Articles

The A’ Design Award is an international award whose aim is to provide designers, architects, and innovators from all architecture and design fields with a competitive platform to showcase their work and products to a global audience. Among the design world's many awards, the A' Design Award stands out for its exceptional scale and breadth; from 2018-2019, over 2,000 individual designs from 106 countries received awards in 98 different design disciplines. This year's edition is now open for entries; designers can register their submissions here.

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Griffin founded the consultancy Urban Planning for the American City, which she complements with her pedagogical work at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Since its emergence with the cultural turn in the 1970s and ’80s, spatial justice has become a rallying cry among activists, planners, and plugged-in architects. But as with many concepts with academic origins, its precepts often remain elusive and uninterrogated. Though some of this has changed with the advent of city- and place-making discourse, few are doing as much to lend articulation, nuance, and malleability to spatial justice as Toni Griffin. A Chicago native, Griffin practiced architecture at SOM for nearly a decade before leaving the city to work as a planner in Newark and Washington, D.C., among other municipalities. In 2009, she founded the consultancy Urban Planning for the American City, which she complements with her pedagogical work at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. There, she runs the Just City Lab, which, through research and a host of programs, aims to develop, disseminate, and evaluate tools for enhancing justice—and remediating chronic, systematized injustice—in America’s cities. But what form could justice take in the U.S. context, and how can architects and designers help? Metropolis spoke with Griffin about how focusing on inclusivity and embracing interdependence and complexity are parts of the answer.

There is often a debate on whether architects and engineers should restore old buildings and preserve what is still standing as a token of the past, or completely demolish them and introduce contemporary designs and features. In Iran, the remains of historic monuments, some of which are World Heritage Sites, have yet to know their fate, as restoration strategies remain uncertain.

As part of his Retrofuturism series, Iranian architect Mohammad Hassan Forouzanfar selected a few pre-Islamic castles across Persian towns, and merged them with contemporary landmarks, bringing about a new definition of architectural restoration.

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Modern architecture, visible in contemporary production, is usually related to the use of guidelines established by Le Corbusier's five points of architecture. Despite being widely known and debated for years, these points continue to be revisited and rethought in projects from various places and contribute to the creation of interesting buildings in various programs.

Architect and educator Astra Zarina wasn’t just the teacher of Tom Kundig, Ed Weinstein, and Steven Holl (who designed ‘T’ Space); she was also an advocator for public spaces, cohesive urbanity, and the communities that these attributes fostered. ‘T’ Space’s newest exhibit Rome and the Teacher, Astra Zarina celebrates Zarina’s life and teachings in the context of recognizing overlooked pedagogical figures, particularly women. A recent article by Metropolis Magazine describes this exhibit in detail and with it, Zarina’s own life story.

The Opening Ceremony of Brewery Arts Festival and Architectural Exhibition (Luohu•2021) is a plan to fulfill the future vision for the comprehensive improvement of the industrial heritage of Kingway Brewery’s urban renewal unit. The project has attracted much attention as Shenzhen’s first case where urban renewal contributes to industrial heritage preservation and activated renovation on land. 

What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," ArchDaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Here you can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT.

Based on research conducted as part of the Computational Design (CoDe) degree at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, we argue that large-scale rapid urban developments in combination with vast amounts of data are beyond human comprehension and consequently need to be synthesized when designed.

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Normally the efforts of the construction industry are aimed to design permanent and durable spaces. However, on some occasions creating temporary spaces can be of great help, not only when providing fast assembly infrastructure after the effects of a natural disaster, but also when activating residual or abandoned spaces in our cities. To exemplify the potential of these interventions, we present thirteen successful temporary public spaces.

In architectural spheres, “accessibility” is often directed at the end-user, and the imperative act of designing spaces, buildings, and entire cities along the principles of “universal design.” An increasingly central aspect of architecture, spurred by legislation such as the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the ethos of accessible architecture was well captured by architect Ronald Mace, quoted in a 1997 New York Times editorial asking “if we’re not designing for human beings, who are we designing for? Let’s design all things, all the time, for everyone. It’s where we’re headed.”

Kengo Kuma (born 8th August, 1956) is one of the most significant Japanese figures in contemporary architecture. His reinterpretation of traditional Japanese architectural elements for the 21st century has involved serious innovation in uses of natural materials, new ways of thinking about light and lightness and architecture that enhances rather than dominates. His buildings don't attempt to fade into the surroundings through simple gestures, as some current Japanese work does, but instead his architecture attempts to manipulate traditional elements into statement-making architecture that still draws links with the area in which it's built. These high-tech remixes of traditional elements and influences have proved popular across Japan and beyond, and his recent works have begun expanding out of Japan to China and the West.

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As wood is one of the most widely-used materials in the world, architects are accustomed to being able to easily obtain sawn wood at a nearby store. However, many of us know little about its manufacturing process and all the operations that determine its appearance, dimensions, and other important aspects of its performance.

The lumber we use to build is extracted from the trunks of more than 2000 tree species worldwide, each with different densities and humidity levels. In addition to these factors, the way in which the trunk is cut establishes the functionality and final characteristics of each wood section. Let's review the most-used cuts.

The history of concrete dates back to ancient Rome, approximately 2,000 years ago. The so-called “Roman Concrete” is composed of limestone, volcanic ash, and seawater and it permitted the construction of aqueducts, highways, and temples; many of them still stand to this day. Some time ago, this original mix was discovered to form a mineral called aluminum tobermorite, which gets stronger as time goes by.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

"I hate this whole ‘beauty’ thing,” says a deeply talented architect and professor friend, reacting to an emerging ripple in the zeitgeist. He is not alone. Words are dangerous things. Since World War II, there has been a consensus mainstream in architecture: the Modernist canon. But change is coming in the profession—and in our culture.

The true believers cringe at the word “beauty” as a design criterion. They dismiss the word “style,” too. Like all orthodoxies, there is simply “right” and “wrong.” The realities of the “wrong” are writ large in architectural orthodoxy: “wrong” is anything allusive to anything but that canon itself. Closed-loop rationalization gives comfort to the convicted.