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On Designing with Nature and the 2022 Salone del Mobile: In Conversation with Mario Cucinella

June 16, 2022

For its 60th and first post-pandemic edition, the Salone del Mobile.Milano was back in full force following two years of setbacks and alternations between digital and physical events. The week-long exhibition, which welcomed over 262,000 visitors from across the world, highlighted the opportunities of environmental consciousness, inviting designers to adopt and reinforce the values of sustainability in the long term, support the protection of human rights, and promote environmental responsibility through design.

One of the most anticipated installations within the Fiera was a centerpiece by Italian architect Mario Cucinella titled “Design With Nature”. The large-scale installation demonstrated the various ways people can improve their relationship with nature, inviting visitors to eat, drink, converse, and work in a piazza-inspired space. During Milan Design Week, ArchDaily had the chance to speak with the architect to discuss the concept behind his installation, the relationship between the city of Milano and Salone, and the importance of valuing our natural resources.

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Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia

May 25, 2022

In these fast-paced and constantly evolving times, architecture has been adapting to new building technologies and complexities to serve today’s world needs. Teams of experts from all areas, architecture, engineering, construction, and a long list of professionals, come together to bring these solutions to our built environment. At ArchDaily we have been highlighting these actors in the architecture we curate and publish every day, but we often come across other types of projects, in which we spot different needs, and ways of building in certain places and communities, that equally require a highly qualified team, specific local techniques, and knowledge that are worth sharing.

In this edition of the ArchDaily Professionals Video Interviews, we talked to Tim Gledstone, partner in Squire & Partners, Edward Dale-Harris founder of SAWA (Socially Active Workshop Architecture), and Matthew Duckett, Senior Structural Engineer in engineering and infrastructure firm Buro Happold. The three experts came together to design and build the community Agriculture Technology Center in Krong Samraong, Cambodia for the Green Shoots Foundation.

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Cities of the Future: Julia Watson on Nature-based Technologies and Radical Materials

May 24, 2022

Looking ahead to the future of our built environment, a one-size-fits-all approach simply won’t do. Issues like rising sea levels, temperatures, and water scarcity in urban communities need localized solutions that take into account questions of sustainability, culture, and public health. Having investigated vernacular infrastructure across indigenous communities for her book Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism, designer Julia Watson is an expert in local, nature-based technologies that are inherently adaptable and resilient. We talk to her about the future of our cities, building materials, and her latest project for Our Time on Earth – a five year, world-touring exhibition that just opened at London's Barbican Centre to investigate how radical, collaborative ideas for the way we live can get us to a much improved place by 2040.

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Spatial Education and the Future of African Cities: An Interview with Matri-Archi

May 04, 2022

Led by architectural designers Khensani de Klerk and Solange Mbanefo, Matri-Archi is a collective based between Switzerland and South Africa that aims to bring African women together for the development of spatial education in African cities. Through design practice, writing, podcasts, and other initiatives, Matri-Archi — one of ArchDaily's Best New Practices of 2021 — focuses on the recognition and empowerment of women in the spatial field and architectural industry.

ArchDaily had the opportunity to talk to the co-directors of the collective on hegemonic space, informal architecture, technology, local idiosyncrasies, and the future of African and global cities. Read the full interview below.

Redesigning the Road to Net Zero: How CO Adaptive Architecture is Breaking New Ground

March 24, 2022

The climate crisis has reshaped contemporary architecture. Sustainability has become a central guiding force in design, and in turn, architects are rethinking how to build today. For CO Adaptive Architecture, addressing the climate crisis begins with a process oriented practice. Together, Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston have created a firm that embodies how a values-based approach can tackle the most pressing issues of our time. The result is elegant and impactful architecture brought to life with poise and finesse.

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"Robotic Construction Can Help Us Design Better Buildings": An Interview with HANNAH

February 18, 2022

HANNAH Office is a US-based experimental research and design studio whose work focuses on advancing architecture and contemporary construction practices by examining the possibilities of new digital routines and fabrication technologies. Selected as one of Archdaily's Best New Practices of 2021, HANNAH Office was founded in 2012 by Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic and constitutes a platform for exploring technology and material methods across a variety of scales, from furniture to urbanism in search of new design outcomes.

