This year, architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, has been granted to Grafton Architects' Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Dublin, Ireland. The 2020 Laureates, who are both educators and architects, are known for their powerful yet delicate approaches. Their contextual and modern interventions are very attentive to history, demonstrating high levels of sensitivity and craftsmanship.
With more than 40 years of professional experience, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, partners and co-founders of Dublin-based Grafton Architects, are the first women to be jointly awarded the architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize. In addition to a very welcoming breath of hope towards greater female representation in the field, the selection also cast light over an equally urgent theme in the profession: recognizing architecture practice as a collective effort.
Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara founded Grafton Architects in 1978, after they met each other at the School of Architecture at University College Dublin. The practice, named after the street where the duo's first office was located, has been awarded this year’s prestigious 2020 Pritzker Award. Grafton's built work reflects the continued search of architectural excellence, in buildings ranging from small scale housing to large public volumes.
Australian architecture is rooted in the land. From environmental and climatic concerns to the country's unique cultural background, the built environment down under is defined by a history of connections to local contexts. Today, Australian architecture has also come to embrace a multicultural identity, with a new class of cultural projects showcasing how contemporary buildings and structures are being designed for the future.
NextOffice has created a space where engineers can gather and communicate with each other. Located in Mashhad, Iran, the 14 200 square meter development was inspired directly from traditional Iranian constructions, with the implementation of a structural void that generates the rest of the morphology and defines access.
JMC Holdings unveiled images of a 21-story office building in Pittsburgh’s 1501 Penn Ave. Designed by Brandon Haw Architecture, an international architecture studio based in New York, in collaboration with the AM/Woolly Group, the new commercial structure is LEED-certified.
Door handles are a ubiquitous part of daily life, being used constantly in almost every space but rarely given thought by the passing user. Nevertheless, the chosen material of each handle can vary widely in terms of aesthetics, durability, and sustainability, with good choices going noticeably right and poor choices going noticeably wrong. For objects that are seen and used multiple times every day without fail, it’s imperative that designers get the choice right.
To deepen this topic, FSB helps us to lay out the properties of four of the most common handle materials below, allowing you to make an informed decision on which material aligns best with your project’s needs.
Entering the Guggenheim Museum, visitors find themselves surrounded by a feast of vivid colors and mismatched fonts. Passing the gigantic green tractor at the entrance, they move across the ground floor, littered with stickers, like a lunchbox, or a lid of a laptop. A thick pillar that pierces the internal atrium has become a garish advertising column. A bale of hay, a drone, and some other object (impossible to identify) levitate high overhead. A cardboard cutout of Joseph Stalin on robot wheels moves down the ramp, scaring off visitors. Big reflective letters say: “Countryside, The Future”.
Architect Rem Koolhaas, the founder of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and Samir Bantal, director of OMA’s internal think-tank AMO, created this utterly confusing environment to exhibit years of research on the space beyond the boundaries of the 21st-century city.
Kengo Kuma's architecture can be defined by its respect to Japanese constructive traditions and alignment with its context. Internationally recognized, the architect is known mainly for his wooden (or mixed) structures, which arise from a simple pattern of assembly and, which through different intersections and angles, generate a complex whole. The representations created by his team bring very specific details, ranging from didactic isometrics to complex parametric drawings. We have gathered details of five inspiring projects by Kengo Kuma that use wood.
Since the winner(s) of the Pritzker Prize 2020 will be announced this Tuesday, March 3, we have asked our readers who should win the most important award in the field of architecture.
AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), co-founded by Rem Koolhaas and led by Samir Bantal, has announced a recent research collaboration with Volkswagen. Focused on rural areas and the countryside, the partnership will look into the future of rural mobility, through a first conceptual study on electric tractors.
BIG has just released images of No 1 Quayside, its latest office building in Newcastle. Designed in collaboration with local studio Xsite Architecture, the project’s curvature is directly inspired by the bridges over the River Tyne and the sloping neighboring hills.
Today marks the start of the registration phase for the international ICONIC AWARDS 2020: Innovative Architecture. These awards recognize the best of architecture and innovative interior and product design, as well as outstanding communication concepts and singularly innovative materials. The winners will be honored at the awards ceremony on 5 October 2020 at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, where they will have ample opportunity to network with other players on both the national and international scene.
