Yesterday, through our Facebook Fan Page we launched a new contest for you to participate. We are looking for the best render that you can send us. Only one per person/office is allowed. The best ones will be featured next week on ArchDaily.com.
Also, there will be a special winners category for the renders that get more “likes”. To vote, just go to our Facebook Fan Page, look for your favorite ones and “like” them. To submit yours, “upload your photo” through the Fan Page, and tell us which software you used to make it.
We have received many great ones, so don’t miss this great chance to show us your work! The deadline is next Monday at noon. Become ArchDaily’s fan right here and start participating right now!
Some time ago, we asked you through our Facebook Fan Page for pictures of your architecture offices. In case you missed it, you can see the complete list here. Today, we can show you a video made by 0300 of Atelier Bow-Wow office. You can see how an architecture office works and catch a glimpse of the environment around it. Seen at 0300tv.com.
A great part of our day is spent browsing architects websites looking for new works to share with our readers, and we have noticed that some are very good, while others were such a pain to navigate… So we decided to go and ask our community about this.
Last week, we asked our Facebook Fans for the best architecture office website they knew. We checked them out and decided the top 10, with no particular order. We looked for the best ones in terms of looks, navigation (is is easy to navigate? Is it fast? Can you go back without reloading the menu? Can you link directly to a specific project?), presentation quality, does it look up to date?, projects (can you sort them by location? by year?).
Also, you will notice that no flash website made the list. That’s because we think flash websites have some dificulties. For example, you can’t link a specific project and Google can´t index most of the contents. So we decided to create a ‘honorable mention’ list with all the flash websites we thought deserve it.
Via mirage.studio.7 we ran into this list of fictional architects in movies. There are some classic ones, like Henry Fonda. Some new ones like Adam Sandler. And there’s even an actual architect who made it to The Simpsons.
Which one do you like the most? The least? Is there anyone missing in this list? Some actor/actress you would really like as an architect in a movie? Tell us what you think. Full list after the break.
A week ago, through our Facebook Fan Page we asked which emergent local architect would you recommend us. We received 60 comments in which architects all over the world recommended great offices, many of who we had never heard before.
We decided to put together some of them so you can check them out as well. And in case you are still not a fan, go to our Facebook Fan Page and become one today! We have many more surprises coming. The full list after the break. read more »
Each year, Wallpaper* Magazine bring us a list of 30 emerging practices around the world. This year, they decided to ask each of the 30 practices to create their ideal model home.
You can find the complete list with their model homes after the break. For more details on each project and office profile, click here. read more »
Sou Fujimoto is a Japan architect that has been pushing what we traditionally call a house, but way beyond that just formal aspects. New typologies are explored, introducing new ideas on “living”.
Architectural Record recently published their Top 250 architecture firms. Companies are ranked according to revenue for architectural services performed in 2008 in $ millions.
Firms engaged in the business of architectural design that responded to Engineering News-Record’s annual Top 500 Design Firms survey submitted these revenue figures. Number 1 was for AECOM Technology Corporation (in the picture), an engineer-architect firm from Los Angeles, California.
The firms classify themselves by: A=Architect AE=Architects-Engineer AEC=Architect-Engineer-Contractor EA=Engineer-Architect
You can see the top 25, after the break. read more »
CNN’s Talk Asia just featured an interesting interview with Rem Koolhaas. At the beginning of the video we see the Prada Transformer in action.
Highlights of this interview are Dubai, which lead to Koolhaas talking about the public sector and the stimulus, and his views on the Generic City.
When talking about influence (Rem was on the 100 most influential people list by Time magazine in 2008) and “star architects”, Koolhaas sentences the term to death:
“I think it’s a name that is actually degrading to the vast majority of people it is applied to. And it really is a kind of political term that for certain clients is important because they use star architects. My hope is that through the current complexity that title will exit discretely and disappear”.
Architectural photographer Pasi Aalto sent us a good photo report on the Crossing Now “Dialogues for Emergency” Exhibition. This exhibition was organized after the Sichuan earthquake (May 12, 2008), which devastated the Chinese nation, with over 69,000 lives lost and over 15 million people affected, needing temporary homes. Crossin Now looks to help these people through architecture, on an exhibition that will bring talented architects from around the world to discuss the issues of environment and emergency architecture from a global perspective.
This exhibition featured works by architects such as: Sou Fujimoto, Rintala Eggertsson, Teddy Cruz, OBRA, PRODUCTORA, Tham & Videgård Hansson Arkitekter, CAFA, Song Xiewei+Han Tao+Xi Xiaojing, Smiljan Radic + Gonzalo Puga, A4设计组, CAL-Earth, ECAL_Martino d‘Esposito, EH+GS, IK studio, Jia Kun Architecture, KUB and ML. + SJU & leondelima
Cliff Kuang from Fast Company has ranked the 10 most creative people in architecture. That doesn’t mean they’re the best, just the most unusual and influential visions in the field.
