With their latest facade construction, Iranian architecture firm Sstudiomm explores the potential that brick can offer by utilizing parametric architecture. Instead of relying on unique construction elements for assembly on-site at a later date, in their new project (called, in full, "Negative Precision. On-Site Fabrication of a Parametric Brick Facade // A DIY for Architects") the firm considers how a simple mass-produced element like the brick can be assembled in unique ways by taking advantage of digital technology. While firms like Gramazio Kohler have already developed industrial methods of assembling brickwork following parametric designs, Sstudiomm aims for a more lo-fi approach, creating parametric brick walls using little more than the traditional construction methods found in Iran and a dose of ingenuity.
For a ruined Civil War-era warehouse in Brooklyn, there may have been no better organization than an avant-garde theater group to think creatively about its future.
Situated in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge in the popular Dumbo neighborhood, the 1860 tobacco warehouse was crumbling and forgotten when St. Ann’s, a 36-year-old theater company that began life in another Brooklyn church, sought to renovate it for its first permanent home. Attaining energy efficiency in historic buildings is not just possible—it can be the most sustainable and aesthetic choice.
St. Ann’s, led by artistic director Susan Feldman, hired a building team that included Marvel Architects; BuroHappold Engineering; and Charcoalblue, a theater, lighting, and acoustics consultancy. The resulting 25,000-square-foot complex, St. Ann’s Warehouse, includes two versatile and changeable performance spaces, lobby and event areas, and a triangular garden (designed by landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates).
https://www.archdaily.com/791475/this-brooklyn-theater-renovation-shows-you-dont-have-to-choose-between-heritage-and-sustainabilityKim A. O'Connell
ArchDaily is continuing our partnership with The Architectural Review, bringing you short introductions to the themes of the magazine’s monthly editions. In this introduction to the July 2016 issue, Editor Christine Murray continues the crusade, begun in the previous issue, against "Notopia." Here, Murray describes Notopia's connection to our 21st century digital society, arguing that "the failed promise of the internet is how it has hurt the real world."
It may be found even in an attractive metropolis, densely packed with fine buildings old and new, replete with coffee shops and bicycle lanes. Here, Notopia is a simulacrum of inhabitation, like a stage set for its players. Nothing is what it seems. The historic apartments that overlook the twisted pedestrianized lanes of Barcelona are in fact hotel rooms for weekend visitors. The towering sea-view condominiums of Vancouver are foreign investment properties bought in exchange for citizenship. Detroit’s streets of elegant gabled houses have no services, the municipal water systems long turned off.
We all know that clients can be difficult to work with. But, doing a personal project for a boss… if you haven’t done it before, you’re really lucky. As much as you tell yourself it’s a great thing to have your boss trust you enough to do something for him or her, the stress is so much worse. Have you been there before?
At a time when Muslims find themselves at the center of the nation’s political stage, the topic of Islamic architecture in the United States is more relevant than ever. The American mosque has become a prominent symbol, within which identities, practices, and cultures converge. More often than not, this convergence results in conflicting goals, further resulting in mosques that fail to identify and serve the needs of their diverse constituents.
Augmented reality is not a new piece of technology. The term has existed in some form since the early 90s, and it has had practical effects for architects since at least 2008, when ArchDaily posted its first AR article about a plugin for Sketchup that allowed users to rotate a digital model around on their desk using just their bare hands. But these past few weeks, society was given its first glimpse of augmented reality’s potential to affect the way we interact with the places we occupy.
That glimpse, of course, has been provided by Pokemon GO, the location-based augmented reality mobile game that allows players to capture virtual creatures throughout the real world. With more many active daily users as Twitter and a higher daily usage time than social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Whatsapp, it cannot be denied that the game has captured our attention unlike anything that has come before it.
Working in architecture is always a challenging experience in which you just never know what might happen next. That said, there are a number of things we can collectively relate to as a part of this industry. Here we've created a list of things we're all too familiar with—whether that relates to finishing projects, working with clients, or just dealing with people that totally don't even know what goes on in architecture. Which ones did we miss?
Following a successful pilot launch in Boston and $1 million in venture backing, a startup company called Getaway has recently launched their service to New Yorkers. The company allows customers to rent out a collection of designer “tiny houses” placed in secluded rural settings north of the city; beginning at $99 per night, the service is hoping to offer respite for overstimulated city folk seeking to unplug and “find themselves.” The company was founded by business student Jon Staff and law student Pete Davis, both from Harvard University, out of discussions with other students about the issues with housing and the need for new ideas to house a new generation. From that came the idea of introducing the experience of Tiny House living to urbanites through weekend rentals.
Inspired by the notion of micro-housing and the powerful rhetoric of the Tiny House movement, initiatives like Getaway are part of a slew of architectural proposals that have emerged in recent years. Downsizing has been cited by its adopters as both a solution to the unaffordability of housing and a source of freedom from the insidious capitalist enslavement of “accumulating stuff.” Highly developed and urbanized cities such as New York seem to be leading the way for downsizing: just last year, Carmel Place, a special micro-housing project designed by nARCHITECTS, was finally completed in Manhattan to provide studio apartments much smaller than the city’s current minimum regulation of 400 square feet (37 square meters). Many, including Jesse Connuck, fail to see how micro-housing can be a solution to urban inequality, yet if we are to judge from the early success of startups like Getaway, micro-architecture holds widespread public appeal. Isn’t user satisfaction the ultimate goal of architecture? In that case, it’s important to investigate the ingenuity behind these undersized yet often overpriced spaces.