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"It is Important to Give Authorship to the Public": An Interview With Urban Radicals

February 04, 2022

Urban Radicals is a design collective based in London, founded in 2019 by Era Savvides and Athanasios Varnavas. The practice operates at the intersection of multiple disciplines, exploring public space and the notion of collectivity across a variety of scales, contexts and design expressions. One of Archdaily's Best New Practices of 2021, Urban Radicals shrinks and grows organically through the projects, dissolving the boundaries between diverse fields of knowledge and circumventing traditional office structure to integrate a multiplicity of perspectives within architecture.

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Heatherwick Studio, MNLA and Arup on their Collaborative Design for New York's Little Island Park

December 15, 2021

In this second edition of the ArchDaily Professionals Video Interviews, ArchDaily's Managing Editor, Christele Harrouk, met with Mat Cash, Group Leader of Heatherwick Studio, Signe Nielsen, MNLA's Founding Principal, and David Farnsworth, Arup Principal, to discuss their collaborative work on one of New York City's latest green areas, Little Island Park at Pier 55.

Is Sustainability the New Luxury? In Conversation with Andrea Boschetti on Karl Lagerfeld Villas in Marbella

December 06, 2021

During the past couple of years, luxury and fashion brands began venturing into architecture. Some built museums, foundations, and cultural organizations while others shaped residential structures that translated their identity into space. Following this same concept, KARL LAGERFELD, along with Spanish Developer Sierra Blanca Estates and the Design and Branding Firm The One Atelier, have developed the fashion house’s first “luxury architectural project”, the Karl Lagerfeld Villas in Marbella, Spain. Designed by The One Atelier, of which Andrea Boschetti is Head of Design, the project has low carbon impact, aligned with the brand’s commitment to the Fashion Pact - a global sustainability initiative that seeks to transform the fashion industry through objectives in climate, biodiversity, and ocean protection.

Asking what is “luxury architecture” and questioning why fashion brands are expanding into architecture, ArchDaily met with Andrea Boschetti to further understand the architect and urban planner’s take on the subject.

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Lighting Design in Architecture: A Conversation with Hervé Descottes and Steven Holl

December 01, 2021

ArchDaily Professionals is an initiative that focuses on all of the collaborators involved in architecture and construction, who participated and are credited in the projects we have carefully curated and published. This project aims to recognize and highlight the best collaborators responsible for delivering the best architecture, by delivering valuable knowledge related to the different disciplines within our community. Today, we are launching a series of video interviews between architects and collaborating professionals, to learn more about their work and to understand the importance of these relationships to deliver high-quality architectural projects.

For this first interview, ArchDaily’s Managing Editor, Christele Harrouk, met with lighting design firm L’Observatoire International’s founder, Hervé Descottes, and American architect Steven Holl. In this moderated talk, we had the chance to speak to Hervé and Steven about their collaboration in three cultural projects in the United States: the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, the Winter Visual Arts Building, and Nancy and Rich Kinder Museum. In this conversation, we learned more about what lighting in architecture means to them, how space and light should be conceived and why a close collaboration between architects and lighting designers is crucial to architecture projects.

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"We Still Have Not Built that City of the Future Where I Once Lived": In Conversation with Nishan Kazazian

October 26, 2021

What follows this short introduction is my unusually personal interview with a Lebanese-American architect and artist Nishan Kazazian. His work is inspired by numerous sources that come from many directions such as Kintsugi, the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together, primary color geometric abstractions evocative of Russian Constructivism, as well as paintings by Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Yet, a stronger inspiration comes from his memories of home and family history. Layering and superimposition of cultures and languages were constantly present in his life since childhood and remain guiding forces to Kazazian, who is both a licensed architect and a professional artist.

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"I Would Rather Be Known as an Architect of Elegant Restraint": Interview with Belmont (Monty) Freeman

October 05, 2021

Belmont (Monty) Freeman (b. 1951) founded his New York-based, currently eight-person practice, Belmont Freeman Architects in 1986. Its active projects are half institutional and half residential, with a special focus on adaptive reuse, predominantly in New York and nearby states. Among the firm’s most exemplary projects are the LGBT Carriage House on the University of Pennsylvania campus, a series of restorations at the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, renovations at the Yale Club in Manhattan, and the renovation of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, designed by Kevin Roche. Current projects include an expansive but minimalist residential compound on Martha’s Vineyard, branch library renovations in New York City, and redevelopment of a former meatpacking building into a new Innovation Hub for Columbia University’s Business School.

