Emerging Practices: The Latest Architecture and News

In the architectural world, unestablished practices are often overlooked, yet, by challenging the traditional dogmas of the industry, they can have a significant impact on the built environment. The Young European Architecture Festival (YEAH!) explores the work of these upcoming architectural offices, looking at how they share ideas visions and experiences at the European level. The event is divided in two sections: Habitats, exploring ideas of domesticity and the residential typology, and Hybrids, initiatives that are rethinking the traditional systems of city planning.

The following represents a selection of projects by emerging architectural practices selected by YEAH! For the Hybrids category. Many of these initiatives are challenging the ideas of public space, but in doing so, they are also shedding light on the larger social structures at play in these spaces. The selection includes community spaces, schools, transportation hubs, and even projects initiated by the architects themselves, who have noticed deficiencies in their environment and are working to not only correct them but to enhance their presence and empower the local community through them.

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Looking to reformulate the relationship between humans, territories, and globalization, “Ecologies for Other Architectures” gathered for two days in Madrid emerging international architects to propose narratives on urban environments and their undergoing changes. Curated by Itinerant Office within the network of New Generations, the event featured 7 scenarios, 7 models, 7 narratives on nature, technology, bodies, material transformation, soil, participation, and (no) humans. The event employed recycled material and a fast-mounting strategy to guarantee zero impact.

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“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Despite Winston Churchill’s words, architects are shaped by our culture, and our work reacts to it. Because our culture evolves, the practice of architecture evolves. What is “New” in architectural practice has had accelerating change, exploding in the 21st century because new technologies have changed everything on a level of the Industrial Revolution, 200 years ago.  

Last year, Archdaily inaugurated its first edition of Young Practices, an initiative meant to highlight emerging offices that pursue architectural innovation. Carl Gerges Architects is a Lebanese practice whose body of work is a careful consideration of culture, context, and heritage. Villa Nadia and Batroun Boutique Hotel are two of the studio’s unbuilt projects that showcase the assemblage of architectural tradition and contemporary design, informed by a poetic sensibility and a deep understating of the local social, environmental and historical landscape.

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New Generations is a European platform that analyses the most innovative emerging practices at the European level, providing a new space for the exchange of knowledge and confrontation, theory, and production. Since 2013, New Generations has involved more than 300 practices in a diverse program of cultural activities, such as festivals, exhibitions, open calls, video-interviews, workshops, and experimental formats.

New Generations has launched a fresh new media platform, offering a unique space where emerging architects can meet, exchange ideas, get inspired, and collaborate. Recent projects, job opportunities, insights, news, and profiles will be published every day. The section ‘profiles’ provides a space to those who would like to join the network of emerging practices, and present themselves to the wide community of studios involved in the cultural agenda developed by New Generations.

ArchDaily and New Generations join forces! From this month, ArchDaily publishes a selection of studio profiles chosen from the platform of New Generations.

Indian Architect & Builder, through a two-part series titled ‘Practices of Consequence’ (Volumes I and II) delves deeper into contemporary Indian practices that have carved a unique identity and place for themselves in the country today. This interview, part of the first volume of the series, takes a closer look at ‘Indigo Architects’, an Ahmedabad-based architectural firm.

IAB: Please describe your work.

Uday + Mausami Andhare: We have positioned our efforts in the field of architecture in the context of our time, which is ridden with great contrasts. On one hand, rapid and haphazard development in the cities is putting the existing infrastructure under a severe strain and on the other, smaller towns and villages continues to suffer age-old neglect in the area of planned growth and quality of construction. With fast-depleting resources, the onus of a sensitive approach to these realities is a dire need...And architecture has the power to effect change, of course. The question is about being effective in various contexts. Urban, rural, big, or small, private or public, it is imperative to give utmost care and dignity to the smallest of efforts. Perhaps, this may be a model that allows well-meaning practices to carry on with their tasks with an integral focus, in any profession. 

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Indian Architect & Builder, through a two-part series titled ‘Practices of Consequence’ (Volumes I and II) delves deeper into contemporary Indian practices that have carved a unique identity and place for themselves in the country today. This article, part of the first volume of the series, takes a closer look at ‘mayaPRAXIS’, a Bengaluru-based architectural firm.

While anchoring each work in its specific site and circumstance, mayaPRAXIS is a synthesis of Vijay Narnapatti and Dimple Mittal’s sensibilities, which endeavor to obtain a deeper experience of time, space, light and materials. A continuum of specific situations enables works of distinct individuality and stylistic variety from project to project. Every project has a realm of details where the essential qualities are crystallised and catalysed at multiple scales.

Indian Architect & Builder's interview with the founders, after the break…

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