There’s so much to learn about architecture, yet so little time. The smart architect knows to have a variety of sources for their architectural knowledge, and that's why we’ve put together a shortlist of our Top 12 Architecture Channels on Youtube, and picked some of their best videos for you to see. Read more to find out the best architecture videos, from sketching and rendering tutorials to architecture documentaries.
Although it opened in 2011, YOTEL New York feels like it belongs in 2084, the same year the science-fiction film Total Recall is set. Quintessentially futuristic, the original cult classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger features robotic police officers, instant manicures, hovering cars, implanted memories, and skin-embedded cellphones. Its protagonist, Douglas Quaid, is a construction worker obsessed with vacationing on Mars.
One could easily imagine Quaid staying at a Martian outpost of YOTEL, a “minimal-service” hotel modeled after Japanese capsule hotels, which provide a large number of extremely small modular guest rooms for travelers willing to forgo all the services of a conventional hotel in exchange for convenient, affordable accommodations. These kinds of automated-service hotels may be a trend into the 2020s, but are they really hotels of the future?
In this article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Redefining (and Redesigning) The Way WeWork," Anne Quito visits WeWork's offices in New York to discover how the company is using its own headquarters as the test bed for its future product offering.
In a nondescript building in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, the global headquarters of WeWork buzzes with creative energy. In just a little over six years, the start-up at the forefront of the coworking-space rental boom has created a $16 billion operation with 50,000 members in 28 cities, with 96 locations announced for this year.
Spread across two and a half floors, the 50,000-square-foot headquarters is the home base for WeWork’s almost-700-strong New York–based staff and serves as a laboratory for its designers.
The visual medium of film has meant that style has always played a significant role in cinema. It’s one of the reasons why film and architecture have gone hand in hand for the past hundred years. In some sense, both mediums display complementary qualities; film as photography captures the structural aspects of architecture, while architectural design dictates cinematic space.
The same can’t be said for television – because even though television has undergone an aesthetic transformation in the past few years, with shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, True Detective, and The Knick, it’s still very much a character-based medium. The format itself allows for the close examination of characters over the course of many hours.
It began with one photo in London when I turned Big Ben into the London Eye. From there I created a series of photos from London, which then led to brands sponsoring me to create images for them in Europe and then from the start of this year I've been able to travel further a field with tourist boards. It's been great to transform familiar sights into something different and it's even more fun watching someone's reaction when they see my photos. I really enjoy it when other tourists come up to me and ask what I'm doing. When I show them the photo their faces go through a transition of confusion, to smiling and then laughing.
The result is a compelling report. It reveals that these high-performing projects skew small. That performance gains and metrics, particularly real-time performance metrics, are improving each year. That the leading projects tend to be expensive. On average, they come in at $537 per square foot. “The cost data shows us that we need more compelling examples of lower-cost, higher performance projects,” Hosey says. Clearly, more exemplars at greater scale, type, and cost variation would be beneficial to both the profession and the market.
Let’s face it, becoming a licensed architect is not for everyone, and is certainly not necessary to having a fulfilling career. Becoming a licensed architect is not easy. For many, it's not a decision; becoming licensed has always been the plan. For others, there are lots of factors involved that make pursuing licensure a difficult decision. It’s an important decision to make, and will affect your life, personally and professionally. Professional support for pursuing an architecture license may vary from firm to firm, but it is very important that everyone who wants to be licensed get some form of support from their employer. From the smallest firms to the largest, architecture as an industry has a responsibility to architects of tomorrow to do their part to achieve that ultimate professional goal of becoming an architect.
Today, thanks to our partnership with Sketchfab, we take you on a virtual tour of some of the most breathtaking historic fortresses across Europe. The design of castles and fortress complexes are particularly interesting because of their strategic siting and defense mechanisms. As strongholds of territorial claim, fortress complexes are meant to be self-sustaining in times of conflict and contain not only defense fortifications but a suite of supporting structures such as chapels, schools, and housing. This effectively turns fortress complexes into a village within a village. These richly detailed scans hosted on Sketchfab allow us to see in detail the urban planning strategies of different historic periods and places.
For a more immersive experience, all of these models can be viewed on a virtual reality headset such as Google Cardboard.
For the last three centuries, museums -as an architectural typology- have transitioned from being an important node in the city to becoming an icon of identity for a whole culture. Museums have transformed into a civic landmark in a local and international scale.
This month we highlight the Estonian National Museum which not only proposes a strategy for meeting spaces and exhibition, but also stands as a cultural, historic and territorial recognition of the country. Placed as an extension of the ruins of an old aeronautical field used during the Soviet occupation, the museum contrasts it’s historic context with a new building that rises as the projection to a new reality and a national future.
https://www.archdaily.com/790838/project-of-the-month-estonian-national-museumAD Editorial Team
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.jpg?1468332538 "Gathering spaces at WeWork’s headquarters offer a wide range of options in terms of informality and noise levels. The café tends to be fairly energetic. Image © Lauren Kallen")