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Los Angeles, Wildfires and Adaptive Design: Greg Kochanowski on Creating New Futures

September 16, 2021

Great design is rooted in responsive and adaptive approaches. For architect and landscape architect Greg Kochanowski, equitable design solutions should address critical issues, such as climate and housing. As Partner and Design Principal at GGA, Greg is an active researcher focusing on resilient environments that create synergies between natural systems, culture, infrastructure, and development.

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On Salone del Mobile 2021, the Democratization of Design and Environmental Qualities: In Conversation with Stefano Boeri

September 15, 2021

Salone is the most important furniture event in the world, strongly connected to the city and the design culture. This year we are seeing a new expanded format to mark the 60th anniversary of Salone del Mobile, titled "SuperSalone", a prequel to the 2022 edition, with a very accentuated focus on the materiality and the sustainable aspect.

Managing to put together the physical and the digital, in order to make the event more accessible for the world, Salone ran during the first week of September, at the Rho Fiera. During these design days, ArchDaily had the chance to speak with the curator, Stefano Boeri, discussing this very special edition, the relationship between the city of Milano and Salone, the democratization of design as well as the environmental quality in his projects around the world.

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"I Want My Places to Come Alive": In conversation with Brian Mac

September 14, 2021

American architect Brian Mac grew up near Detroit. He graduated from the Architecture School at the University of Detroit in 1988 and for the next five years worked for a preservationist firm, Quinn Evans Architects in Ann Arbor. There he learned to love historic architectural detailing, and, while working at the firm, in 1992, became a licensed architect. Then followed a short period of disillusion with the profession and moving to Ohio to work in a residential treatment center for adolescent felony offenders.

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Digital Tools, Innovation and Sustainability: In Conversation with Henning Larsen

September 08, 2021

Henning Larsen has been creating projects that address cross-cultural design, tackle diverse climatic zones, and try to achieve ambitious sustainability objectives. All of this wouldn’t be possible without the use of technology and specially crafted digital and generative design tools that allow architects to treat any element as a parameter in design.

In a special interview with ArchDaily, Jakob Strømann-Andersen, Partner and Director of Henning Larsen’s Innovation and Sustainability Department talks about digital tools and their incorporation in the design process. Focusing specifically in this conversation on Sandworm, a new modeling program that uses sandboxes, Anderson explains how they have achieved to scan and directly transfer manipulated landscapes into a 3D model.

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“With Distance in Time, We Are Able to See in a Different Light”: In Conversation with Dorte Mandrup

September 01, 2021

Questioning the new now, especially with the new challenges of Covid-19, around the world, cities are advocating for structural change and collective action. Berlin questions, an annual, multi-day conference and a platform for transdisciplinary dialogue, in its 2021 edition “Metropolis: The New Now”, tackled the immediate present, creating a place for debate. Dedicated to local solutions to global challenges, the event took on a hybrid format, at various locations in Berlin and online, resembling the world we live in.

ArchDaily had the chance to meet up with the winner of the Iconic Awards 2021 in the Architects of the Year category Dorte Mandrup, architect, founder, and creative director of Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter at Berlin Questions, to discuss the firm’s latest project in the German capital, the Exile Museum and to reflect on her career and visions.

"Cultural Identity is Central to Architecture": In Conversation with Lesley Lokko

August 25, 2021

Questioning the new now, especially with the new challenges of Covid-19, around the world, cities are advocating for structural change and collective action. Berlin questions, an annual, multi-day conference and a platform for transdisciplinary dialogue, in its 2021 edition “Metropolis: The New Now”, tackled the immediate present, creating a place for debate. Dedicated to local solutions to global challenges, the event took on a hybrid format, at various locations in Berlin and online, resembling the world we live in.

ArchDaily had the chance to meet up with Lesley Lokko, architect, academic, and novelist at Berlin Questions, to discuss her talk “Africa as the lab for the future”, her visions for the future of architecture education and the future of big cities on a social, cultural and urban level.

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