Architecture is powerful, and like nuclear energy, it all depends on how it is used. While it can create uninhabitable municipalities, it can also create safer cities that improve quality of life.
In various examples, urban design has provided a response to deteriorated or abandoned public spaces. It has shown that distribution and lighting are essential, but that it is also necessary to consider who will be using the space and how to make it an environment that generates community.
Cuernavaca, located just a few hours from Mexico City, is one of the most visited places in the country thanks to its history, weather, and architecture. The city has eleven declared historical sites, such as the Cortés Palace, the Cuernavaca Cathedral, the Borda Garden, the Calvario Spire, Teopanzolco, Chapultepec Nature Park, the Cuernavaca Kite, and the Hotel Casino de la Selva, among others. For the past few years, Cuernavaca has experienced a boom in contemporary architecture, starting with the Tallera building which was built in 2010 by Mexican architect Frida Escobedo. The project gave life to the Siqueiros murals and all the history behind them.
WOHA's Kampung Admiralty Singapore in Singapore has been named the 2018 World Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival, concluding this year's three-day event in Amsterdam. The building, which combines dedicated senior-housing facilities with a broad mixed-use program and a lush green roof, was selected from a strikingly broad shortlist that included works from offices such as Sanjay Puri Architects, Koffi & Diabate Architectes, Heatherwick Studio, Spheron Architects, and INNOCAD.
Our world revolves. Not just literally, as it does around the sun, but in nature’s every aspect. Seasons cycle into each other (though more erratically each year), waves trace and retrace the beaches with the shifting tide, flowers open, close, and turn to follow the path of the sun. Even we are governed by these circular natural systems. Maintenance of our circadian rhythms, a human connection to light, is so essential to our health that it is a required element in many contemporary building codes.
A recent exhibition at the MAK Vienna - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, is showcasing the works of Sagmeister & Walsh, a NYC-based design firm investigating what makes beauty so appealing.
Titled "Beauty," the exhibition explores the notion that beauty operates as an independent function, and that in itself, it can be the primary motive for architecture: form is a function. In collaboration with the YouTube channel and design studio Kurzgesagt (In A Nutshell), this video released along with the exhibition explains why beautiful things make us happy.
“A model by Corbusier is the only image that brings to my mind the idea of immediate suicide.” - Ivan Chtcheglov
Despite their pranks and dirty politics, the Situationists may have been right after all. The death of architecture students will not be a result of excessive studio work, but will rather occur from the sermonizing repetition of modernist ideals that continue to be taught. In Le Corbusier's manifesto, Vers une Architecture (Toward An Architecture), he advocates for the adoption of modern architecture as the solution to 20th-century global crises, in a way that now seems rather limiting.
If the discipline doesn't move past the black-and-white photographs of the Barcelona Pavilion or the reductionist designs of the Bauhaus, students will continue to produce what may now be incorrectly associated with the “right architecture.” In order to break away from these stereotypes of what architecture should be, here are six explorations of building, curating and writing that resist these notions:
We all have that childhood memory of drawing a little house with a door and a window, a gabled roof, and a tree. But what sets architects apart from the rest of the population is that we continue to draw this after childhood, usually with a bit more technique. And just as our residential designs were becoming more complex and complete, the design of our trees needed to improve a bit as well (that broccoli-like shape would not please customers and teachers alike.) Although generally, trees are not the main focus of drawings, they play an important role in the composition of sketches, mainly to represent the scale, intended shading, or some intention of landscaping.
The 6th International LafargeHolcim Forum for Sustainable Construction will be hosted by the American University in Cairo from April 4 to 6, 2019. The LafargeHolcim Forum is dedicated to the topic of “Re-materializing Construction.” Keynote speeches, workshops and site visits will focus on strategies to reduce consumption throughout the material cycle from extraction to processing, transport, installation, maintenance, and removal.
The Forum pursues the question of how the building and construction industry can adapt to be leaner: with a smaller ecological footprint and not driven by the pretense of infinitely available raw materials. Hence, the Forum seeks to suggest radical solutions in the use of building materials.