Architecture and engineering firm HED has broken ground on the new Lynda and Stewart Resnick Student Union at Fresno State. Working with McCarthy Building Companies, the team created the design for the California State University to enhance campus paths of travel to invite students and visitors into the new center for student life. In turn, the design will provide additional space for a growing student population.
As one of the oldest building materials, dating back to at least 7500 BCE, brick is often thought of as a traditional, classic option for a building facade. Throughout its long history, however, the brick industry has changed and modernized to remain architecturally relevant. Innovations in brick construction continue to provide new opportunities for designs that combine the warmth and character of a natural material with the efficiency and aesthetics of a modern building.
Robotics and automation are a staple of any vision of how we will live in the future. Among architects and designers, this trend crosses a variety of scales, from smart cities to smart kitchens. As we outlined in our Trends That Will Influence Architecture in 2019, recent years has seen a strengthening in how interior spaces are being transformed by technologies, with searches for Domotics soaring by 450% in twelve months.
Deception, concealment, camouflage. Nature's numerous examples of disguising as a strategy to survive have provided humankind with plenty of inspiration for military unobtrusiveness throughout history. Today, disguise appeals as a way to protect one's private life in the City with Eyes. In a time when monitoring and surveillance systems are increasingly pervasive, Monica Hutton reflects on concealment strategies that are being developed, and which agencies they can deploy as part of complex urban ecologies.
On Design with Justyna Green brings you insightful conversations with the arts & design's most inspiring figures - from designers to architects, editors to creative directors and everybody in between. If you want to know what inspires them, how they work and how they see the world, this is the podcast for you. Listen to the On Design podcast now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Play.
On Design podcast host, Justyna Green met Adam Nathaniel Furman at his apartment in the vicinity of Regent's Park. In their conversation, they discuss Furman’s multicultural upbringing and its effects on his notions of identity. With roots in Argentina, Japan and Israel, Furman’s views on design, aesthetics and the society derive from numerous cultures, traditions, and religions, resulting in an open mind and a wealth of informed viewpoints.
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The stories of the buildings of the United States have been built by the undeniable culture that its inhabitants have been creating. That is why architecture is more than a physical object, it evokes moments that express the wishes of its inhabitants in different political and economic contexts. In all cases, these buildings represent the daily struggle that comes with a monumental legacy of those who lived there.
The Midnight Charette is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by architectural designers David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features a variety of creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions. A wide array of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes provide useful tips for designers, while others are project reviews, interviews, or explorations of everyday life and design. The Midnight Charette is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina discuss strategies and share their stories about passing the AREs (Architects Registration Examination). The two cover everything from the best study materials, how to study and how much time to allow, why the exam is difficult, the best time to take the exams, what to do if you fail, what to expect the 'day of', tips for taking the exam, and more! If you have any questions call or text the hotline at 213-222-6950.
This article was originally published on Washington Post, courtesy of Common Edge.
Hundred-year floods. Record-breaking Antarctic heat. Wildfires and drought. The stories appear with numbing regularity. And though the details differ, they all point to the same grim conclusion. We’re failing to address climate change. With carbon emissions continuing to rise, what were once dismissed as worst-case scenarios now look like the best we can hope for.
Design:ED Podcast is an inside look into the field of architecture told from the perspective of individuals that are leading the industry. This motivational series grants unique insight into the making of a successful design career, from humble beginnings to worldwide recognition. Every week, featured guests share their personal highs and lows on their journey to success, that is sure to inspire audiences at all levels of the industry. Listening to their stories will provide a rare blueprint for anyone seeking to advance their career, and elevate their work to the next level.
Pritzker Prize Winner, Glenn Murcutt joins the podcast to discuss the recent fires in Australia, the importance of spatial understanding over form-driven design, and how he established his award-winning practice.
Mass timber has been hailed as the solution to architecture’s notorious sustainability problem – that buildings account for nearly 40% of global energy use is by now a worn and overcited fact. But timber isn’t the world’s only renewable material, and architects and engineers have begun looking elsewhere for other possible steel and concrete replacements. One such possibility that has recently come to light is engineered or laminated bamboo, a highly sustainable and structurally impressive material. Below, we investigate how laminated bamboo is made, what its primary qualities are, and how it compares to timber.
Just completed, Eighty Seven Park in Miami is Renzo Piano’s first residential commission in the United States. The Pritzker Prize winner, known for his cultural interventions around the globe, imagined an architecture that creates the illusion of a floating building above the ocean and park.
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