguably elitist profession. Their work wasn’t without controversy; where one finds whimsy another might see mockery. But it was always vibrant as the man himself.

  Robert Venturi, in his own words »

• Architecture is a Corporate Product - and We're All Buying

  For highly-branded companies with money to spare, architecture has become a popular way to signal taste, value, and personality. But with design becoming a branding exercise, the question of who the architecture is for becomes complicated. The gap between architecture’s intention and its reality is long documented (and practically the nature of the profession), but the gap between who architecture is marketed to and whom it is actually for is a newer one. Can architecture retain its value when design is reduced to eye candy for ‘users’ who will never actually use it? Probably not.

  Who is this architecture really for? »

• On the Other Side of the Wall of Shame in Lima, Peru

  Lima is divided by a wall. On one side lives the rich, on the other the poor. It’s a division common in many cities, but in Lima this wall delineates a division not just between wealth but between monochrome and vibrancy, structure and spontaneity, planned and self-made.

  What side of the wall are the architects on? »

• How the Parc de la Villette Kickstarted a New Era for Urban Design

  Bernard Tschumi’s design for Paris’ Parc de la Villette was a direct riposte to the classical approach made universal by Frederick Law Olmsted. Rather than designing a pastoral respite for the public Tschumi’s design took a microscope to the city itself, organising the landscape in a series of points, lines and surfaces. It’s a design process that has been referenced in almost every urban design project since.

  Learn how this project started a new era of urban design »

• 50 Instagram Feeds for Architecture Students (And Everybody Else)

  Instagram has in the past years expanded from just an image sharing app to a kind of digital forum, even creating a new economy of influencers. For architecture, with all its emphasis on the visual image, the fit has been a natural one. Students, practitioners, and laypeople alike have adapted their presence and follow list to create a kind of internal community within the platform. This list gathers together the some of the essential profiles, breaking them down by focus: Student Work, Young Architects, University Studios, Drawing + Collage, Platforms (and ArchDaily itself.)

  Curate your scroll »

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