Be sure to check the architect’s works published on ArchDaily!
Architect Magazine listed the Top 100 U.S. firms based not just on their size, but on three elemental and critical aspects of each one: profitability (revenue per employee, based on 2008 gross revenue), sustainability (with variables such as percentage of LEED projects in 2008 and green policies) and design quality (based on awards on 2008).
Architecture film makers 0300 just released their latest video: Pezo von Ellrichshausen Architects, Context & Work System. They interview Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen at their office in Concepcion, Chile, and visit four of their houses: Poli House, Parr House, Wolf House and Fosc House.
Vice Magazine went to Brazil to interview the legendary architecture master Oscar Niemeyer. A pioneer in reinforced concrete, played a crucial role in the modern movement, not only because of formal or material explorations, but also for designing the new capital for Brazil: Brasilia. The whole city was built in only 4 years, and was a sandbox to put in practice the ideals of the modern movement.
Oscar Niemeyer is now 101 years old, and he keeps working every day at his office in Rio de Janeiro, with on going projects in Brazil and Spain. I think that his secret is how passionate he is about architecture and women, and he has devoted his life to both.
mountains/waves/women = curves
It is not the right angle that attracts me. nor the straight line, tough, inflexible, created by man. what attracts me is the free, sensual curve. the curve I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the clouds of the sky, in the body of the favourite woman. Of curves is made all the universe.
You can read a short version of the intervier at Vice Magazine.
Last year there was an interesting exhibition on the ORDOS villas by 13 NY Architects, 13:100. During that time the Architectural League conducted short interviews with some architects asking them some interesting things about the ORDOS 100 project.
What was your initial reaction to the invitation? Did you ever consider not accepting the commission?
How aware were you of Ai Weiwei’s work when you accepted the commission? To what extent do you think we need to see the Ordos 100 project in the context of his work thus far?
Describe how you dealt with designing a private residence for an abstract client.
To what extent were you designing with Chinese construction technique and standards in mind? How is this reflected in your design?
Describe what is architecturally at stake in your project. What were you after architecturally?
How do you feel about your participation in the project now that the design phase is over?
What do you think of the site plan and the cumulative effect of the one hundred architectural interventions?
Can you imagine an equivalent development being built on the United States?
Describe how you think the sheer size of Ordos impacts the role and position of the architect.
Describe your dream commission.
See the answers by Pablo Castro from OBRA Architects. You can also see their villa on our following post.
A narrative slideshow that depicts a day in the life of a Berkeley architecture student (played by Chris Torres). Photography and editing by Peter Hess. Music by Nine Inch Nails.
The Mohawk Group, along with Interior Design Magazine and IIDA, is hosting a number of FREE workshops designed to help displaced designers and architects get back to the drawing board and back to work.
If this is for you, register today here. If you have a friend in need, pass this along!
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As one of the runners for the design and curatorial aspects of a pavilion during the past Venice Biennale, I was very intrigued on how each country will address the theme proposed by Betsky, as “Architecture Beyond Building” is such a powerful call, specially in times when architecture is being able to address problems beyond its traditional scope, after being apart for quite some time.
But sadly, most of the exhibitions were the total opposite. After seeing the pavilions, but most important, what was being exhibited at the pavilions, I think that the answers went on the opposite direction. On the -pessimistic- words of Amanda Baillieu “The Venice Biennale has become reflection of the state architecture is in”… a biennale by architects and for architects, with 0 relation to our society.
But among this panorama, there were a few exhibitions that were up to “architecture beyond building”. One of them was Into the Open: Positioning Practice, the US exhibition curated by William Menking, Aaron Levy, and Andrew Sturm. They selected 16 practices which are working very close to communities, creating new work in response to contemporary social conditions, expanding the conception of architectural practice. People who are answering the question we always ask on our interviews (“What is -or should be- the role of the architect in contemporary society?”) from a unique perspective.
And after this, the curators successfully raise the question: need the end product be a building? More importantly, they ask: need the end be a product?
This questions try to be answered on a video produced by SMAC, highlighting the work of Teddy Cruz, Laura Kurgen, and Rural Studio:
Cruz’s project, Radicalizing the Local: 60 Linear Miles of Transborder Urban Conflict maps the collision between wealth and poverty, the formal and informal city and many other disparities apparent along the 60 miles north and south of the Mexican border at Tijuana and San Diego. Kurgan organizes city data on poverty, infrastructure, criminal activity and prison displacement to ask: what if more resources were spent on investment in housing and infrastructure rather than sending people to prison? Rural Studio’s Animal Shelter is a project carried out by students earning their degrees by assisting the structural development of Hale County, Alabama.
Currently, the New School for Design is hosting the exhibition Into the Open: Positioning Practice until May 1st. You can see more info about that on our previous feature.
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