Pre-Fab: The Latest Architecture and News

Can you even call yourself an architect if you don’t have an old box of LEGO that you can’t bare to throw out stored away in an attic somewhere?

LEGO has become a part of architecture’s collective conscience – an inspiration, a modeling tool, a nostalgic driver, a raison d'être for architects who grew up piecing worlds together and imagining alternative realities. With the completion of BIG’s LEGO House in Billund, LEGO is once again in the spotlight. But, as this short documentary explains, it never really left.

Videos

Designers are trained to consider the context for a finished building, but often neglect to consider the construction phase. When architecture is primarily judged based on the impacts it has on their surroundings once they are built, what can be learned from the process of building? The time-lapse is a method that can help architects to do just that, as it can capture years of complex development in a matter of minutes. This can uncover patterns of impact on social and economic levels, as months to years are played back over several minutes.

What is shown by time-lapse videos, though, can be as disturbing as it is interesting; when uncovered, the construction process is a revealing process, and the ramifications in regard to energy consumption can be as monumental as the buildings themselves. The time-lapse allows the viewer to get a better understanding of the types and amounts of materials being put into the construction of buildings, and the impact construction has on its immediate surroundings. By comparing time-lapse videos of different projects, what insight can we gain about how the physically generative process of architecture affects people and place?

Hip-Hop artist Pharrell is used to collaborating with big names - Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, and now? Zaha Hadid.

If you're at all immersed in the design world, you already know the name of Danish-American furniture designer Jens Risom. And, if you know Jens Risom, you most certainly know the mid-century, pre-fab house he designed and built on an isolated island 13 miles off the coast of New England. 

If you don't know it - now's the time to get acquainted. The gorgeous summer home - which famously graced the pages of LIFE Magazine in 1976, has recently been featured by Dwell in a video.

The house, which has stood on Block Island for 45 years with relatively little renovation, despite the island's notoriously powerful gales of wind, defies the stereotype that pre-fabricated buildings can't be built to last (or beautifully designed).  Indeed, Risom only attempted the venture because of the "personal freedom" that pre-fabrication afforded him. As he explains: “Architecture, to me, is the most beautiful of the arts. But I watched my father [an architect] struggle with the challenges, what was to me an enormous drawback: The architect did not fully drive the end product. I always knew that I wanted to design, but only [if I could] create products over which I had total control.”

More on this extraordinary home and its designer, after the break...