Planning can, on occasion, feel Sisyphean. Emerging technologies, shifting economies, and changing governments can all enact dramatic and unpredictable change in short order. So what’s the use of planning for the future, let alone planning for a future nearly half a century away?
The greats of twentieth-century Colombian architecture were regarded for their genuine interest in brick. To this day, many of Colombia's iconic neighborhoods are filled with brick buildings.
Below, a selection of stunning Colombian brick projects —available in this My ArchDaily public folder as well.
This article was originally published on CommonEdge as "The Design Media Needs to Examine its Own Privilege."
Kate Wagner grew up in rural North Carolina. As a kid, her mom, who never went to college, worked in a grocery store deli and later in childcare. Her dad had a steady government job with a pension, and his time in the military meant he had the resources and benefits needed to get a college degree. Wagner describes her economic background as “one foot in the working class and one foot in the middle class, and it was always a negotiation between those two classes.” They were, she says, “just normal-ass American people.”
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Nestled in the steep gorges and river valleys of Japan’s Tokushima prefecture is Kamikatsu - a small town seemingly like any other. But Kamikatsu, unlike its neighbors (or indeed, most towns in the world), is nearly entirely waste-free.
Since 2003 - years before the movement gained widespread popularity - the town has committed to a zero-waste policy. The requirements are demanding: waste must be sorted in more than 30 categories, broken or obsolete items are donated or stripped for parts, unwanted items are left in a store for community exchange. But the residents’ efforts over the years have paid off- nearly 80% of all the village’s waste is recycled.
There's a certain rare feeling that all architects share once they leave school: they don't know what they know. Design? Not really. Technical details? You'll need a specialist for that. Can you build this from scratch? I still need some practice. So, what do you really know?
In this article, we'll share six skills that you learned as an architect that you probably aren't even aware of.
Architect Mayerlly Cuta along with the architect and visual artist Carlos Alberto Hernández founded Urban Sketchers Bogotá," a worldwide movement of drawing that promotes the practice of drawing in Bogota streets, capturing real-time life in the city.
From October 24 to November 9, an exhibition was held in homage to architect Rogelio Salmona. According to Cuta, they sought to commemorate the architect 11 years after his death by drawing his present works in the city of Bogotá. "As managers, we began to draw and promote his works. Later converting them into an exhibition. The Colombian Society of Architects and the Rogelio Salmona Foundation joined the project, leading to the Drawing to Salmona Call. This call brought together more than 100 people and collected more than 300 drawings that came from different cities in the country and the world."
There are many ways to solve the acoustic comfort of the interior spaces we design, using materials and solutions of different prices and appearances. Perforated cardboard gypsum boards are an economical and efficient option to incorporate into projects, absorbing the sound and reducing the noise level generated by the reverberation through different patterns and shapes.
Applied mainly in schools, offices, shopping centers, restaurants, lobbies, and hospitals, gypsum boards are easy to install and can deliver high-quality aesthetic results in ceilings and coatings.
It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the massive production of architecture today. Scroll through ArchDaily for more than a minute and even we'd forgive you for losing track of it all. But what seems like an endless scroll of architectural production doesn't quite fit with the popular movements surrounding resource sharing and community.
Hidden among the mass production that has defined architecture in the last century is a germ - one that seems to be marching to the forefront of practice today. More and more designers seem to be taking on locally-focused and/or adaptive reuse works. Award shortlists today highlight not icons by recognizable names, but sensitive international works that are notable for their process as much as their product.
The common image of the architect may be of one obsessed with ego and newness, but practice today doesn't bear that out as much as it used to. This week's news touched on issues of reduction, reuse, and a radical rethink what architecture is in the 21st century.
Of Le Corbusier's five points of modern architecture (the ribbon window, free design of the façade and ground plan, a roof garden, and pilotis), pilotis are perhaps the most used element in Brazilian modern architecture.
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